Page 109 of Don't Let Me Go
Jocasta nods and leans back in her chair. “Except you didn’t, did you? You clever boys found a way back.”
“But how?” I ask, my tired brain still struggling to understand what I’m hearing.
Jocasta sets down her tea and considers. “How old were you when you died in Pompeii?”
“We were young,” Riley answers. “Teenagers. I think I’d just turned eighteen.”
“And you were in love?”
The question makes Riley blush. “Yeah. We were in love.”
Jocasta sighs. “That could do it. Two souls in love cut off in their prime, wanting more time. It’s been known to happen.”
A shudder passes through my body, causing my skin to break out in goose bumps. “We died young in our other lives too,” I add. “In London. And in Greenland.”
“Did you?” Jocasta sips her tea and stares at us in unnerving silence.
I turn to Riley, whose eyes reflect my own apprehension. “If your family has run into us a dozen times,” he says, “do you know if we died in those lives as well?”
Jocasta shrugs. “Everyone dies.”
“But did we die young?” Riley insists.
Jocasta studies him, and something in her dark piercing eyes makes me wish he’d never asked. “You were eighteen when you died in Pompeii?”
“Yes.”
“How do you know you were eighteen?”
“Because it was my birthday.”
An icy chill roots me to my chair and fills my chest with dread. “The day that we died in London, it was also your birthday,” I remind Riley. “And in Greenland.”
“His eighteenth birthday?” Jocasta asks.
I nod.
“Interesting.”
“Why is that interesting?” Riley asks.
“It seems as though each time the two of you are reincarnated, you’re given the exact same lifespan that you had in your first life.”
Riley’s face goes white. We’re both thinking the same thing.
“How old are you now?” Jocasta asks.
“Seventeen,” Riley answers.
“And when do you turn eighteen?”
“In two weeks. July thirteenth.”
“Ah.” Jocasta doesn’t say anything more. She doesn’t need to.
“Hang on,” I say, shaking my head in disbelief. “Are you saying that in two weeks, Riley and I are gonna—what—die?”
Jocasta sighs. “I told you. Reincarnation is highly unusual. Humanbeings are meant to live one life and one life only. Each time the two of you come back, you’re breaking the rules.”
