Amrita

  From even the greatest of horrors, irony is seldom absent.

  She wedged in through the window very quietly as soon as Oliver had it open. She’d been half-afraid that his old man would come home alone, that somehow Olly was dead, no matter what anyone at the hospital had said.

  “What are you doing?” he whispered, looking pale and scared.

  She figured she probably shouldn’t punch somebody who just got out of the hospital, no matter what dumb questions he asked. Instead, she feigned surprise. “Oh, this is your house? Damn. I was gonna steal everything.”

  “Yeah, well, unless creepy religious statues sell for a lot, you’re going to be disappointed.”

  He looked stressed and worn out; she couldn’t be mad at him. She took him by the shoulders and sat him back on the bed. “Dude, are you okay? I seriously thought you were dying.”

  “Yeah, me too. I don’t even remember passing out. Mrs. What’s-her-name, your neighbor, she was telling me how to juice jalape?os for an enema, and then, just… nothing. Zero memory of anything until half an hour ago.”

  “That woman thinks enemas are the answer for everything. I hope it goes without saying, but you should absolutely not put burning hot peppers up your butt.”

  “Thanks for that. I wasn’t planning on it.”

  She squatted in front of him and wrapped her arms around her knees, feeling suddenly awkward. “Did they tell you what it was? Did I make the world’s shittiest joke when I said you had cancer?”

  He closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “It’s not cancer.”

  Her guts relaxed ever so slightly. “So are you okay?”

  He opened his eyes, his gaze a million miles away. “None of us are okay.”

  She flicked him on the shin. “Thanks, philosophy boy. I mean are you going to keep seizing and bleeding weird shit out your nose?”

  He chewed on his lip and thought about it. “That should stop soon.”

  “Well, that’s good.”

  “Yeah.”

  She put a tentative hand on his knee, and he snapped into focus on her. His eyes were a deep, calming blue, and they made his otherwise unremarkable face into something more. “Oliver, are you okay? Really?”

  He took a shaky breath and deflated, his eyes welling with unshed tears, and he shook his head mutely. “I don’t understand what’s happening.”

  She sighed and hauled herself up to sit beside him, their legs touching. “Me neither. This is some stupid sci-fi shit and I still can’t make myself believe it.”

  “Maybe we need to read those stories you found online.”

  She chuckled, trying to keep it quiet. “I’m not going back to the library, are you?”

  “Heavens no.” He looked toward his closed bedroom door. “We shouldn’t let my dad know you’re here.”

  “Why do you think I climbed up to your window, dumbass? Your dad was a capital-D dick to my family at the hospital.”

  He nodded. “I was afraid of that. He thinks your family is all mixed up in that cult stuff Ms. Gilman was talking about.”

  She let herself fall back onto the bed and looked at the ceiling. “Yeah, he’s not a hundred percent wrong about that. Turns out my grandma was a top-shelf psycho and wanted me to follow in her footsteps. My dad never told me until today.”

  “Did you tell him? About the thing?”

  She scoffed. “Hell no. ‘Hey pops, you know all that messed up shit your mom was into? Turns out it’s real and we’re all gonna die!’ He’d move us to Canada and pump me full of horse tranquilizers.”

  “It might be safer.”

  She sat back up. “You really think so? Dad said this cult thing goes back to India and all kinds of other places too. You saw that freaky thing under the library. If it’s in Olmstead – the dumbest, least useful, most boring place on earth – you think those things aren’t all over?”

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  His brow beetled. “I don’t like that thought.”

  She turned toward him, noting with something less than pleasure that he was being very careful to keep his hands in his lap. “The thing is, I watched the news there in the hospital while we were waiting, and there was nothing about the library. And nobody around us said anything, either.”

  He frowned. “Could somebody really have covered something like that up? People have to be dead. Does nobody know?”

  She fixed him with a grim stare. “Maybe everybody does.”

  “What, the whole town?”

  “How else does a monster destroying a whole-ass building not become the only thing everyone’s talking about?”

  She could tell he was groping for excuses. “Maybe it’s a don’t-ask-don’t-tell situation.”

  She thought of the unnatural stares of all the YMCA swimmers and shivered. “I think it’s more than that.”

  “What do we do?”

  She stood up as much to expel her jittery energy as anything else. “They want me to be their priestess lady, so maybe I go tell them that their nasty god thing wants us to shut this crap down.” Her left thigh was cold where he’d been pressed against her, and she wished she’d stayed sitting.

  “I’m not sure that’s safe. The well underneath the library was built specifically for whatever that was, and it’s the oldest thing in town. People have been working on this for a very long time; they’re not just going to pack up and forget it because you say so.”

  She frowned. He was right. “Still, if I pretend to be with them, I can find out what they’re up to. Figure out how to screw it up somehow.”

  He looked aghast. “Infiltrating a cult that worships an actual, literal monster sounds like a really bad idea.”

  “I can’t just do nothing, Olly.”

  He twisted his hands together, grasping for words. “What if they’re right? What if this is the way things are supposed to go?”

  “Nope.”

  “I mean it, Amrita, what if—”

  She pulled him upright and shook him by the shoulders. “Shut your goddamn mouth. I don’t care. I won’t think about it. So this world is completely wrecked. So what? If I look at the whole thing, you know what I’ll be? Overwhelmed. Shut down. Paralyzed. I’m gonna focus on one thing and keep moving, even if it gets me squished and eaten by a tentacle monster. My dad’s the one who said it: if this shit’s real, I don’t want to live in this world.”

  He looked at her as if trying to peer into her mind. He looked so vulnerable, so sweet. He cared so damn much, and she’d never seen that in a boy before. “Amrita, I…” He swallowed hard. “My dad said—”

  “Your dad can suck it.”

  “I know, but—”

  “Is your nose gonna bleed?”

  “What?” He lifted a hand to his nostrils and checked. “No.”

  “Good.” She kissed him.

  He went stiff with shock and then melted into it. His lips were warm and perfectly soft, and his breath was gentle against her cheek as he sighed in relief and contentment. She started to understand how people could get into this. She pressed her lips harder into his and felt a thrill course through her as he leaned into it. She was just getting warmed up, and the wrestling match she’d been wanting to have since she first noticed this boy suddenly took on a whole new dimension.

  Then he spasmed and reared away from her, his hands clutching at his head as he crumpled back onto edge of the bed.

  “Oh, shit,” she said, hands fluttering over him helplessly. “Did I hurt you? Are you seizing again?”

  “No,” he groaned. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. My head hurts, it’s not your fault.” One hand went to his nose and came back with a smear of black.

  “You’re gonna pass out again. I should get your dad.”

  “No! I’m fine, I’ll be fine.” He snatched up a handkerchief from the top of his dresser and held it to his face. “Just give me a sec.” He coughed wetly into the cloth and black spots appeared on it.

  She looked away, nauseated. “Glad you didn’t do that a second ago.”

  “God, yes.” He coughed again, sounding as if he was retching.

  She walked away, trying to give him what shred of privacy she could. His room was littered with boring-looking books, and his side table had intricate geometric sketches she couldn’t quite get her eye to follow. His fish tank held a beautiful blue-and-red fish with long, trailing fins and a cluster of tiny silver ones that darted in erratic loops all together.

  “Hey, asshole, that’s my statue,” she said indignantly, shoving her hoodie sleeve up to her elbow and reaching into the water for it. She felt immediately calmed and satisfied when her fingers closed around it, and she hauled it out, heedless of the water she was dripping onto the carpet. “You can’t use a priceless artifact for your fish tank! You said you were gonna study it. I’m taking my turn now.”

  He wiped his nose one last time on the dirty handkerchief which he was holding in both hands as if it held a puppy in its depths. He must have hacked up something disgusting. “Sorry. Yeah, it, uh… it kind of freaked me out after the thing we saw in the Ambrose house, and that just seemed… I don’t know. Sorry.”

  She put the headless statuette in the front pocket of her hoodie, keeping one hand on it. “Man, we both really know how to kill a moment, don’t we?”

  He shrugged with a sad grimace, still hiding the ruined hankie in his cupped hands. “My fault, sorry. It was awesome. You’re awesome.”

  “Damn right I am.” She shifted uneasily. “Should I go?”

  “It’s not like I want you to, but yeah, probably. My dad will lose it if he comes up and finds you here.”

  “Screw him.”

  He sighed. “Yeah, I guess that’s fair.”

  She jabbed a finger at him. “I’m seeing you at school tomorrow.”

  He smiled, looking happy for the first time since she’d come in the window. “Of course.”

  “And we’re eating lunch together.”

  “Way better than my usual company, which is none.”

  “Damn right it is.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  She headed to the window. “Think I’m gonna go check out Miskatonic Pond. My dad said grandma used to go all the time. These nutjobs probably don’t even meet there anymore, but I have to start somewhere.”

  “Be careful.”

  “Yeah, you too.” She threw a leg over the windowsill. “Don’t die.”

  She slipped out without waiting for a response. If he knew what was good for him, Oliver would be staring after her looking like he’d just been hit over the head by a two by four, but she wasn’t going to ruin the moment by checking to make sure. She stepped softy across the gentle slope of the roof toward the tree that got her up and would serve just as well to get her back down.

  She felt good. She had her little statue back, her friend wasn’t about to die, and even though everything else was epically messed up, it turned out he was a pretty good kisser, too. All in all, not a bad night.