Prettyinpinkgal: I first published this story when I was almost thirteen years old. I last updated it when I was thirteen. My goodness, that flew by. "Foster Everlasting" is back, with an eighteen-year-old prettyinpinkgal! And I'm even a self-published author now! (In a moment of shameless advertising, you can go to my website alyssabcole[dot]webs[dot]com.) Isn't that strange? It's funny, because whenever I try to pick up old fanfiction projects, it feels like my writing reverts back to a thirteen-year-old's (which, rereading some of my old writing, is pretty horrifying!). I've been rereading some of the reviews for this story, and may I just say that you guys are the sweetest people ever? I'd rather like to give up this story, but maybe there's some of you, even after half a decade, who want to know what happens next. And so, may I present another chapter of "Foster Everlasting". ;)

Disclaimer: I don't own "Tuck Everlasting".

FOSTER EVERLASTING

CHAPTER SEVEN: SUITORS

It was early the next morning that Winnie slipped out of the house. She had a slight cough, but it was nothing a bit of medicine couldn't cure. Perhaps the Tucks had brought some with them, but she didn't bother checking. She needed an excuse to get out of the house.

After jotting down a quick note, Winnie grabbed her coat and walked through the familiar woods as the sun began to rise. The birds' songs brought her some semblance of comfort. The individual birds might have died, but new ones always took their places, and thus the songs continued daily for the past thirty years. Did any normal person notice this wonder? The everlasting song lifted her spirits slightly.

Treegap had modernized, and the horses and buggies, despite the stubbornness of its people, had eventually given way to the automobiles which now honked noisily on the streets. The town had grown, too, which resulted in...more honking.

"They're noisy for so early in the morning," she murmured aloud, darting out of the way of one traveler. "I wonder what Mother would have said about vehicles. No doubt nothing good. Father probably would have hated them until he found some sort of economical value in..."

With an audible clack, Winnie shut her mouth. Her heartache was making her think of what might have been. That would only make her feel worse. She didn't need to think about the fact that her father had committed suicide ten years after her disappearance and her mother had supposedly died of heartbreak the winter after.

As a result of these distracting thoughts-and the fact that it was doubly distracting trying to push them from her mind-it took her some time to realize the doorhandle she had been jiggling was not making the door give way. Her eyes turned to the sign, and then she turned to her pocketwatch. It would be another half an hour till the store was open.

With a sigh, Winnie decided extending her stroll wouldn't be a bad thing. She came all the way out here, and she was not about to return to the house in the woods for a while, if she could help it.

Absently, she hummed Mae's song under her breath, watching as the rest of the townspeople-besides those unnerving motorists-slowly woke. Treegap had grown, but almost all of the original stores remained. Many of the original families had remained as well, but seeing her now, after so long, would not spark recognition in but a few, as she was rarely seen and the scandal her disappearance must have caused possibly remained in the memory of some particularly attentive gossips. But they would probably blink, brush off the memory, and think of her as nothing but a lookalike to the Winnie Foster of a few decades past.

She floated into an especially familiar part of town, and there stood her old home, now owned by another family. The gate was open. Winnie was very glad of it.

A car came honking, and Winnie kept walking, both to avoid unnecessary company and unnecessary memories. The first would not be denied, however. "Why, hello, there. So, beauty rises with the day, eh? How about I take you to wherever you wanted to go?" the man in the car said, leaning over. He winked.

Winnie was not familiar with men. Her love for Tuck was the pure, innocent sort, the sort young girls dream of before the world taints them. As she left very soon after she drank the water, and in "her day" (goodness, how old she seemed with that phrase!) people behaved like ladies and gentlemen, particularly as the only people admitted into the Fosters' acquantaince were of those categories, she was unused to such forward remarks. Her mother would have fallen into a cold faint if she had seen the sort of degradation that had happened in their society! To see women wearing such short, close-fitting dresses that exposed so much leg and skin-God forbid they were...flappers...!-and the gentlemen behaving very...ungentlemanly would have driven her to her grave had she lived to see it.

With an awkwardness that showed she was a novice to such situations, combined with a finality in her voice that displayed she was not flattered by such advances, she said, "I really have to be going. I prefer walking, thank you."

"Your dress is longer than what most girls wear nowadays," he observed, keeping the car in a creep as he drove alongside her ever-hastening stride. "Your parents' old-fashioned?"

"Yes" was her curt reply.

"Fine by me. I like leaving it...up to the imagination."

Her face grew hot by the comments she did not understand, but knew by a woman's intuition that they were not proper and something that would have gotten had him thrown out of the house. It most likely was related to a topic Mother had meant to withhold until her wedding night...

But now Mother was gone, and no wedding day would ever arrive.

The thought threw several logs of wood into the already brewing fire in her soul, and Winnie suddenly felt her anger was about to boil over. She did not want a "gentleman caller" and if this man did not understand common sense...well, then, she would make him!

She spun around and commanded in her most Foster-ish tone, "Go away. I am in no mood for your antics, nor do I wish for them. I pity the girl you bore and irk next."

"Oh, stop acting so high and mighty!" he said, his flirtatious attitude suddenly faded as proud anger overtook it. "You're not so good looking yourself!"

"Ah, so the 'beauty rises with the day' nonsense was indeed nonsense?"

He spouted some word that would have made Grandmother shriek until her fake teeth fell out, and as he drove off he pulled the car disturbingly close to Winnie, causing her to cry out and fly backwards in order to avoid a collision. She fell, dirtying her already well-worn dress, and sighed.

"Are you all right, miss?"

The voice belonged to a man. Not another one! Winnie cried mentally, aggravated enough. "I'm fine, thank you, although my dress can't say the same..."

As she looked into his face, she found herself reexamining all the faces of old acquaintances long ago, trying to place the man who appeared to be ten years older than her. As soon as she realized what she was doing, she silently laughed at herself, certain that the only reason the face seemed so familiar to her was because he was the descendant of some family acquaintance.

But he was staring at her, too.

"'If you say something about beauty rising with the day, I will smack you," she warned, a slight smile on her face.

He blinked hard, then laughed. "I could try waxing poetic, but it seems your earlier catch filled your appetite of pretty words already."

"You say 'catch' as if I wanted him to be here!"

He laughed heartily at this. "I beg your pardon. You..." He was eyeing her again, but not exactly in the same fashion as the previous admirer. "You need your dress cleaned. Here, let me buy you a new one."

"There's no need!" she cried, a bit embarrassed. "The stores aren't even open yet."

"I have connections." He led her back into the commercial part of town and towards the back of a small clothing store Winnie had not noticed before. "Walter, it's me! I have a customer for you!" the man shouted, pounding on the door.

After a few moments of this, a large, sloppily-dressed man opened the door. Yawning, he said, "Jim Harding? You do realize the store opens in another hour, right?"

"First off," Jim said with a tight smile, "as I've told you before, I prefer James. Only a select few may call me Jim, and they're long gone. Secondly, I found a way for you to repay your debts to me: by providing this young lady with a new dress."

For the first time, Walter seemed to notice Winnie standing uncomfortably in the doorway. "Ah! Forgive me, miss; I didn't see you there. I'm not a morning person, you see, hence why we open an hour later. But, since we have an emergency situation, I'll excuse it." He turned towards James. "You mean all of my debts?"

"All of them," affirmed Winnie's companion.

"Well, then, let's get to it!" Walter laughed, taking a quick look at Winnie's size before almost skipping off on his way to find some suitable dresses.

Winnie smiled. She still was unused to seeing other folks, but seeing Walter and James's interactions made her forget her heartache temporarily. "What debts?" she asked James, who was busying himself with looking at his pocketwatch.

"Gambling," he admitted sheepishly after a moment's hesitation. "When you have as much free time as I do, you start picking up bad habits to kill the time."

Winnie thought about this. "I suppose I can understand that."

James smiled strangely. "I knew you would."

Walter came back just then, pulling Winnie in jubilantly and directing her to the changing room.

After a few minutes of trying on the different dresses, Winnie called a bit helplessly, "Um, which one is the cheapest?"

"Do you like them all?" Walter sounded very proud, and Winnie could not help but giggle.

"I do, but-"

James cut in. "Winnie, those dresses altogether won't even cover half of Walt's debt, so don't worry about it. He's fine with you taking all of it."

"Well, I still was hoping I'd make some extra profit from whatever she didn't pick..."

"Oh? I'm forgiving your debt by taking only a few dresses as payment. Isn't that profit enough for you?" James asked in a voice full of forced amiability, and Winnie snickered again.

"Don't bully him, James!" she called, slipping into one of the clean dresses. "I'm very happy with just one dress, thank you. Some of these other ones are...not my taste, anyway." She glanced at one of the more modern gowns. "And some are too fancy for my lifestyle, so..."

"Oh? Do you not live in town, then, miss?" Walter called.

Too much information. Winnie bit her lip before replying. "My family would think I'm putting on airs if I dressed too nicely," she replied lightly, entering the main room again.

James seemed to cover a laugh with a cough, but Winnie wasn't sure.

"Well, if you're sure you don't want the rest," Walter said, surprisingly reluctantly. "I do feel like I ought to give you these. Maybe someday, when you've grown up a bit more, you will find them useful."

Winnie smiled a bit sadly. "Yes, maybe when I've grown up." That's true, she thought. I need to find another place to stay anyway. I should have some nice gowns in case some good fortune comes my way. Maybe, she added a little wryly, I can wear one of them to the wedding.

"Then you'll take them? Good! Now I won't feel too guilty. Nice meeting you, miss...?"

"Winnie Kendal," James cut in smoothly, smiling.

"Miss Kendal. Perhaps I'll see you again with this lad some other time," he said with a wink.

Winnie smiled politely as he wrapped her dresses and handed them to her. After the men said their goodbyes, Winnie once again followed James, this time into a more awake streeth.

"By the way, you look stunning in that dress. Walter's a good man, and he'd been begging me to cut him so slack, so we killed two birds with one stone, didn't we?" he said, offering his arm.

Winnie didn't take it. "I thought you looked familiar. I never told you my name, and it's too strange that you chose the name Kendal to protect my identity, even if you claim your own is Harding.

"You're James Kendal, aren't you?"

He paused, then smiled. "It's a pleasure to see you again, Winnie. Especially since it isn't in your father's stuffy sitting room!"

Prettyinpinkgal: Nope, no Jesse in this chapter. He's taking a time-out since he was naughty and went finding some other woman while Winnie gave up her mortality for him.