Page 61 of The Underachiever’s Guide to Love and Saving the World
COURTNEY
How did I get to the position I was in? Well, it was simple.
Back in the prison, I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw the skeleton outside my cell door. Anyone was better than Amy. “Did Greg send you?”
The skeleton nodded, smile never wavering. For obvious reasons. (She had no face skin.)
I wasn’t sure what Greg wanted from me, but I wasn’t about to hang around and find out. I needed to get out of there. “Let me out.”
When the skeleton began gesturing excitedly, I held up a hand.
“No. I’m not doing charades again.” I glanced around for something for her to write on, but my cell was, of course, bare (I was still upset about that).
Thinking about my cell prompted me to think about my other cell, as in, my cell phone.
I whipped it out and powered it on before opening the Notes app. I scrolled past lists of preplanned insults for Bryce and opened a blank page. Stretching my arm through the bars, I experienced a surreal moment as I handed the skeleton my iPhone. “Here, Skelly. Just tap the letters.”
Skelly, or Kelly, as I’d started to think of her, took the phone. Her finger bone tapped aggressively against the screen. As her tapping grew more irate, her head slowly tilted to the side. At last, she gave up and showed me the blank screen.
“Oh yeah. I didn’t think about that. It only works with”—I grimaced—“uh, skin. And stuff.”
Kelly promptly found herself a finger.
The broadsword was involved.
It was gross.
As Kelly tapped not her finger against my phone, I made a swift decision to burn the device as soon as possible. When she was done, she proudly presented the somewhat smudged screen. I read it from as far away as possible. She’d somehow turned caps lock on, which made reading easier.
GREGORY WANTS TO EXPLAIN HIMSELF. HE IS NOT EVIL, THOUGH HE IS THE ONE THEY CALL THE EVIL ONE. IT IS COMPLICATED.
“That makes no sense, Kelly.”
She typed some more. The clicky button noises filled the echoey dungeon.
She shoved the phone in my face.
HE WAS TRYING TO CAPTURE YOU OR brYCE SO THAT THE CASTLE FOLK WOULD ARRANGE A PUBLIC HANGING.
“See, you say he’s not evil, and yet.”
Kelly typed some more, then showed me the phone.
IF ALL IMPORTANT FIGUREHEADS CONGREGATE IN ONE LOCATION, IT WILL MAKE ADMINISTERING THE ANTIDOTE EASIER.
Antidote? Now she had my attention.
Tap, tap, tap , went the phone.
THE HISTORIAN HAS BEEN GIVING EVERYONE IN THE KINGDOM PATIOS.
“Well, that’s… nice. A valuable use of tax dollars.”
Tap, tap, tap.
APOLOGIES, THE TABLET SEEMS TO HAVE AUTOMATICALLY CHANGED MY SPELLING. HOW AMUSING. I MEANT POTIONS.
“I knew it!” I said.
After many texting and autocorrect mishaps, my theory was confirmed.
Amy had summoned the last Chosen One, Edna Johnson, to help him give everyone in the kingdom his potions by slipping them into her signature mulberry ale. He must have told her it was the only way to bring everlasting peace to the land and open the portal home.
Each person received a potion specific to their position in the kingdom.
Ones for peasants, ones for soldiers, ones for bakers and blacksmiths and tailors.
He’d been giving every new baby born into the kingdom potions ever since.
Everyone who remembered a time before the potions was gone by now, so most didn’t even know there was something wrong with them, aside from a few families who managed to tell their children the stories through sarcasm or speaking in opposites.
This was how Amy maintained peace for so long.
It was also why everyone acted like stereotypes.
Because they were. Peasants never strove for more.
Blacksmiths did nothing but blacksmith. Even thieves and criminals like Winston stuck to their roles and committed petty crimes so neighboring kingdoms wouldn’t catch on to what Amy was doing.
Except, Clementine the visiting princess had caught on. “Between you and me, something has always struck me as not quite right about this kingdom,” she’d said the night of Winston’s kidnapping.
The next time I spoke to her in the garden, she’d been unable to speak freely when she tried to accuse the king of suspicious activity or when she tried to hint that not everyone in the kingdom liked Edna Johnson.
Amy must have heard what she’d said and slipped her a princess potion to make her docile and silence her.
“That’s why Amy didn’t want us talking to anyone!” I exclaimed. “He didn’t want us to notice how unnatural everyone was acting for fear we’d catch on to what he was doing.”
Kelly nodded and told me the rest.
The mouse was working on an antidote, but the potions would compel everyone to run from help, since, objectively speaking, curing them would make them “worse people” by freeing their minds.
He’d kidnapped Winston first because he was easy prey and, as a mouse, Greg needed all the help he could get.
After secretly drugging Winston, Greg and a legion of mouse friends carried him off while he slept to a secluded wing of the castle and gave him the antidote.
But when Winston woke up, he ran away before the mouse had a chance to speak with him and enlist his help.
While Winston was free to renounce his life of crime, he didn’t understand what it meant, nor had he known that his kidnapping had actually been a rescue attempt.
Since Greg and his friends lacked opposable thumbs, Greg realized he needed more help if his next attempt would be more successful.
First, Greg convinced me to free the dragon, then used it to catch General Thimblepop, who’d been helping him launch his campaign ever since.
Next, he sent us to the field with oregano and made sure his dragon burned it, which raised the army.
He used his army at the tournament to capture the king’s hand, gathering another public figure to help lead the charge.
Now, the mouse was planning to use my fake hanging as a way to gather the rest of the kingdom’s figureheads in one place, so he could successfully surround them with his army and free their minds.
His primary target was the king, who could help by commanding his kingdom into compliance.
Hopefully, the peasant potion would force the people to obey the king more than it urged them to run from a cure.
After finishing her story, Kelly put me in a headlock and forced the antidote down my throat, and then we were on our way.
After Bryce’s declaration and after Kelly and I pulled off our switcheroo, I stood there on top of the gallows, my heart soaring in my chest. I was a raindrop, not a snowflake, and Bryce knew it. He made me feel like the only rain to drop in a thousand years, and he was dying of thirst.
I didn’t have to give up my do-nothing lifestyle for Bryce. Rules had exceptions, but that didn’t mean the rules ceased to exist. If my goal to have no goals were the I before E rule, Bryce was the word weird , a maddening anomaly that somehow fit right in.
He’d never pressure me down a path toward a future the world could accept. He’d help me build a hut at the crossroads of my life where I could go on existing as I had been, smelling the roses, looking at the stars, touching grass. A tiny space where we could just be .
I wasn’t a hero or a peasant or a villain. I was me, and that was enough for me, and enough for him.
Thanks to Bryce’s strange grand speech, I’d forgotten my actual reason for being up on the gallows until Kelly removed her skull, slipped off the end of the rope, then jammed her skull back on her spine as she landed nimbly on the ground. She looked up at me and waved her hand.
I remembered in a hurry that we were supposed to be ambushing the king to give him the antidote. Unfortunately, the king was now surrounded by a squad of guards and being led away by Amy toward the castle.
Holding the jars of antidote inside my coat close to my body to keep them safe, I jumped off the gallows. I landed hard, knees popping, more accustomed to sitting on a couch than performing feats of heroism. “Let’s go!”
Which was when things really went to crap. The skeletons burst through the gate, pouring inside like a swarm of shoppers raiding a Best Buy on Black Friday. Soldiers charged for them, coming together from the perimeters of the courtyard to form a blockade, keeping the skeletons at bay.
Bryce stepped into our path, holding a discarded, rusted skeleton sword. The potion was compelling him to stop me.
I didn’t have time for this. The king was getting away. I drew my sword—a handy bonus of taking the guard’s uniform. “Look, Bryce. You know how we found that potion book? Amy’s controlling everyone. Greg is the Evil One, but he’s not that evil!”
Bryce took a step forward. “If he isn’t evil, why didn’t he tell us his plans from the beginning?”
He had a point. I didn’t know, but I didn’t have time to ponder it. I pressed forward. “Move.”
“I can’t let you.” He said it hard, like a command, but he was also still under the influence of the potion. Even if he wanted to help Team Mouse, the potion would force him to try to talk me out of it. It would force him to fight against the antidote, against me .
Bryce lunged. I barely lifted my sword in time to block. Around us, the sounds of battle rang. Soldiers and skeletons fought in the corners of my eyes. Slowly, the skeletons were taking the upper hand, disarming and subduing the soldiers.
“Look around you,” I grunted as I pushed away from Bryce and circled him. Maybe if I could convince the hero potion that Greg was being heroic, Bryce would be able to let me go. “The skeletons aren’t hurting anyone.”