Page 55 of The Underachiever’s Guide to Love and Saving the World

The group scrambled into action. Courtney and I hustled them onward, unable to move until everyone else was ahead of us. Cuthbert made a pit stop to gently tuck the piece of face into Bash’s bony hand with an apologetic smile.

At last, Courtney and I brought up the rear. We barely avoided the reaching hands of the skeletons, breaking through their lines and running for the trees. For some reason, they didn’t shoot arrows at us to stop our escape, which was weird, but I was too grateful to be alive to question why.

We ran deep into the woods, climbing the foothills of the nearby mountain range.

Winston swore he had a cousin who owned an inn at the next town over, and who would be happy to accommodate us.

Everyone was greatly shaken, and we planned on taking the evening to regroup before coordinating another attack in the morning.

The next few hours were spent maneuvering around large boulders and towering pines, ascending the mountain. Mist hung like wet cobwebs across the valley below, veiling everything in shades of gray.

I looked over at Courtney. It was unnerving, seeing her like this. Nice. I wanted the girl who saw everything in a negative light and found it hilarious. Without her, everything felt hopeless.

A thumping sound drifted through the woods.

Courtney’s head snapped up. “What was that?”

The thumping grew louder by the second. Our band of sidekicks was far ahead of us, nearly out of sight. But not so far away that we didn’t hear their cries of fear.

My feet propelled me forward. The cowardly Bryce part of me wanted to hang back, but the hero potion forced my legs to pump faster. I spotted the crew a little way ahead, hunkered down behind boulders and bushes.

A shadow fell over us, and I looked up. Through the pine branches, I caught a glimpse of wings, bristly fur, and pinchers.

The dragon. Staying low, I crouch-ran over to the huddle of sidekicks, Courtney on my heels.

The beat of dragon wings throbbed against my eardrums as the beast passed overhead again.

The blacksmith whimpered. Pants’s pants rattled in fear.

“It knows we’re here,” Winston said shakily.

“We’ll be all right,” I said. My body forced me to continue speaking, the potion obviously having decided some kind of big speech was warranted.

“Today we fight, not as friends…” I screwed my jaw shut before I could say we were family or some such nonsense.

We had, after all, only known one another for a handful of hours.

Everyone exchanged looks.

“Not as friends,” Courtney said, “but as… more .”

I nodded. “That’s right. More. If we die today, we will die as…” Heroes didn’t feel right. “As people who really tried.”

Winston slapped Cuthbert on the back, his eyes wet.

“So, until then, I say we fight,” I spouted off.

“I’m a pacifist.”

“Fight for those scared of spiders,” I went on, ignoring the blacksmith, “and those who…” I’d talked myself into a corner. Speeches were hard. “For Sparta!” I finished.

Instead of cheering, everyone freaked out, hushing me and thanking me for the speech, saying they didn’t want to interrupt, but really, I should keep it down, and had I forgotten about the dragon?

A wave of heat blasted across the back of my neck. Whirling, I looked up. The dragon’s four dark wings splayed across the sky like spilled ink on paper. Its mouth gaped wide, flames churning in its throat.

An inferno of orange fire rolled down into the forest toward us.

Cuthbert let out his signature warbling scream.

Pants leaped agilely out of the way, thanks to her pants.

The blacksmith and Winston flattened themselves against a boulder.

I pulled Courtney with me and dove behind a tree as fire whooshed past us.

The smell of burnt pine needles and singed hair stung my nostrils.

Heat wafted over my face. I turned my head to the side.

With her hair billowing in the heat waves and fire reflecting off her dark irises, Courtney had never looked less like a sales associate.

In that moment, I missed her. Missed her so badly it hurt.

The things I would’ve done to see her back in that puke-green uniform vest, making me feel safe and comfortable as she shot idle threats of bodily harm my way.

The fire sizzled away, leaving behind scorched boulders and tree trunks. Everything seemed darker as my eyes adjusted back to the gloom of the woods.

A blur darted out in front of me. It took a second for me to realize it was Courtney. Running toward the dragon. I reached for my magic, but it slipped away, too faint to hold on to.

The dragon dropped into the forest in front of Courtney. The ground shook under my feet. The dragon’s eight eyes snapped this way and that as it tried to focus on all of us at once.

Pants leaped from one boulder to the next, showing off the amount of dexterity wearing pants gets you.

As she ran, she tugged a coil of rope free from a loop on her—you guessed it—pants.

“We can use this to tie the beast’s mouth shut,” she yelled, which sounded like another terrible idea in a long line of terrible ideas, but I didn’t have a better solution for subduing the creature.

“Watch out!” Winston yelled as flames licked around the dragon’s maw.

Venom dripped off the ends of its talon-like pinchers, steaming and hissing from the heat of its fire.

The dragon roared.

Courtney jumped aside as flames exploded in the space she’d just occupied. I ran toward Courtney and the spider, intent on pulling her from harm.

“Catch!” Pants yelled, tossing me the rope.

I expected it to hit me upside the head and flop onto the ground, but my hand shot up and snagged it out of the air, my feet never breaking stride—which was probably thanks to the hero potion.

Still, some part of me, underneath all that fear, felt pretty badass and hoped Courtney had seen my impressive moment.

I sprinted closer. The dragon snarled. Its legs bulged as it shifted its weight forward. Wind pounded against my eardrums as the dragon whipped its wings wide, sending Courtney staggering back. She sprawled to the ground, the dragon rising above her.

“Do it now, Bryce!” Winston screamed.

I ran forward, grabbing Courtney under the armpits and dragging her away. When she was out of danger, I sprinted back to face the beast. I looked up at it, its wings wide, muscles rippling, fire in its eyes.

The beast reminded me of Courtney—the way she was before the potion.

Wild and furious and free. The dragon didn’t want to be nice.

The dragon wanted to be left alone to be itself.

It ate livestock and spat fire because it was in its nature.

It was not inherently evil just because the rest of the world couldn’t condone its actions, afraid of something different and messy.

I finally fully understood what Courtney had been trying to tell me.

She wanted someone to like all of her, not just pick and choose her prettiest parts and look past the rest. Rejecting Courtney’s faults would be like only accepting this dragon once it was muzzled and behind zoo bars.

I realized I’d been an idiot, always searching Courtney’s actions for signs that she was more than what she appeared.

But there was no mystery or secret joke behind Courtney and the KitKat, and that was the point.

What you saw was what you got. She was a grouchy woman with blue hair who ate KitKats in a stupid way.

I kept digging past her hard shell, excavating her softer attributes and showing them to her as if they were the treasures I valued most, when all along…

I didn’t like Courtney’s heart just because it had a soft center. I liked it for its hard shell too. She was tough and fierce and impossible. She had a heart as strong as iron, and that was why I liked it. Because if I ever managed to get in, she’d never let me out.

She never would have been the type to tell me she loved me one day and then leave the next. Why couldn’t I have just said, I like you, you asshole , instead of making her feel like I needed more from her?

Instead, all my pestering to get her to reveal her softer side had probably contributed to her conviction she wasn’t good enough, leading her to take that potion and change for me.

Or maybe she wasn’t convinced she was unlovable. Deep down, maybe she’d only been afraid there wasn’t another person alive who was good enough. Good enough to love her for her faults.

I’d failed her. I’d caged her into a pretty box the way I was about to tie down this dragon.

I tried to drop the rope, but I couldn’t. My clammy fingers remained clenched around the scratchy fibers. The hero potion wouldn’t tolerate beasts that hurled fireballs, only cheerful compliance.

Suspecting my death was very near, I tried to tell Courtney she never should’ve changed, that she was perfect how she was, but the words caught in my throat. Because saying she was perfect when she wasn’t did not get the hero potion’s seal of approval.

The dragon let out a hiss and shot forward, legs a blur as it charged me.

It slid at the last second, turning broadside, flinging thick, sticky webs from its spinneret.

The webs whipped around my body, clinging to my skin and pinning my arms to my side.

The dragon reached for me with one spindly leg.

Courtney rammed into me, sending me rolling.

I hit the ground hard, tumbling until I smacked into a tree.

Pain shot through my body from the impact.

Desperately, I fought to free myself from the spider’s web, but the more I thrashed, the tighter it clung.

Head swimming from lack of oxygen, I wrestled myself up enough so I could see Courtney facing off against the dragon.

She was running, not away from the dragon, but toward it. She bobbed and weaved, the dragon zipping jets of web at her like the world’s deadliest silly string. “Grab Bryce!” she yelled, spurring the misfits into action.

Before I knew it, all four of them were trying to carry me at once, their hands matting the thick, sticky web more with every touch. With two of them at my head and two at my feet, they finally managed to hoist me off the ground, smacking me into every tree we passed and dropping me several times.

Meanwhile Courtney reached the dragon. It whipped around, stopping with its pinchers inches from her chest. The tiny armlike appendages near its face stroked over its fangs as it huffed pillars of smoke like an industrial ozone-destroying factory.

Without hesitation, Courtney punched the spider squarely in its fleshy face.

It recoiled, rearing up, hissing and screeching all at the same time, fangs clicking.

Courtney somehow stared down the dragon towering above her.

“Tell your boss he’s not getting us back.

That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? If Greg wanted us dead, you would’ve burned us all up by now. ”

“Courtney,” I rasped around a mouthful of web as the misfits smashed my head against a tree branch. I began to lose sight of her as I was jostled farther away. I needed to tell her—needed to tell her—

“Tell your boss we’re coming for him,” Courtney said, which wasn’t wise, seeing as it ruined any chance we might’ve had for a surprise ambush. “We will find him, and we will kill him.”

The misfits shuffled me farther away.

“Wait,” I said, but everyone ignored me. “Courtney. I have to tell her…” The words wouldn’t come out.

“There, there,” the blacksmith said, aggressively patting my likely concussed head. “It’ll all be all right.”

“I need to tell her…” I needed to tell her about my revelation, that I finally understood her. “I realized how amazing she is.” But we were too far away for her to hear anyway.