(ON HOLD) Spellbound (BxB)

Chapter 20 | Black Hole

It was strange returning to his dorm room, where the lock was still broken and the door sat ajar and the whispering sounds of the Crazies muttering around him, saturating his walls.

For two weeks, he barely left his room.

He wanted to ask his father if he could stay on the couch—take the early bus to campus every morning. But Asher was tired of being an inconvenience. Asher was tired of being Asher.

The dorm fit his mood, anyway. Cold, empty cement walls, piles of his own sad filth, and the stale smell of cleaning chemicals in the distance.

It was Aspen who eventually heaved him out of his slump, appearing in his door with an orange flier. "Please come," she was saying. "Please, please, please?" Asher had been curled up in a heap of his own filthy laundry when she handed him the flier. It required extra abdominal muscles he didn't have to sit up from the dent his body had made.

Drive-in Horror Night, the flier read. Just like the one he'd found in his locker at school

"How many drive-in horror nights do you guys need?" Asher asked.

"It's always Halloween in Willowbrook," Aspen said. "They hold them at least once a month. I used to go with Logan," she said. Her voice went soft and desperate and Asher gave a wild groan of defeat and kicked himself up from his dirty pile.

"You win," he said. "But you're feeding me."

"There are lots of concession stands," Aspen replied, gleaming. Then she took him by the shoulders and pushed him into the hall. "Go, go, go. Go shower. You smell like a barn."

Asher showered off a week's worth of sweat and stink and fast food grease, then remained there in the shower a while longer, letting the steam bounce off his back.

Every day he thought of Jackal—an urge kicking him to get out. To go seek him. To crawl back to the Riley house by any means necessary. And every day, he fought it down.

Maybe a movie night would be good. It'd get his mind off of Jack.

When he dried off and changed while Aspen tended to his pile of dirty laundry, Ryan burst through his door with car keys latched around his finger. "Red, baby!" he cried, throwing his arms around Asher while he was half-a-leg into his jeans. "How I've missed you."

Asher stood there awkwardly in his embrace, pants around his ankles. "What are you doing here?"

"Got you a present," Ryan said. Then he let go and sunk back on the bed, pulling a long board from his backpack. A skateboard with the image of a snake illustrated on the bottom. "Saw this little guy," he said, tickling the illustration, "and had to buy it. But I don't skateboard, so it's all yours."

Asher gleamed, for the first time feeling some splash of normalcy wash back into his life. He took the skateboard into his hands like he'd just been handed the blade of Excalibur, delighted by the weight and structural strength of the wood and wheels.

"Take it with you," Aspen said, "we're gonna be late."

They piled into Ryan's car, Asher's new skateboard hugged to his chest, and drove off toward the setting sun. The drive-in was located in a wide open field with concessions on either side and food trucks parked with loud generators running, the smell of high-cholesterol goods thick in the air. They'd arrived ten minutes into the movie and Aspen and Ryan sat on the trunk of his car, while Asher delighted in his new skateboard, racing along the pavement near the restrooms to feel the wheels gliding like butter below him.

A loud laugh caught his attention and he kicked his board up into his arms, seeking out the source. What he found was Courtney, standing in the bed of a pickup truck on the first row, helping Josephine onto the back. There were other faces he didn't recognize—then Jackal, standing by the bed, staring directly into his soul. It shocked him at first, those dark, magnetic eyes stuck onto him like glue. He turned away, praying he wouldn't approach. Wouldn't text him, wouldn't call from across the field. And he didn't.