The Immortals by Mary Hallberg (chrysanthemum read aloud txt) 📗

“Kenzie, I think your brother’s right.” Gage scratched his temple. “It’s going to be a madhouse down there. Safety in numbers, right?”

I sighed and grunted.

As it turns out, Gage may have been right. The entire parking lot was full, and Luke had to circle around several times before he finally let us out on the curb. We went to find Elizabeth, who was close to the front of the line and shivering in a winter coat and boots. It had been unseasonably warm for the past few days, but of course on the first night we had to spend any time outside the temperature dropped. I wasn’t sure the people behind us would let us cut in line and I felt strangely exposed as we walked up to meet her. The only reaction we got was some guy in oversized sneakers and glasses yelling out “Hey McKenzie!” as we passed him on the sidewalk. He waved furiously and I didn’t even attempt to think about how I might know him. It felt like one of those dreams where you’re naked in public and nobody notices but you.

“Where have you guys been?” Elizabeth said as we approached her. “It’s so boring over here. I’ve been listening to a bunch of strangers run their mouths about what they’re getting people for Christmas.”

Finally, I heard it. “Hey, you kids!” A man a few yards in front of us yelled. “No cutting!” He pointed an accusatory finger at us. “Officer, they’re cutting!”

The crowd erupted. The man lunged for us but was held back by several others. Several people cried out things like “They’re behind you anyway!” and “Their friend was saving their spot!” but it went largely unnoticed. The man was a fighter. Despite still being held down, he kept moving forward until several security guards carried him off, still kicking and screaming.

By then, the entire line was chaos. There were dozens of other officers already on the scene but they were mostly swallowed up by the hundreds of people wrapped around the store. Luke grabbed my arm and pulled me out of the way just as a large man fell in the spot I had just been in. He cried out in pain, but only one officer swimming against the crowd even tried to help him.

“Let’s go,” Luke said. “I told you guys we shouldn’t have come.”

“But I want to stay!” Elizabeth protested. “This is the best part!”

“Get in the car!” he shouted. The rest of us obeyed; Elizabeth grunted but followed, barely managing to dodge a three person fight that had broken out behind her. It took us nearly five minutes to find the car because Luke had forgotten where he parked, but at least the mob didn’t follow us.

That night, the riot briefly made the Necropolis News. Dozens of people were injured, Corrina informed us, but all were cured with a few shots of TNV. The rest of the half hour news block was taken up by Immortals being interviewed about the amazing Black Friday deals they had gotten. “E-book readers for 100 bucks!” the guy who accused us of cutting exclaimed. “How on earth could you pass that up?”

The day after school let out for the holidays, Jacey had a Christmas party at her house. She said she wanted to exchange gifts and spend time with her friends before we all went our separate ways. But she certainly wasn’t short on the eggnog either; I suspected both she and Elizabeth would consume their fair share.

Surprisingly, they only went through two glasses each before Jacey decided it was time to exchange gifts. She headed to the pile in the center of the living room and picked one up. “To...Gage,” she read. “Oh, here you go Gage.” She tossed the package to him and, luckily, he caught it with ease. “To...oh hey, this ones for me.” She smiled and shook the package, but it didn’t make any noise. “Oh damn...well, maybe it’s a nice shirt or something.”

Since all of us had exchanged gifts with one another, our piles were virtually equal in size. Paige was the first one to rip into hers — her first one was from Gage. Some new movie that nobody would remember ten years from now. He gave pretty similar things to everyone else — another shirt for Jacey, a new bag for Elizabeth, even another movie for Matt.

Finally, it came time for me to open my present from Gage. It was small, so I figured it was something equal to the others — a gift certificate or something cheesy. We hadn’t really talked about gift exchanging, or much about our relationship at all. So when I opened the package and pulled out a beautiful emerald bracelet, I nearly fell over.

“Oh my God, Gage,” I said. “It’s beautiful.”

The entire room was silent. I looked up and saw Paige’s jaw dangling from her mouth.

“I hoped you would like it,” he said.

“I love it.” I leaned in to kiss him.

“Ew, get a room,” Jacey said, turning her back to us in favor of the eggnog. Elizabeth and Paige followed suit. I stayed on the floor with Gage, admiring my beautiful new bracelet.

chapter eleven

I waited until the last possible minute to go home for Christmas. In other words, my BMW arrived in my mother’s garage at 5 pm on Christmas Eve. Mom couldn’t handle me being out too late on the roads. Apparently she had Christmas confused with New Year’s, that other holiday when people drink too much.

Instead of giving me a few minutes to unpack my things and, you know, breathe, she bombarded me with questions of how my drive (and, since I hadn’t been home since September, my semester) had gone. Jacey called me halfway through the interrogation and mom was fascinated by the fact that you could actually see a person on a video screen while talking to them on the phone. Phones like that had been pretty common before the collapse, but now