Chapter Ten

  Jeremy had delivered the news a week and a half ago while he and his parents were eating dinner. The only sounds had been the clink of silverware against plates and the soft warbling of the birds outside.

  Jeremy had hesitated, wondering if maybe this particular secret should stay a secret. No, he finally decided. They were going to find out eventually, one way or another. While their reaction wasn’t going to be pleasant either way, he strongly suspected that it would be even worse if they discovered this on their own.

  “Mom, Dad?” he had said, clearing his throat nervously.

  Silently, they’d turned to look at him, and Jeremy had had to fight the urge to shrink down into his chair. They must have picked up on something in his tone, because he could already see disappointment glinting in their eyes, as if they were mulling over how best to punish him for whatever came out of his mouth next.

  Put the stick down and let the lion sleep, the voice of wisdom whispered in his head.

  Instead, he had pushed his fears aside and forced himself to say, “M- Miranda and I are dating.”

  Their reaction was almost exactly what he had expected. His mother had screeched for an hour straight, until Jeremy had worried that she would pass out. Couldn’t he see? That filthy little street girl would lead him so far down a path of wickedness and depravity that the only job he would ever qualify for was flipping burgers at a dingy fast food restaurant! They were just trying to help him! Why did he have to make their lives so difficult?

  When Jeremy refused to budge, she’d finally broken down into tears.

  Meanwhile, his father had just sat there, shaking his head in silent condemnation.

  In a strange way, the whole confrontation had been a little comforting, like ripping off a bandaid. Painful, yes, but at least it was over, and now his imagination couldn’t keep him up all night whispering increasingly horrible ways the discussion could play out into his ear anymore.

  Little had he known, the lion was awake, and this time it wasn’t going back to sleep.

  Things had gone strangely quiet after that. The way his mother would turn up her nose whenever he entered the room told him his transgression hadn’t been forgiven, and his father was happy to pretend he didn’t exist. That would immediately change the moment either of them wanted something from him, but the moment he was done, it would be like a trapdoor had opened under his feet.

  As guilty as Jeremy was to admit it, it was a pleasant change of pace. For the first time in longer than he could remember, he was able to go about his business without constantly being nagged and scolded for the pettiest of reasons.

  Behind the momentary peace, though, there was still a tension in the air that grew a little tighter each day. He did his best to ignore it, but he knew it wouldn’t be long before the dam broke and all that pent up negativity was released.

  He just hadn’t expected it to happen at the hospital.

  “We told you that being around that girl would only hurt you,” his mother had barked when they’d come to visit him after he’d had his cast applied. “I hope now you’ve learned to listen to your mommy and daddy!”

  Jeremy had shrugged. “The doctor says—”

  “Sometimes telling a child not to stick their hand in the fire isn’t enough,” his father had interrupted him, “and the only way to teach them their lesson is to let them get burned.”

  His Mom had grabbed his wrist and raised his arm so she could inspect the cast with a dissatisfied eye. “Well, I just know my little angel will never make us go through something like this ag…”

  Her voice had trailed off, and Jeremy had cringed, knowing exactly what was going to happen next.

  “What is this?” she had demanded shrilly, pointing at the words written on the bright yellow wrapping in an equally bright blue ink.

  Get better soon so I can break your other arm! Love ya, Dork! ~Miranda.

  “She stopped by a couple hours—” Jeremy had tried to say.

  “They let her in here?” Mom shrieked.

  The next half hour had been a hurricane of noise. First his father had raised hell demanding to know why Miranda had been allowed in his room. The nurse had been forced to explain five times that they’d had no reason to turn her away before he’d finally stopped asking the same questions over and over again.

  Then his mother had screamed until the doctor had been sent for, at which point she’d commanded him to rewrap Jeremy’s cast immediately. When the doctor had said no, Mrs. Faulkner had acted like she was going to faint. Her face when he’d simply walked out of the room would have had Miranda in hysterics, but Jeremy's stomach was too busy jumping rope with his intestines for him to even crack a smile.

  In the end, they had grudgingly settled for scribbling over Miranda’s words and writing their own message below it. Jeremy’s face had burned with embarrassment the whole time, but at least it was finally over.

  Then his mother had pulled out the flyer.

  “Are you gonna tell me what’s wrong?”

  Jeremy blinked, yanked suddenly out of his own thoughts. Outside, the sun was little more than a brightly shining line on the western horizon.

  “Huh?” he asked.

  “You look like you’re about to tell me my dog stole my car and ran over my cat,” Miranda answered. “Come on, spill the beans! You know they’ll give you gas and it’ll come out the other end if you don’t.”

  Jeremy’s heart sank into his stomach. He couldn’t put the matter off any longer. He opened his mouth to speak, but his throat constricted before he could say anything. Miranda cocked her head and smirked in amusement.

  She won’t be smiling for long, Jeremy thought, his stomach tightening.

  He tried to answer her again, but when the words still refused to come, he raised his left hand and pointed a shaking finger at his desk. Miranda followed his gaze, her eyebrows going up curiously when she saw the flyer by her arm.

  “What’s this?” she asked, picking it up and scanning it. Just as he’d feared, the more her eyes darted across the paper, the darker her expression became. A minute later, her hand was shaking too when she lowered the flyer and looked at him and asked again, “Jeremy, what is this?”

  “Mom and Dad gave it to me at the hospital yesterday,” he answered, hanging his head in shame. Without meaning to, he ran his eyes over the flyer, even though he’d read it enough times by this point that it was burned into his memory.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  Cornucopia High School, Where the Best and Brightest Minds Germinate!

  “So, what?” Miranda asked slowly. “They’re thinking about sending you here?”

  He shook his head, unable to bring himself to look at her. “No. They are sending me there.”

  She just stared at him.

  “They just told me yesterday. I’ve already been enrolled for my junior and senior years.”

  “Jeremy…” For the first time he could remember, Miranda actually seemed at a loss for words. “This is on the other side of the country!”

  He nodded.

  “And you told them no, right?” Miranda’s voice was slowly rising in pitch. “There’s no way you’re going to let them do this!”

  Jeremy forced himself to raise his head, looking at his girlfriend with wide, helpless eyes. He didn’t say anything, and didn’t need to. She was able to read everything she needed to know straight from his expression.

  “Jeremy!” she whispered, a look of horrified betrayal stretching across her face.

  “What am I supposed to do, Miranda?” he asked, spreading his hands as best he could. “You’re always asking, how can I let them do this? How can I let them do that? They’re my parents! What am I supposed to do?”

  “Tell them no!” she exclaimed incredulously, as if there were nothing more obvious in the world.

  “Quiet!” Jeremy hissed, glancing at the door. When no angry footsteps came pounding toward his room, he looked at her again. “Do you really think that’s going to make a difference? I already told them I didn’t want to go. Guess what? They said they didn’t care!”

  “So you’re not going to fight them at all?” Miranda demanded, angrily wadding the flyer up and throwing it against the wall. “You’re just going to let them tear us apart like this?”

  “I…I can’t…”

  The words seemed to trip over his tongue, falling lamely out of his mouth. How could he possibly explain this to her? She had spent most of her childhood on her own, without any parents to force her into line. Even when he was home, her father was a laid back man, and wouldn’t raise a fuss so long as her antics didn’t land her in jail.

  How could she possibly understand what it was like having a mom and dad who saw you as something closer to a pet than a human being? To her, the idea that someone’s freedom could be taken away with something as insignificant as the word “no” must have sounded insane.

  To Jeremy, though, “no” was a cage locked as tightly as any maximum security prison. It wasn’t as easy as just ignoring them and doing what he wanted. No matter what he thought, how he felt, or what he wanted, his parents would steamroll right over him to impose their will. And as long as he lived under their roof there was nothing he could do to stop them.

  “Do I really mean that little to you?” Miranda asked. Jeremy was shocked to see tears starting to run down her cheeks. “After everything we’ve been through together, you’re just going to let this happen?”

  “Miranda, I—” Jeremy reached out toward her with his left hand, but she slapped it away.

  “Don’t touch me!” Standing up, she wiped her tears away, trying desperately—and failing—to keep her emotions from showing. “I thought you were different!”

  “Wh- What?” he stuttered.

  “Everyone leaves me!” she ranted, her voice rising again. “My mom ran away when I was a baby. I don’t even remember her face! Dad spends months out on the road, and when he comes home the first thing he wants to do is leave again!”

  “What’s going on in there?” his mother’s outraged voice came from the other side of his bedroom door. The doorknob began to turn and, without thinking, Jeremy leaped to his feet and slammed his shoulder against it, holding it shut. “Jeremy Faulkner, how dare you bar your door from me! Who is in there with you? You let me in this instant!”

  Visions of his robots being left on the curb for the trash man flashed before his eyes, but Jeremy didn’t move.

  “You were my only friend!” Miranda was still yelling, as if she hadn’t even noticed what was going on. “Nobody else in this stupid town wants anything to do with me! And now you want to leave me too?”

  “Miranda, no!” he protested. “It’s not like—”

  “Did you say Miranda is in there?” his mother shrieked at the top of her lungs. “Walter, call the police!”

  “You’re just like everyone else!” Miranda yelled.

  Jeremy stared at his girlfriend…now obviously ex-girlfriend…in horror as his mother battered on his door from the other side.

  He felt strangely weightless. His whole life was falling apart. Everything he cared about was being ripped away from him, and it was all happening at the same time.

  His head spun. Overwhelmed. Chest tightening. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t breathe.

  “I HATE YOU, JEREMY FAULKNER!” Miranda screamed, fists clenched and tears pouring from her eyes.

  Outside, the sun finally disappeared behind the horizon, plunging the world into night…

  And then the light came.

  It came from everywhere, shining out of every conceivable angle, brighter than anything Jeremy could have ever imagined. An incredible heat ripped through his body, as if his cells were all combusting from the inside out. But before the pain could even register in his mind—

  Darkness.

  Jeremy was nowhere. He heard nothing. Felt nothing. Was nothing.

  Am I dead? he wondered.

  That made a disturbing amount of sense. That light…the only logical explanation he could think of was that a nuclear bomb had been dropped on his neighborhood, and he had been vaporized.

  Was this the afterlife, then? His heart skipped a beat in panic. He didn’t want to spend eternity in a place like—

  WELCOME, HERO.

  Jeremy froze as the words appeared in the air in front of him. He blinked in surprise, but they stayed visible even behind his eyelids. When he moved his head, they followed him, always staying in the exact center of his field of vision. After a couple seconds, they disappeared, only to be replaced by new words.

  THIS IS A WORLD WHERE AMBITION IS EVERYTHING. GREAT POWER IS AVAILABLE TO THOSE WHO SEEK IT.

  They disappeared again, and Jeremy looked around. This wasn’t his bedroom. Where he was, he had no earthly clue, but it looked like some kind of cave. Torches flickered on the walls, only bright enough to illuminate about half the room, and the stones on which he sat were cold and slightly damp.

  BUT BEWARE: THOSE WHO WILL NOT FIGHT FOR WHAT THEY DESIRE WILL FIND ONLY OBLIVION.

  Not knowing what else to do, Jeremy reached out and swiped at the words. His hand passed behind them, like they were credits playing over a movie—only, his eyes were the screen. After a few seconds, they disappeared too.

  “…USED IT TO SAVE AN NPC!”

  Jeremy gasped. That voice had come from nearby. In his near-panicked state, it didn’t even occur to him that he may not want to attract the speaker’s attention. All that mattered was that he wasn’t alone. He turned, trying to follow the voice in the dim light…

  And found himself face to face with a giant snake.

  A scream tore itself from his throat, and he recoiled, falling over backwards. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he realized that his arm was no longer broken when he used it to push himself back up. Either that, or there was so much adrenaline coursing through his system that he couldn’t feel it as he scrambled away from the gargantuan, unmoving beast.

  The sound of footsteps echoed through the room, and a shadow fell across Jeremy. He looked up to see a colossal man standing above him. He had a beard as thick as a bear’s hide, and he was dressed all in furs like some kind of caveman. Jeremy stared up at him in horror, but the giant only glared back down with a cold, stonelike expression.

  Another figure appeared on his other side, and Jeremy’s head swung around to see a…he blinked, unable to believe what he was seeing…a tree making its way toward him. It stood on two legs, and half its face was hidden beneath a white scarf. A pair of green and amber eyes narrowed in obvious displeasure when they saw him.

  I’m going to die, he thought. Oh, dear God, I don’t know where I am or how I got here, but I’m going to die!

  “J- Jeremy?”

  The voice was soft, barely a whisper, but the sound of his name was like a bucket of cold water being poured on a sleeping man. With a gasp, he jerked his head around to see a woman standing beside him. She was wearing a short black dress, a dark blue cloak and hat, and…and…

  And her legs were covered in gray fur that reached up to her lower thighs, with black hooves instead of feet.

  “This isn’t how it was supposed to happen…”

  The woman sounded like she was on the verge of tears. Jeremy looked up at her, and his brain squirmed a little when he saw that she had horns as well.

  But then he paused. Her face…

  She was an adult woman, somewhere in her upper twenties if he guessed right. He was certain that he had never seen her before in his life, but at the same time…

  Tan skin. Freckled face. Long, curly black hair. A gap between her front teeth.

  “M- M- M…” he stammered, his entire body going numb. “Miranda?”

  The woman was still for a moment, but then she nodded.

  More words appeared in front of his eyes, but Jeremy didn’t get a chance to read them. With a weak moan, he flopped backwards like a wet scarecrow and fainted.

  PICK YOUR CLASS AND BEGIN YOUR JOURNEY.