Page 46 of The Underachiever’s Guide to Love and Saving the World

brYCE

My heart pounded so hard it hurt. I couldn’t breathe. Maybe I was dying too.

Dying. Oh god, oh god, oh god.

One minute, I was being kissed like it was my last day on Earth. Now, it actually felt like it might be my last day on Earth.

I’d never been kissed like that in my entire life, with pure, raw want . And now this, the instant reminder that no matter how good something was in the moment, it was sure to come crashing down.

Courtney’s knuckles jabbed against my side. The warm light of the stables stung my eyes. Then I was pushed onto a horse. The cold darkness of the city streets hugged me, suffocated me. Streetlamps flashed by.

My thoughts were sharp, staccato, firing off to the rhythm of my horse’s hoofbeats.

This was why it was better to never chase happiness. It felt so much worse when everything fell apart. Courtney wouldn’t leave me, and I couldn’t leave her, and she’d made me progressively more and more happy until—until this.

Clomp, clomp, clomp , went the horse’s hooves. Amy was still breathing, though shallowly, and I focused on that to avoid spiraling more.

With a jolt, I realized we’d stopped, and Courtney was standing at my knee, looking up with wide eyes. “Help Amy off the horse. Something’s wrong.”

Together, we helped Amy down. He didn’t look good: eyes bulging, skin going blue around the mouth. We hadn’t made it far at all. There was no way we’d get to the doctor in time.

Garbled choking noises issued from Amy’s throat. He gestured wildly, trying to tell us something.

“I think he’s trying to talk,” I said.

Supporting Amy, we dragged him to an abandoned alley and propped him against a building.

“Is there something we can do to save you?” Courtney asked, going to her knees in front of him. Her hair was falling free from her updo, and her dress was dirty and wrinkled. Dark smudges rested under her eyes. She looked like the human embodiment of stress.

Amy opened his mouth, but only a croak came out. Croaking in every sense of the word. He pointed at me, then opened and closed his fingers rapidly like he was miming small explosions before pointing at himself.

I started to laugh, a high-pitched, hysterical laugh that was almost a sob. I couldn’t help it. The whole situation was too ludicrous. Here we were playing a high-stakes game of charades with our mentor, who we’d had a hand in poisoning.

“How many words?” I heard Courtney ask. “Five. Okay. Ten. Fifteen? Amy, no, I’m not sure you understand the concept of this game. Brevity is key.”

I sank to the wall opposite Amy and clutched my hands, still half laughing, half crying. Emotionally and physically, I was spent. Hopeless.

“Person, place, thing, book?” Courtney asked.

I peeked through my fingers.

“Oh my god, Amy,” Courtney said. “Just write it in the dirt.”

I blinked. “That’s not how charades works, Courtney.”

Courtney gave me a look of disbelief. Right. We weren’t actually playing charades.

Amy bent to the side, gnarled, shaking finger tracing wobbly letters in the dirt.

He wrote:

Magic has healing properties. Bryce has awakened his, and, with focus, he could coax the poison from my body.

“How, though?” I asked hopelessly, feeling as lost as the time someone told a waiter it was my birthday, and everyone stared at me as though I were instinctually supposed to know how to act correctly when faced with ice cream I didn’t want and the racket of a public domain birthday song.

Amy started writing in the dirt:

The first man to discover magic was my ancestor Urphomptemtust a million billion years ago…

Courtney turned her back on Amy as he proceeded to write his memoir in the dirt. “Come on, Bryce. Heal him. You can figure it out.”

Behind her, Amy wobbled, then slid farther down the wall, eyes drifting shut.

I pointed, wheezing, my dismay too extensive for words.

Courtney looked over her shoulder. “Oh my god. He died.” Her voice was blank and uncomprehending.

My chest tightened. “No. He can’t be gone.” I crossed the alley, scrambling to my hands and knees, sweeping Amy’s bony wrist into my hands. His pulse fluttered weakly against my fingertips. “He’s still alive,” I said, latching on to that one hope.

Courtney’s hand found mine, her slender fingers weaving into my cold, stiff ones, and my focus steadied. “You can do this. Use your Care Bear love magic and heal him.”

I laid my hands on Amy, reaching inside for that tiny glow I felt earlier that day. But I couldn’t find a single glimmer. Pressure built in my head as Amy grew weaker. My hands shook. “I don’t think I can,” I said.

Releasing my hand, Courtney rocked back on her heels, creating space between us.

“Are you serious?” Before I could react, Courtney scooped up a handful of pebbles and started lobbing them at my boots.

“You. Have. To. Try. Harder.” Lob, lob, lob.

“They’re going to throw us into the streets and stone us for killing Amy.

Which, actually, you’d probably like, considering your pebble fetish.

Your body won’t know if it should die or be aroused. ”

I deflected the tiny rocks. “Joke’s on you; not knowing if I’m dying or aroused has been my body’s resting state since coming here!”

“All your body does is rest.”

“That’s rich coming from you!”

“At least I’m not obsessed with rocks.”

“Don’t hate on geology!”

Amy made some concerning snuffling noises.

Courtney flung her hands, letting the pebbles fall through her fingers. “Move.” She elbowed me out of the way. “Think some nice thoughts about me to turn on my magic, and I’ll heal him.”

My mind was blank. I’d been so intent on feeling nothing but hate for Courtney for so long, I couldn’t manage anything else.

The dark, swirling memories clenching my chest wouldn’t allow me to manage anything else.

Me, at nine years old, so happy one second, so devastated the next.

Courtney and me kissing, so happy one second… so devastated the next.

I stood to shake out my cramped legs. “What if, as soon as I stop hating you, something else bad happens?”

A raindrop splattered across her forehead, and she swiped it off her brow, movements jerky. “You’re giving yourself too much credit if you honestly think your feelings can alter the course of the universe.”

“We are in a fairy-tale world. Who says they can’t?”

“If we were in a fairy tale, positive feelings would save the day, not ruin it,” she said, voice rising. “If we were in a fairy tale, all we’d have to do is kiss again, and everything would be fine.”

Something in my chest constricted, all my fears reaffirmed.

“Instead, everything fell apart after we kissed,” I whispered.

More rain fell, spattering in cold drops across my skin.

I struggled to allow myself to feel the things she needed to awaken her magic.

With each new piece of evidence suggesting she and I were a doomed idea, new walls formed around my heart.

She licked her lips. “Bryce—”

“Courtney,” I sighed wearily. “If you want me to infuse you with some love juice—”

“Don’t call it that.”

“—you’re going to have to give me something new to work with. You used to work in marketing, right? Pitch yourself until I can’t help but like you.”