Playing with Forever

Chapter 24: Paula

I stood at my locker, staring into it stupidly before school, completely dazed. I hadn't been sleeping all that well lately. I'd been cutting Sam and I's calls short and had lost the soothing power of his voice and the way it lulled me to sleep. In combination with school, volleyball, and running around with Nate? It was easy to get exhausted. A beat-up futon for a bed didn't help, either.

I jumped when Sam suddenly appeared next to me. "Sam!" I scorned. "Don't sneak up on me like that." Especially when I was half asleep with my back turned.

"My apologies," he replied, looking genuinely contrite. He hadn't meant to scare me. "But you like kids, yes?"

I narrowed my eyes. How random. "I guess so, why?"

"Emile and I are having an old friend stay with us for a while that I would like to introduce you to."

"How old is old?" I asked, narrowing my eyes. I was always looking for hints to Sam's background.

"She is nine."

That meant nothing, not if she was an immortal. "Meaning, she's really...?" I tried to pry out of him.

Sam shrugged elegantly. "Forty, give or take a few years. But she is nine."

A forty year old nine year old. Weird. "How do you know her?" I asked.

Sam sighed sadly, crouching to pick up a slew of papers that had fallen out of my locker and onto the ground. "It is a long story. Paula got mixed up in the stream after her parents died. Like with other family-less children, she bounced around with other immortals while the Council found a volunteer to be her permanent guardian. A woman named Loraine volunteered to take Paula in and be her official guardian. But Paula is used to being passed around a lot, so she likes to visit various people she knows. Including Emile and I." He smiled a sweet smile. "She is rather fond of Emile."

I took a minute to wrap my mind around this new immortal development. And to stop thinking how nice Sam's adoring smile was. "When I thought about immortals," I said, shoving the stack of papers back into my locker, "I never thought of children getting mixed up in it."

Sam sighed again, darker this time. "Yes."

Geez, how terrible. "Do they—I mean, what happens to them? Where are they maturity-wise?"

"They stay pretty true to their physical age. You have to gain some sort of wisdom over all those years, however, but for the most part, they stay as they are. Thankfully, Paula became immortal before the age of broody young adolescence, and does not really care about the difference of her life and mortal ones and all she misses out on from never growing up. She did not lose her innocence."

"She's mentally still a child," I said, understanding.

"Yes. It is the young teenagers that have such a terrible time of it," he explained as he ran his fingers over the cold metal of my locker, thinking.

I ached with dread at the thought. "Oh man. I can't imagine. I hated middle school—it sucked so much. And to be immortal, and know that you'll be a teenager for forever... Oh no, Sam, how awful."

"Immortality is not a fantastic, fairytale thing," he said darkly.

I protested, "I never said that."

"And now you never will."

We stood in silence a while, contemplating. If I had to be immortal, I certainly wouldn't want to be stuck at age nine. Or worse: as a middle schooler. I shivered at the thought. "How long will Paula be with you?" I finally asked.

"We will see how long she wants to stay. Probably a few months, maybe a year."

"That's a long time."

"Not when it comes to eternity," Sam said with a smile.