Page 85 of Riot Act
It’s fucking excellent, and I am too furious for words.
There’s a girl waiting for the boy at the mouth of the maze. She’s naked, covered in bruises. Her lip’s split open, the wound oozing blood down her chin. She doesn’t say anything. She takes the boy by the hand and leads him through a dark, impenetrable forest. He thinks many times that the girl has lost her way and lured him into the woods in order to hurt him. Soon, the trees thin out, though, and the dark becomes less ominous. Eventually, the loamy, springy moss beneath their feet turns to sand. The girl leads the boy out of the forest and onto a pristine, beautiful beach. They’re alone. In the blossoming dawn, the boy and the girl sit on top of a dune, listening to the waves crash. The chapter ends with the girl holding her hand out to the boy again and saying, “I am Genesis, the beginning. You are Omega, the end.”
I don’t know what I’m supposed to make of that.
Most annoying of all, her writing is beautiful. Her wordplay had me groaning under my breath and jealousy knifing me in the back. Every word she utilized served a purpose, every line masterfully constructed to elicit an emotion or some kind of response. And it worked. It fucking worked. I felt the trees pressing in. I smelled the night air laced with smoke and the whisper of snow. Worst of all, I felt the hope when our characters stepped out onto that beach and watched the sun rise together.
So, now I absolutely hate her. IhateChase, because she was supposed to be bad at this. I was supposed to embarrass her with my superior writing skills, and she was supposed to run away with her tail between her legs, but that isn’t what happened. She’s fuckingshown up,and, holy hell, am I pissed about it.
Where the hell is this story supposed to go now? What the hellisit? Her chapter was excellent, but it was definitely a pointed message to me, and not the continuation of a novel. I’m going to have tomakeit one, and that pisses me off even more.
I dive straight into my next chapter, hammering heatedly at the keys of my laptop, griping all the while like a sour little bitch under my breath about having to pick up the lion’s share of the work. Thing is, continuing the story isn’t hard. The words come easily, flowing like the grains of sand through an hourglass, word after word, sentence after sentence, paragraph after paragraph.
The boy rejects the girl’s help. A vengeful god—the same god who trapped him in the maze in my first chapter, it transpires—turns the beach to glass with his fiery wrath. He captures the girl and whisks her away, telling the boy that he must complete four challenges in order to save her. First: a challenge of physical strength and determination. He heads out into the world, ready to face the obstacles that he must overcome alone. The way it’s supposed to be.
I re-read the piece three times, checking for typos and ensuring that everything flows, thoroughly pleased with myself when I go over the section where the god takes the girl and she sobs like a little bitch. Chase painted herself as a pillar of strength and light in her chapter, and me like some lost little boy in need of rescuing. Hopefully, my response puts her firmly in her place.
Suddenly, it’s four in the morning and I can barely keep my eyes open. My bed looks mighty comfortable, but I don’t want to be comfortable. I dream when I’m too comfortable. I lie on the couch in the corner instead, knowing that I’m going to wake up with a numb arm and a crick in my neck, but it doesn’t matter. I can run off that pain when I chase the boys up the mountain in three hours. And having to run up the mountain in pain is far better than accidentally dreaming of Presley Maria Witton Chase.
30
PAX
“What do you mean, you’re not fucking coming?”
Wren hurls a pillow at me; if I’m not mistaken, he was aiming it at my head. I bat it away before it can make contact. “Out!”he hollers.
“If you’re not bleeding from your fucking eyeballs, you’recoming,” I growl. “We run in the mornings. It’s what we do.”
The duvet next to him shifts, something squirming beneath the covers, and a streak of white-hot rage flashes across my eyes. Wren knows I’ve seen the movement, because he reaches over and places his hand protectively over the left side of his bed, his dark brows snapping together. “I disowned my father because I didn’t wanna go to military school, asshole. And now you’re busting into my room like a fucking drill sergeant? I don’t fucking think so, dude. Get out.”
I laser in on his hand. The incriminating one, sitting on top of the cover. “I thought we weren’t havingsleepovers?”
“Do I look like I’m fucking playing around right now?” His voice has hit that low, flat, emotionless tone that preempts an explosive Wren Jacobi trademark outburst. If I don’t turn around and head out of the door, he’s going to come at me, fists flying. I’d welcome the tussle—it’s been an age since Wren and I have gone toe-to-toe—but I suspect that he’s naked under that duvet and his girlfriend’s mouth might be wrapped around his cock, from the way he keeps jerking, and I donotwant to see that.
I back up, ready to make a sharp exit. “Let the record show that I object to this. I object very fucking much.”
“There is no record, dude. Object away. I can have whoever I want in my room, and I can choose to leave it whenever I like. Nowfuck off.”
“Bullshit. Fuckingbullshit, man.” I slam his bedroom door so hard that the walls shudder. Down the stairs I go, seething all the way. I nearly collide with Dash as he comes out of his bedroom, kitted out in his running gear. “My head’s killing me,” he says. “Come on. Let’s get this shit out of the way. Where’s Jacobi?”
“Slacking. Why don’tyousee if you can get him out of his pit? He just threatened to murder me.”
Dash grumbles, shaking his head as he slips his AirPods into his ears, heading up the stairs. Three seconds later…
“AHHH! JESUS CHRIST! WHAT THE FUCK, MAN! GOD!”
Lord Lovett hurtles down the stairs, face awash with horror. He finds me waiting for him by the front door. “The fuck is wrong with you? You purposefully had me walk in on—on—urgh!” He shakes his head, trying to dislodge whatever he just saw from his memory. “That was so fucked, man. I just saw parts of Jacobi that should never be seen. Byanyone. Not even a proctologist.”
I smirk into my pre-workout electrolytes. “Did you see Stillwater’s tits, though? That’s what really matters.”
Dash nails me in the upper arm with his fist. “I have a girlfriend. I wasn’t looking at Elodie. And I wouldn’t let Wren hear you saying shit like that. Not if you want to live to graduate.”
I shrug, heading out of the door. “I’m notmarriedto the idea of graduating.”
I say all of this. I did it to see how the words would feel, coming out of my mouth. I already knew, though. I knew they were going to taste rank on my tongue. As we leave the house, my head is filled with dangerous thoughts of Chase.
I run until it feels like my lungs are bleeding, and then I run some more. Dash keeps up, which only encourages me to drive harder. The two of us are gasping and covered in sweat by the time we reach the foot of the mountain.
