Page 22 of The Underachiever’s Guide to Love and Saving the World
I darted forward, grabbed Courtney’s hand, and yanked her away as the dragon unleashed a stream of flames.
I dragged her out the door, fire literally hot on my heels.
I risked a peek back. The dragon burst from the barn, its side banging into one of the steel doors and crumpling it like a tin can.
It shrieked at the sky, unleashing another stream of blinding flames.
My legs pumped faster, my hand clammy in Courtney’s. “Run,” I said again. “Run, run, run.”
We burst into the tree line, the subwoofer thumps of the dragon’s wings pounding against my eardrums. The trees bent as the beast lunged into the sky.
Waves of air battered against us, forcing us to our knees.
Spotting an alcove tucked between massive, gnarled tree trunks, I pointed, urging Courtney forward.
We crawled into the space and hunkered low, willing the dragon to move on.
I couldn’t see it through the trees and darkened sky, only heard its pounding wings. They went on and on for what felt like hours but must’ve only been a few minutes. At last, with one final scream, the sound of its wings faded.
The air grew still. I panted, slumping against a tree root.
Courtney slipped her hand from mine, letting out a shaky breath.
Then she hopped to her feet, tossing the Disturbing Sack aside.
“The mouse must’ve translated the prophecy wrong.
Even though I’m not the Chosen One, you were there, too, and it still tried to eat us both.
But you should have been able to tame it.
The mouse said the Chosen One could tame the dragon. ”
“Why are you listening to prophecies from random mice?” I was too busy undergoing acute chest pains to pay much attention to what she was saying.
“It wasn’t a random mouse. It was my sidekick.”
“Right,” I wheezed, “the famous sidekick nobody but you has seen. And look where it landed us.”
“There are worse things.”
“Are there? Are there really? Because I can’t think of much that’s worse than an oversized, flying, fire-breathing spider .”
“We weren’t in any real danger,” she said.
“We weren’t?” Slowly, the vise of fear loosened around my heart.
“Nah. Now, if it had been a flying vending machine, we might’ve been in trouble.”
“You ass.” I scrambled to my feet, my temper flaring, numbing the fear away.
Her words weren’t soothing, but, in a way, they did manage to chase off my panic.
It was the emotional equivalent of telling someone you had a headache, and them offering to smash your finger to make your head feel better—drowning out a smaller feeling with a bigger, new one.
“What happens when the dragon starts ravaging the countryside?” I asked. “It won’t take much to figure out who’s to blame.”
Her reaction caught me off guard. It was the same look she had when I told her to start over with her life, the same look she had when Amy said she had to change if she ever hoped to save the world.
There was a familiarity to the crack in her expression, like a mug with a handle that had been glued back together in the same spot time and time again.
She wasn’t surprised by the fact she’d royally messed up. I guessed that made sense.
Everyone told her she was a screwup; I’d heard the phone conversations with her parents through the thin duplex walls.
Her family, Amy, even I had tried to push her to do something different with her life.
I hadn’t considered the fact that the constant berating actually got to her, that maybe she did try, and it always led to disasters like this one.
“Maybe it will fly away,” she said weakly, and now I caught the edge of panic in her seemingly unconcerned voice. “Maybe it’s happy, free and chilling in the wild. Maybe it’ll never hurt anyone, and no one will ever have to know.”
I held my tongue before I could remind her there was a lock on that barn, implying the dragon had been caged for a reason. She knew that as well as I did, and she felt bad enough as it was.
“Listen,” I said gently, “we need people to like us if we want to gain Charisma. If the dragon comes back and starts causing destruction, we’re going to have to blame the Evil One for its release, otherwise the people will never forgive us.”
“We can’t just let it eat people, Bryce.”
“Of course not. When it returns, we’ll recapture it before it can hurt anyone, and no one will ever find out we’re to blame.” My tone was soothing, even though the thought of facing the beast again made me wish for an asteroid.
But if we wanted to get home, to get the portal open, we had to make the world a better place than when we came to get the portal open.
Which meant, if the dragon started hurting people, we had to put a stop to it.
Yet another thing to pencil in to the Chosen One to-do list between find Winston and defeat the Evil One .
Courtney thought about my suggestion for a moment. “Okay. It can be our secret.”
Normally, phrases like it can be our secret were used for fun, harmless things. Like grandmothers sneaking you cookie dough. Not—oopsie daisy—accidentally releasing a fire-breathing spider.
“If you don’t tell, I won’t,” she said.
We were accomplices, whether we liked it or not, and if one went down, we both did.