2014

"Yoo hoo! Earth to Ellie!" Caroline waves her hands in front of my face and I blink up at her from my desk.

"Listen, I know we all don't love school as much as you do," she teases, "but some of us want to get out of here. You know, see where the day takes us."

"You gotta be kidding me!" I raise my eyebrows. "It's not even fourth period yet."

"Oh, please!" She takes me by the arm and tugs me up from my desk. "Do I need to remind you of the facts again?"

"Ugh," I groan. "No."

Caroline loops her arm in with mine and I reach down and grab my bag before she tows me out of the classroom. We make our way into the busy hallway, where she weaves us around the crowd towards the quad.

"Fact number one," she states, ignoring my protests and holding up a finger as we zig-zag through a swarm of freshmen boys. "You have one of the highest GPAs in our entire grade without even trying, which frankly is disgusting."

I try to disagree with her, but she isn't finished.

"Fact number two," she talks over me. "It's your birthday tomorrow, and you are seriously overdue for some fun."

We exit the building and step out into the crisp autumn air, heading for the field behind the gym. It's the only place on campus where you can sneak into the parking lot without getting caught, thanks to a rip in the wire fence, and Caroline uses it often.

She releases my arm, and I tighten my jacket around me as she turns around, walking backwards so that she can face me while she speaks.

"Oh! And we can't forget all-important fact number three..." Her green eyes sparkle with excitement and she leans towards me, whispering under her breath, "Apparently, you've done all this before."

With a playful wink, she starts to laugh, and I stomp around her, walking at a pace that I know her shorter legs can't keep up with. I hate when she brings this up in public, and she knows it. Of course, the only person to blame here is me. I was the one who stupidly told her the truth about myself when we were thirteen.

It wasn't like I had planned on it, but we had already known each other for eight years in this lifetime, and it seemed like the right thing to do. We were at my house having a sleepover, and Caroline had pulled out a Ouija board from her overnight bag declaring that we were going to contact the dead. At first, I didn't want anything to do with it, but after ten minutes of Caroline's incessant nagging, I finally gave in, and reluctantly played along.

After what felt like an eternity of accusing each other of moving the dial, we finally got the hang of it and Caroline asked if she was going to fall in love.

I tried to hold back my laughter as the dial slid over to "yes" and Caroline squealed with delight.

"Awesome," she sighed before shoving the dial towards me and telling me that it was my turn.

When I said she could go again, she looked at me like I was nuts.

"Come on!" she pestered. "There must be something you're curious about. How about whether you'll fall in love? Or if you'll get married? Or have kids?"

The permanent ache in my heart throbbed with each of her suggestions, and I shook my head. I didn't want to deal with the fact that I already knew the answers to all those things, and none of them were good.

Realizing that she wasn't getting anywhere with me, she dropped her voice, and tried another tactic. "How about asking when you'll die?" Her eyes danced at the morbid possibilities, but I just felt bitter.

There it was again: the inevitable crossroad I always seemed to find myself at. I had to decide if I was going to keep my secret, or confide in my best friend. I'd done both in the past with unpredictable outcomes each time. Sometimes it went okay. Other times it went horribly wrong.

The sad truth is though, it never changed anything. I still ended up dying, and in turn, sealing my friends' fates. And it's not like any of Caroline's past incarnations ever truly believed my story; I saw it in their eyes. But sometimes just having someone to talk to—even if they think you're a little crazy—sometimes it's worth it.

You'd have thought I knew how to do this after having shared my secret with her twice before, but I was still a little nervous.

"Caroline," I started before I could chicken out. "I'm going to tell you a story and you're gonna find it pretty hard to believe, but promise me you'll just listen. Don't say anything until I'm done, okay?"

She hung on my every word. It was a rare moment that I had the upper hand in a conversation with my best friend. The last time I shared some of my secret with her was in the 1970s. We were a little older, and her name was Claire. She was totally open to the whole thing; of course, it probably helped that she was high on mushrooms at the time.

Taking a deep breath, I gathered my thoughts. "You know how some people believe in past lives?" I paused; my mouth suddenly dry. "Well, not only do I believe in them, but I also remember every single one of mine."

I remember her tilting her head, like she was waiting for a punchline; so, I quickly tried to explain things before I lost my courage. I told her all about how I was born for the first time in 1781, and how we were best friends even back then.

"Only your name wasn't Caroline," I explained. "It was Charlotte, and your family was one of the wealthiest in town. Your brother, your mother, your father, they were all there too, but everyone had different names, and no one looked quite the same as they do today—similar, but not the same."

She looked dubious, and it felt like I was losing her, so I cut to the chase. I told her about my seventeenth birthday, and how it happened to fall on the same day her mother was throwing a party.

"And at that party, I met Levi..."

"Levi? Like the jeans?" She broke out into a fit of giggles, and threw back her head. "What kind of name is that?"

"Caroline, Levi was—IS everything to me. We were in love, but there were so many things keeping us apart. It didn't matter though; we found a way. Then a year later, everything fell to pieces, and right before my eighteenth birthday I was murdered."

I made sure to be careful with this part. There was so much more to this story—things I'd learned, things that had happened, things that would have scared Caroline to death if I were to have told her right then. So, I decided to just give her the bones of it. She didn't need to know every detail, some parts of it maybe never.

"Caroline, after I was killed that first time, I... I came back. I was born again in 1817. I remembered everything from before—living in the 1700s, having you as my best friend, falling in love with Levi... even my death. The memories were so clear. I knew they weren't just my imagination, but I wasn't sure what to make of them either.

"Then, when I was six years old, I met you again. I immediately recognized you as Charlotte. You had a different name of course, but the same green eyes and pain-in-the-butt personality that you have now."

I remember bumping her with my elbow to see if she was still with me, because she was quieter than I'd ever known her to be, but Caroline nodded, so I kept going, in too deep to stop.

"This keeps happening," I confessed. "I meet Levi on my seventeenth birthday, fall in love, and then get murdered before I turn eighteen, and everything starts all over again."

"So, you're saying you're going to be killed when you turn eighteen?"

I nodded.

"Ellie, that's crazy."

"I know how it sounds, but it's the truth."

"Okay, then who murders you? Is it the same person each time, or someone different?"

I could tell that she was invested now, and I had to admire her resolve, even if it was misplaced.

"I'm not sure," I admitted. "I've never seen their face."

"Do you know why it happens?"

"Why I'm killed, or why I keep coming back?"

She scrunched up her face. "Let's start with why you're killed."

"I'm not sure."

That wasn't the complete truth. You didn't live seven lifetimes without coming up with a few theories, but I wasn't sure if any of them were correct. It didn't matter though. There was no way I was going down that rabbit hole with Caroline. She needed some time to get used to this whole thing first.

"Then why do you keep living over and over again?" she asked, and I could detect some impatience in her voice. "I mean, when you die, shouldn't you go to heaven or something? Isn't that how it's all supposed to work?"

Ah, the million-dollar question.

I looked down at the Ouija board and shrugged. "I'm not sure. I mean, I've never been to heaven. At least I don't think I have. I just keep repeating all this. I'm murdered and then reborn. It's like no time has gone by, but on earth years have passed."

I cleared my throat, trying to work around the lump forming there. "It's like I'm a ghost or something."

Regardless if she completely believed me or not, Caroline still wrapped her arms around me and pulled me in close. "You're not a ghost, Ellie."

But her statement just hung there, floating in the air, until I finally spoke.

"Yeah, but the truth is Caroline, I don't really know what I am."

In the years since I've told her more about our past lives, and she's become comfortable with the idea, even though I can tell she's still a little skeptical. I've often wondered if it was a mistake to confide in her. I'm not sure if it ever does anything but help ease some of my own guilt. It's selfish really, but Caroline's the one person I know I can trust with my secret, and I learned long ago that I can't carry the weight of it alone.

I watch as she crouches down and shimmies through the split in the fence. She jumps up on the other side in the parking lot, and pumps her fists in the air with a shriek of excitement, like a caged bird finally freed.

"Come on, Ellie!" She grins back at me, so filled with life. "Let's go see if we can get into some trouble."