Character Analysis
Girl Next Door
Nikki Beckett—or Becks, as her friends call her—starts out as an average teenager in Park City, Utah. She has a boyfriend she adores and a family she loves but also struggles with: her younger brother is annoying, her dad is distant, and her mom, well, she was just killed by a drunk driver.
Before the Feed, Nikki does well in school, to the point where her best friend Jules "used to hate the fact that school came easy to me" (2.46). She had other ordinary hobbies back then, too, like fly-fishing with her brother and getting coffee with her friends. Like every other teenager girl out there, Nikki worries about her looks. She remembers how in sixth grade popular girl Lacey Greene told her that bangs were "out" (5.47)—so she promptly grew out her bangs.
In her pre-Feed life, Nikki does the typical date-your-best-friend-growing-up thing. When her friend Jack finally pays attention to her in high school and starts to date her, she's over the moon: "We had been friends for so long […] and I had been secretly pining for him since… well, since forever" (1.64). This only adds to our understanding of Nikki as not that different from other teenage girls. Who hasn't had a crush on a friend at some point and yearned to date them? It may not always pan out, but it's still a pretty classic experience.
Also, Nikki's a little insecure. Totally unexpected coming from a teenage girl, right? Not. She spends a bunch of time stressing over her relationship with Jack. For instance: "I'd never had a boyfriend, and Jack obviously had more experience than me. I didn't want to be like the others, but that didn't stop me from wanting to be with him. It didn't stop me from wanting him to want me" (5.99). Ah, young love—everyone has to figure out how to be true to themselves and navigate the sense that there are ways in which they don't measure up.
Nikki's dating angst and insecurities help make her easy to relate to. And while this happens often in books as a way of helping readers identify with the main character, in Everneath it matters a bit more. Because then Nikki goes underground to become a Forfeit to the immortal Cole. And everything changes. Big time. Nikki is an ordinary teen no more.
The Girl Who Lived
Getting her emotions and memories sucked out for one hundred years changes Nikki. Shocking, we know. And when Nikki Returns, she even looks out of place, enough that people notice. She says:
My dad told me it was because I looked like a malnourished animal, ready to sprint. I'd lost a lot of weight, and my dark hair no longer held any curls. (1.20)
Pretty drastic, right? And it's clear that Nikki doesn't look good; if anything, it sounds like she's a shadow of her former self. But the physical changes don't stop here. Another weird impact of the Return is that Nikki's hands constantly shake:
Since my Return, my emaciated muscles made my hands shake, and I looked for ways to keep them busy. It was part of the reason I took up knitting. (1.41)
She isn't just thin, then, she's been seriously depleted—her muscles are "emaciated." But that she picks up knitting as a way to cope with this, lets us know that she's still resilient. She may be weak, but she isn't throwing in the towel.
Another difference Nikki experiences is that she can now taste and feed on emotions. That's kind of weird, right? But at least she's expecting it: "Cole used to tell me that the Everneath would change me—make me more in tune with the emotions of others because I was so empty of my own" (1.25). It's creepy when she accidentally tastes people's emotions, but there's nothing she can really do about it. So bummer.
While her body is weak, at least her new powers come in handy when she tells Jack about what happened to her. She proves that her story is real by sucking the energy from him, prompting Jack to ask: "What are you, Nikki?" (18.155). Is she a mutant? A Dementor? We don't really know—and she doesn't either. But no matter how you slice it, Nikki's fundamental being has changed in the Everneath.
Girl with Principles
For all the bizarre stuff happening to Nikki when she Returns, though, at least she sticks to her guns, deciding to do the right thing rather than the easy thing. And sometimes this is hard, because taking the easy way out—begging Cole to take away her pain, no matter the cost—is tempting, and something that she's given into before (hello, impulsive streak).
Importantly, Nikki's do-the-right-thing streak started back before the Feed. It's a fundamental quality of hers and she returns to it throughout the book. When she celebrates her three-month anniversary with Jack, for instance, she's worried that he'll want to have sex, which she's not ready for. After some awkward discussion, he says he'd never rush her, but her response is that even if he had asked, "I would've said no" (7.99). So our girl Nikki definitely sticks to her guns.
Part of Nikki's reason for Returning involves doing right by her family. She says, "Last time, I left during a fight, with no explanation. At least this time I can leave them a note, so they don't waste their time thinking I was kidnapped or something" (3.81). She believes at this point that she'll have to leave them again, but she's determined to do a bit better by them, to at least partially right the wrongs of her initial disappearance. And that's good looking out.
Of course, even our girl has her doubts. When things are really terrible during her Return, she has a moment of wanting to go with Cole and erase all her pain. But she ends up sticking to her guns: "But it wasn't real […] I reached a conclusion I'd been trying to avoid: the easy path in this whole mess would be to go with Cole, and I couldn't let myself make the easy choice. I had to make the right choice" (9.65). Is she tempted? Yup. But Nikki quickly finds her guns and sticks to them.
How many people do you know who would choose eternal suffering over eternal life in order to avoid having to suck others dry? Once Nikki resolves to do the right thing, she stays on track—to the point of lying to protect the people she loves. Dun dun dun…
Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire
Nikki might be dedicated to doing the right thing, but she sometimes twists the truth to do it.
When she and Jack begin to reconnect after her Return, he asks whether she even remembers him. Her thought process is this:
Jack was grasping at the faint shadow of the life we'd had before, searching for a stronghold. I could see him doing it and I couldn't let him. I'd already hurt him enough. He said he'd moved on.
So I lied. The biggest lie ever. (11.38-39)
Nikki tells Jack that she doesn't remember anything of their past, and he stops talking to her as a result. The boy's clearly heartbroken, and Nikki's not happy about it either—but she does it out of a desire to not hurt him again. Eventually, though, she caves and tells him that she does remember their past together. And you know what? They grow closer as a result. So maybe she never needed to lie to him in the first place. But just because she might have been mistaken, doesn't mean she came from a malicious place when she opted to lie for a while.
The second huge lie Nikki tells Jack is actually a lie by omission. She doesn't tell him that the Tunnels will end her time on earth within six months of her return: "There was no way I was ready for Jack to know the truth about the Tunnels coming for me" (21.25). Cole spills the beans, though, and when he does, Jack walks out on Nikki. So while she lied to spare Jack pain, the result is that her "heart felt like it was breaking" (25.64). Oops.
They make up, but that doesn't stop Nikki from concealing the truth one last time: by not telling Jack that she suspects he can take her place in the Tunnels. We love us some Nikki, but she doesn't have the most direct relationship with the truth—and while she's always motivated by trying to protect Jack when she lies, she also doesn't seem to realize that he always finds out the truth. So, you know, maybe she could spare them both and just come clean in the first place.
Love Is All You Need
Love plays a big role in Nikki's life. She Returned to see Jack again, even though she's not sure what will become of their relationship, and love for her family plays a role in her Return, too.
Part of Nikki's growth as a character involves distinguishing love from lust, and heartfelt emotion from memories. Cole tries to convince her that they belong together: "We shared a heart, Nik. Your heart is in me […] It belongs to me. And so I belong to you" (25.82-84). And while we're kind of thanks, but no thanks about Cole's declaration, being with Cole feels good to Nikki. She says:
I knew I should've pushed away, but my stupid body betrayed me. My traitorous arms and legs wanted to tangle with Cole's again. (25.86)
Though she knows Cole's bad news, being Fed on creates some strange fondness in Nikki for him. In the passage above, it seems like it's almost against her will, too. Call it a really dark take on love.
Nikki's emotions are so jumbled during her Return that she considers going to the Tunnels prematurely just to end her pain. But after that low point, and after Jack forgives her for lying to him (multiple times), she reaches a new resolution:
For the first time in a hundred years, Jack's lips were against mine in a real kiss. He was mine again, and in that moment, I made a decision.
I had to find a way to stay. And I wouldn't stop searching for a loophole to my fate, until the moment the Tunnels dragged me away. (28.20-21)
The catch? Nikki stays on the Surface, but only because Jack sacrifices himself to the Tunnels for her. It's a loophole, all right, but not exactly what Nikki had in mind. And it breaks Nikki's heart: "What Jack did for me splintered me, and I wondered how my body stayed together each day instead of falling apart into the thousands of little pieces it should've been" (33.14). But Nikki's love for Jack binds them together, and he visits in her dreams every night.
Just as Nikki's love for Jack caused her to Return after the Feed, it now inspires her to find him someday. She says: "I tell him to hang on. I will never stop dreaming of him. I will find him" (33.60-61). So in a sense, love causes Nikki to come full circle, to reject the easy pain-free path Cole offers her, and to connect with Jack in a meaningful (though painful) way. Which brings us back to what we said about Nikki earlier in this analysis: Girl sticks to her guns.
Nikki's Timeline