Chapter 1: Live Forever to Really Live

When Winnie Foster thought back on it now, the decision was easier than she had imagined it would be.

Oh, she had vacillated back and forth between being a teenager until eternity or growing old. But, when her parents had insisted that she had to go to boarding school because of her going astray with the Tucks, Winnie realized that immortality was her only shot at freedom.

She couldn't wait two years so that she was the same age as Jesse. By that time, the forest might be gone, or she would be locked away somewhere that would make a return to Treegap and the spring more impossible. So, one day, a few weeks after the Tucks escaped from jail, Winnie snuck out of the house before dawn and ran for the spring.

Upon seeing it, she fell to her knees. Taking a palm full, she only paused for just a moment before gulping it down. The swallow was long and low. Miles had been right. The water did taste like heaven, floating over her tongue like a cloud.

She took another handful, then a third, just to be sure. Then Winnie sat back and waited. Perhaps she shouldn't expect to feel any different, anticipate the heavens opening up and angels coming down from on high to welcome her into their immortal ranks. Finally, she stood. She trusted the spring would do its work. 15 years old was not a bad age to be stuck as forever.

Then, Winnie took off running. Out of the forest, and out of Treegap.

She walked most of the way, daring not to hitchhike on some wagon, for fear that someone would recognize her, as surely by now her parents were searching for her all over again. Upon reaching Baltimore, Winnie stowed away on a boat without paying for steamship fare, bound for Europe. She ended up in France. The first thing she did, of course, was to climb the 1,652 steps to the top of the Eiffel Tower. Here is where she would build her eternal life. Here is where she would wait for her beloved Jesse.

She waited. And waited. Winnie learned rudimentary French, but was aware enough of the lessons the Tucks taught her to master the art of seclusion. She became a sort of recluse, living out her ceaseless life in the French countryside. 1914 came and went. World War I broke out, but Winnie still remained in the rustic cottage she had built for herself. Only once did she flee her adopted homeland, during World War II in the 1940s; she feared if the Nazis took her prisoner, her secret would be revealed. She hid out in much safer Britain until the Third Reich was defeated, before returning to France.

Still, Jesse did not appear. Winnie kept zero contact with anyone, getting her news from the papers in town; it was about the only goods she risked buying. Everything else, she foraged for herself. Nature was always the best provider. Finally, sometime in the early 1970s, Winnie was going through the newspapers when she spotted an international bulletin, in the obituary section. Her father had finally passed away from grief, so the announcement said. Winnie was briefly mentioned, that she had vanished decades before and was now presumed dead. Her mother was not mentioned as surviving her husband, so Winnie figured she had died, too.

Winnie waited a little longer. The 1970s passed into the 1980s. Across the Atlantic, one President resigned in disgrace, two more were deposed in elections. The Berlin Wall finally came down.

It was suddenly the hot summer of 1990. On her television, Winnie observed Saddam Hussein invading Kuwait; watched as President George H.W. Bush vowed that such an aggression would not stand. All at once, Winnie decided that the end of the Cold War had not brought peace to Europe. She wanted to go home.

By now, she figured that no one who remembered her would still be alive in Treegap. And she was right. When she arrived in her old hometown for the first time in nearly eight decades, the place was much changed. Modern cars had replaced the wagons of yesteryear. Paved roads lay where dirt ones used to be. Brand-name storefronts – Starbucks, McDonald's – now reigned supreme on the streets. And most conspicuously of all, the forest had been razed. The spring was gone. Yet eerily enough, one of the few structures that had remained unchanged was Winnie's old mansion on the outskirts of town. There was no car in the driveway, and when Winnie peered in the windows, the rooms were dark and deserted. With the money she had saved in Europe, Winnie quickly bought the place for herself. She tried not to think of the amazement the Bank of America people felt at seeing a supposedly 15-year-old girl signing deeds for a property. But there was no suspicion floated, no probing questions asked – it left little doubt that anyone would even remember a Winnie Foster, much less recognize her. As she had in France, Winnie lived at her old childhood home in seclusion, only going into town for supplies when absolutely necessary.

The new Millennium fast approached. Winnie celebrated what would have been her 100th birthday in 1999. The 21st century arrived, and with it, a new President. Winnie marveled at how she was witnessing the trials of the 43rd President of the United States, George W. Bush, when she had been born during the reign of the 25th President, William McKinley.

9/11 happened. Winnie remembered reading about the first airplane flight of the Wright brothers as a toddler on her mother's lap. The memory now exacerbated her horror that the Wrights' invention had been turned into a weapon of mass murder. The war drums beat ominously, as the Bush administration quickly invaded Afghanistan; there were talks on the news of preparations to invade Iraq.

This was the present moment Winnie found herself in, that fall of 2002. As she did most mornings, she rose early to watch the sunrise, as Jesse had advised her to. Then, it was time to tend to her garden. As she plucked carrots and other vegetables, she didn't notice the fancy Harley-Davidson motorcycle parked at the end of her gravel walk.

But she did hear what sounded like crying, coming from the other side of the house. Curious, Winnie paused in her work and strolled around to the back, a place she actually had yet to explore. Underneath a tree, she found a figure hunched over a slab of stone. He had long hair that almost reached his shoulders, and was cloaked in a fancy leather jacket. Peering over his shoulder, Winnie was shocked to find the figure sobbing over her grave. WINNIE FOSTER was printed in large letters along the stone. Her 1899 birth date was in view; her death date had been left blank. Had her parents erected this after losing all hope that she would ever be found?

"Oh, Winnie….. Winnie…"

Winnie gasped. She knew that voice – a voice she thought she might never hear again. A voice that, even in this moment, swelled her heart.

"Jesse Tuck?"