“Who wants to go first?” She gets right to the point sometimes.
“I’ll go,” Tom said. “By the way, is our waitress hot?”
“Tom!” my mom said in a hushed voice. “Why would you say that?”
He shrugged. “Dad’s voice sounded weird.”
I snorted and Stache went bright red as my mom scowled at him.
She shook her head and turned back to Tom. “How was your day, Tom?”
“Okay,” he said. “I think my EA’s boyfriend might be cheating on her.”
She sighed. “What did I tell you about eavesdropping?”
“She was talking pretty loudly. He keeps coming home late and yesterday he smelled like perfume—”
“Laura,” my mom said, cutting him off. “Your turn.”
“Well,” I said, “my class spent most of the day calling me Mrs. Kelp.”
“Why?” she asked.
“They were implying that I was married to a boy in my class.”
My dad almost spit out his beer. “What boy?”
“Relax, Stache,” I said calmly. “Just a joke. A mean one. But as it turns out, it didn’t bother Liam and everything is cool.”
“Do you like this Liam?” my mom asked with a smile.
My dad watched me closely.
“Maybe,” I muttered.
My father took another drink of beer. “No boyfriends until—”
“I’m thirty-five and living on my own,” I cut in. “Yeah, yeah, Stache.”
Not a real rule by the way. Though at this rate it was certainly possible.
“And don’t you forget it,” he said.
The waitress returned with our cutlery.
“Can I get you guys anything else?” she asked.
“I’ll take another beer,” Stache said, about five octaves higher than normal.
Tom giggled and my mom rolled her eyes.
Yep. That’s my family.
—
That night I sat on my bed thinking about what Eldon had said. He did have a point. I’d gone to school today, even though I’d wanted to stay home. I’d taken the abuse, I’d cried, but I hadn’t left. And because of all that, I found out that Liam wasn’t even upset. Just because I stuck around.
Kind of what I should have done with softball. Instead I quit, and now I just looked at the old boxes in my closet and felt like I had let myself down.
I opened up the guide and started reading more of the Guide to Monsters section. There was some general information on the monsters, including where they came from. Daniel the Dragon Killer, the first Monster Crusher from Riverfield, had written an account of his visit.
Only a few people have ever had the misfortune of visiting the monster realms, including me. There are many of them, and all are dark and awful. Some have rivers of lava running through, casting everything in a red glow, though there are streams and lakes as well, as even monsters must eat and drink. What they eat I do not know: each other, maybe, and bats and fish and the oversized rats that scour the tunnels
.
I have only been to one monster realm, which we called the Dead Mountains, since it is a cavernous place with towering mountains running through it…it is the closest realm to Derwin. I won a battle there against Scarab the Scourge barely
.
I saw a note on the side, written by someone else.
Then he decided to go back and was killed. Bad idea
.
I frowned and kept reading Daniel’s account.
I don’t know what the monsters really want, but they hate humans. They’ve been fighting each other since the moment they met, and I suspect they think of us as monsters too. They seem to only have one goal: wipe out the humans in the Under Earth so they can reclaim it as their own. But I think the goal is greater: wipe out ALL humans, so that only monsters remain. One day, I suspect that will lead them to the surface too. In the meanwhile, we must hold them at bay. But the Dead Mountains is just one of their realms: we know of many others, and who knows what else lies beneath our feet
.
Another person had written a postscript below it.
Note: He really was a cheery fellow, wasn’t he?
I sat back and thought about what Daniel had written. How many monsters were there? What if they got onto the surface? Could we even stop them?
My cellphone beeped, and I immediately scooped it up.
Did you see Carl today? That shirt was so hot.
Thank you, Shal. The second one was from Mia.
Check your wall. Awesome.
I hurried over to my laptop and opened my profile. I literally laughed out loud.
A picture of Allison Black was the first thing I saw. Except it had been slightly altered. Her face was covered with warts, tinted green, and somehow her nose had been extended and bent. A hat had been added over her long black hair. At the bottom it said:
The Wicked Witch of Riverfield.
It was posted by Liam R. Kelp. You courageous fool.
I had a message in my inbox. It simply read:
This is how you use Photoshop.
Did I mention yet that I love him? This sealed the deal. Allison would probably find some evil way to get back at him, but oh well. The picture already had eight likes.
Make that nine.
After staring at the picture for a while longer, grinning from ear to ear, I threw on some workout clothes and headed for the panel. I still sincerely doubted that I was going to become a great warrior, but at the very least I wasn’t going to quit.
Sometimes you just had to stick around.
I crawled into the elevator and shot downward, now holding onto the lever with one hand and not even worrying about screaming. Nodding at Porton, I hurried through the village, heading for Arnwell. I noticed that the streets were a lot quieter today, though the sun sphere was shining brightly as ever. I stepped through the towering arched gate and saw that for the first time the courtyard was completely empty. The Warrior’s Way stood alone, and weapons were scattered across the cobblestones, as if everyone had suddenly left and not bothered to
