EVALINE.

Time and tides change, like all things do. Winds shift, seasons come and go, flowers grow and smile, and wither and die. People change. Incrementally, and then all at once.

It's the small things at first, the way they dress, the way they smile, the slang they use. It's the slow shift of tectonic plates, slight shifts under your feet, light tremors that you barely notice, quakes you can chock up to nature.

Then the buildings shake. They do things you never thought them capable, they say words you pray they don't mean, they look you in the eye and it strikes you all at once - you are standing on the fault-line. The light tremors are now an earthquake, and you dance on the edge of its destruction, a casualty being eaten up by disaster. Suddenly, it's a seismic shift, a paradigm shift, and you wonder - how did I not see this coming? And you brace yourself, because it's too late, you're standing on the fault-line, waiting for the earth to break into two.

You wait.

And wait.

And it occurs to you, bits and pieces falling into place, understanding dawning on you incrementally - and then all at once.

You either wait for the disaster to come to you, or you become it.

+

Evaline Clarke sat on the ledge of her windowsill, swampy eyes lost in some distant trance. She places delicate fingers on the window, tracing shapes of people she's yet to meet, places she hasn't seen.

It's been almost a year, a whole year since she graduated. She remembered throwing her cap in the air, a wide smile on her face, the promise of a new state looming ahead - a new state, a new name, a new life. She would not be Evaline Clarke anymore, she would not be chained down by the likes of Everett or Julie, she would not be held down by Cairnview. She supposed that she and Everett were alike in that sense. Years of change had driven the sisters out, but nothing would diffuse that desire for escape.

Their difference - Everett was viciously ambitious, but for Evaline, anything that wasn't Cairnview was enough.

But, of course, something still tied her down. Something always tied her down. She remembered her mother, clutching her hands, saying, "Evaline, my sweet, sweet Evaline, you musn't go, oh no. You are my summer and skies, and I could not possibly take care of your sister myself. Defer for a year, Evaline. Please, for your old mother."

Disgust coiled at the pits of her stomach. Elizabeth Clarke was crazy, but she also held all of Evaline's money. And so the question of her staying was not so much a question but a demand, and the reason was not Elizabeth Clarke's maddening love for her daughter, but her poverty. For all Elizabeth's talk about her fancy Vicorian mansion, she had nothing else. Her siblings had grown up and gone to find new lives, and Elizabeth stayed in Cairnview, dropped out and married a man she tried to banish from her dreams, worked at a nail salon, and inherited her parents' only asset - an old house, chipped in all the wrong places, destroyed more than it was fixed.

What she needed was not her "summer and skies", but her daughter's money, and her work. That, of course, meant Evaline for their mommy-dearest could not ask the same of her pretty, perfect Everett Clarke who was destined for worlds larger than Earth, and was the most wonderful daughter ever to have been birthed.

Evaline's fists clenched at her sides. She was chained on all sides, as she was as a child and as she was in High School. Elizabeth. Everett. Keelian. Julie. Her shackles. The clips that pin her wings.

Sighing, Evaline stood up and opened the door, a "Literature 101 for Dummies" book tucked under her arm.

And then she ran into Julie Moore herself.

"Woah, easy," the girl laughed, clutching onto Evaline and stopping her from falling. Her eyes - warm and browner than the earth - met Evaline's.

"Julie."

"Evaline."

Eva pursed her lips, stepping away from Julie. "What are you doing here?"

Julie shifted her feet, averting her eyes a little. "Waiting for Everett...any idea what time she'll be back?"

Evaline swayed a little, clutching her doorknob behind her. "Uh, no. Sorry." She was about to head back into her room when Julie reached out and grabbed her forearm. Evaline stiffened at the sudden contact.

"Eva," she breathed. "Can we talk?"

"What's there to talk about, Julie?" she said coolly, stilly. She knew it was illogical to have held onto a grudge this long, but she couldn't help it. It was part of her nature. Just like how Everett's temper was a fuse waiting to be ignited, Evaline held onto grudges like moss clung to rock. She liked to call that self-preservation, too.

"Evaline," Julie sighed, looking into her eyes. They changed, Evaline realized. Those brown eyes lacked the warmth that it had when they first met, but it didn't have that haughty look it did when they parted either. Julie Moore had just...changed. She changed, as Evaline did, as people did. She changed from the first Julie Moore, and the last Julie Moore, and the present Julie Moore. People changed. Evaline wasn't sure why she kept finding that realization shocking.

"Please," Julie said sadly. "I've missed you. Things have changed since we last spoke and...I'm sorry." She pursed her lips together and her eyebrows knitted together. "Please, Evaline. Hear me out." She took a step forward, her tongue darting out and licking her lips.

Evaline looked at Julie Moore, and felt a pang of, well, something. Whatever it was, Evaline rested a hand on the knob of her door and opened it. When Julie didn't follow, she turned her just the slightest and said, "Well?"