Page 58 of The Underachiever’s Guide to Love and Saving the World

COURTNEY

If my younger self had read this story featuring me, she would have thrown the book across the room.

When the first rays of dawn lit the sky, I stopped running and looked up to find myself outside the city, the army of skeletons separating me from the gates.

I settled onto a grassy knoll and watched the sunrise. The run dulled my panicked feelings so I could view the situation with more rationality.

Being in an adventure like the ones I used to read about brought things out of me I wouldn’t have thought possible.

Terrible things. Things that would make my younger self cringe mightily because suddenly, I’d become the annoying character who I used to shake my head at from the comfort of my couch and go, What an idiot .

I’d turned into the person who made rash and obviously incorrect life choices, the one often found running up stairs trying to get away from horror villains.

I was the one who was too emotional, a cold bitch, and a wet noodle all at once.

The one who felt the urge to blurt out an I love you after knowing someone for only a few days.

I needed to get my shit together and get us home, where there was no more magic and, hopefully, no more potion.

It wasn’t the fear of failure that made me want to crawl back to my old life.

It was the fear of my life being perfect.

Because a perfect life didn’t include bare feet in grass, Christmas lights in May, and ice cream without cookie dough.

A perfect life didn’t include the most ridiculously sexy accountant I’d ever seen.

Bryce liked me before I ever tried to be a hero. He even admitted he’d tried to push me away that morning with the Christmas lights because he was scared of the fact he was growing to care about me.

Drowning in insecurities made me latch on to the first sign of evidence my fears were real, but I knew Bryce, the real Bryce.

I’d never needed the potion because I wouldn’t have left him.

He wouldn’t have given me a reason to. The Bryce of two days ago took my carefully constructed ideas of the world and demolished them.

He saw the real me, and he only wanted one thing.

No, not that .

He only wanted me to stay.

Making ourselves into heroes ruined everything and made us do ridiculous things like—

Miscommunicate.

Miscommunication was easy to do in this world, where no one was free to be themselves, tied down by the duties pertaining to their positions in the world—

Something clicked.

What was it I thought about Bryce? That the potion had made him just like everyone else in this world?

Yet his mind was still there, and he could still sneak sarcasm under the potion…

the way I could see that something in the flower stand girl’s eyes when she said, We can never not be peasants .

And Mama—she talked as though the less fortunate couldn’t accept help.

I’d thought it was some rule of etiquette preventing them from bettering their lives, but what if they physically couldn’t ?

The way I physically couldn’t be anything less than perfect.

In that potion book, there had been potions to make perfect heroes, perfect soldiers, and perfect peasants.

What if everyone in this whole world were trapped in their roles the way we were?

A shiver ran down my spine. On our first day here, Amy told us not to get close to the peasants. Then he’d passed Bryce and me a flask. “A toast,” he’d said, “to the good we will accomplish together.”

What if it was hero potion? We hadn’t drunk it, but he must have thought we had. Must have thought we’d be his perfect pawns. Just like the entire world was.

Oh. My. God.

Amy’s perfect peace was a lie, as much of a lie as my old life had been, everyone hiding behind masks, doing what was expected of them while they quietly died inside.

My first instinct was to run back to Bryce and tell him the truth, but I doubted the potion would allow me to plot against it.

If it were so easy, Mama or any of the other peasants would have screamed the truth at us and begged for help.

I was on my own. I’d have to find a loophole so I could get to Amy and demand he tell me how to undo the horrible effects of the potion.

It might be impossible. Because undoing the potion would undo the peace, and I was a hero, unable to cause chaos. But I had to try.

Setting my jaw, I channeled the perseverance of a lactose-intolerant person who consumes dairy anyway. Then I threw back my shoulders and headed toward the city.

I sneaked past the skeletons, even though I was beginning to suspect Greg the mouse and his minions weren’t as evil as I once thought. Still, I wasn’t sure what his role in all of this was, and it was best to play it safe.

Entering the city through the same conveniently unguarded side gate we used the day before, I plucked a long brown cloak off a clothesline and flipped the hood over my conspicuous hair, Jedi-style.

The streets were mostly empty, thanks to the early hour and the looming threat of the dragon, but I still kept my head down.

When I reached the castle, I waited by a side door until a servant opened it. At the last moment, I shot from the shadows and jammed my foot in front of the closing door.

I slipped inside—

—and immediately ran into the real Evil One and douchebag extraordinaire Amy. The king stood at his side, flanked by half a dozen guards.

“One of the imposters .” Spittle flew from Amy’s lips as he pointed one gnarly finger.

I opened my mouth to scream at him. My muscles coiled, ready to tackle him to the ground, but I couldn’t move. Couldn’t speak. The potion kept me rooted to the spot, judging me guilty, forcing me to stand there waiting for my arrest.

A brief silence ensued, during which we all exchanged looks, waiting to see what the others would do.

The king waved an apologetic hand my way. “This is one of the traitors involved with the poisoning of our oldest and most respected historians.” He nodded at Amy before turning to his guards. “So, well, I suppose, if it’s no bother, you ought to seize her?”

Inside I was freaking out, but on the outside, I asked, like I was making small talk, “Historian? Amy, you’re the castle historian ? I thought you were something cool, like a wizard.”

Amy shook with anger. “How dare you impugn my wisdom?”

“But how are you so old if you’re not magical?” I asked.

“Superfoods,” said Amy, like it was obvious.

“Seize her,” the king said again. Evidently, he’d had a taste of power, and now he wanted more. What an untimely moment for him to grow a backbone. “She shall be hung for treason.”

The soldiers stormed forward, barking orders, their boots stomping and armor jangling, flashing light into everyone’s eyes as they jogged around, looking serious and generally accomplishing very little for several moments. Finally, they got their act together and formed a tight circle around me.

“Excuse me, sorry, one last thing.” I held up a hand, and the guards paused. “I’ve been thinking about this a lot, and I’m like eighty-two percent sure it’s hanged .”

“No, no,” the king said. “It’s never hanged .”

“I think this is the only case when it’s hanged .”

“Mmm, yes, she’s right,” Amy murmured thoughtfully.

“Oh,” the king said, crestfallen. He perked right up a second later when he remembered he was in the middle of realizing he had massive amounts of power to abuse. “Seize her!”

And that was how I found myself in prison.

The dungeon was dark and damp because of course it was.

A fantasy world where anything was possible, but god forbid it have bright, cheerful prisons or disco prisons or, at the very least, not-moldy prisons.

But no. The unoriginal medieval world had unoriginal, dank, dreary prisons with big burly guards and rusting iron bars.

Bending, I picked up a flake of loose cobblestone and turned it over in my fingers. It made me think of Bryce. He’d surely noticed my absence by now. I imagined him waking up and finding half of the bed empty. Guilt ravaged my insides.

No one would be coming to rescue me. Bryce would assume I didn’t want to come back. Too late, I’d finally accepted the truth he’d been shouting at me this whole time; he never did have expectations for me.

I wouldn’t have a chance to explain why I’d left, or apologize for it. He’d never suspect I’d been captured.

Wrapping one hand around a cold prison bar, I leaned as far as I could into the aisle and chucked the rock at the guard standing down the hall. The pebble fell short and skittered across the floor, stopping by his feet.

The guard looked up and, predictably, smirked, all mean and guard-like. “Much good that spunk will do you while you’re standing on the gallows with a rope around your—”

“Come on, man. Lighten up.”

The guard pondered that for a moment, then tried again. “Wonder how much of that spunk will be left in ya when you’re danglin’ off the end of a—”

I ran a hand down my face. “What has you so down that you have to be this way? All that’s required of guards is for them to guard things. You’re choosing to be grumpy all on your own. Life isn’t so bad.”

It was at that moment the guard was impaled from behind by a broadsword.

My lower extremities experienced an extremely negative visceral reaction in sympathy.

The guard slumped to the side. Standing in his place was a figure wearing long purple robes, their face shadowed by a hood.

“ Amy? ” I asked, withdrawing from the front of my cell.

The figure kicked aside the guard and strode forward. They stopped before me, head lifting slowly. Dim light washed over the ghoulish contours of a skull, each grinning tooth outlined in black shadow.