(ty for readin, i know the last chapter was sort of late and so is this one sorry, also the pacing is really odd in this? but bear with me) (it's also like, so many words longer than i planned? so i'm sorry in advance, this book is becoming longer than i initially thought it would be)
(tap the little star if u do so wish to, and thank you again)
(also, ty for 2k reads! that's a lot of pairs of eyes)
"Who knows where the beast lives?"
Nobody raised their hand. I flexed my fingers, and the veins popped out, flooding with a startling scarlet red.
I opened my mouth to speak but Maia said, "Underground."
Mrs. Moon tore off the chalk letters on the green board. We did not have chalkboards anymore. We didn't have beasts.
I sat up. I felt more veins bulge from my skin, raised up above the skin like beveled map trails, blood red and ready to burst.
The classroom was a concert hall was a lecture hall, spanning thousands of seats and a hundred settled violinists no older than me. Mrs. Moon's chalkboard began to turn white.
"Where is the beast now?" she asked.
Someone began to scream their answer. Someone else joined them. I clutched the edge of the desk, more veins raising, filling beyond capacity. Maia began to bang on my desk, yelling incoherently. Blood mist and hazy, discordant and endless.
"Please check the maps on page ten of your textbook," she said. "There are several red dots for the locations of the beast. Please open your textbook. Angel, open it."
I opened it. Everyone still screamed. The textbook was blank, nothing but amorphous shapes and indistinct lines peering back at me. The textbook was a book was a vortex was a (blank).
"Wait," I said. I went to wipe at my eyes, but felt the veins bulging in them and winced. "Where are—"
"What is the beast?" she said. "Please read your textbook. Please look closer. Did you take your notes? The beast is on one of these locations. Did you do your homework?"
"There are no dots," I yelled.
Maia began to rattle my desk, still screaming. Someone began to tug at my hair, and Rae's fingers ripped into my scalp. I cried out.
Mrs. Moon began to tap her pen on the board.
"The beast is not your friend but you are its friend. Did you take your notes? Where is it?"
"Where is what?"
"Please pay attention. How far does the beast go? Please read page nine."
I went to page nine. Water poured out of the black paper, flooding around me and melting into ink. I burst out of my seat.
"I don't know!" I yelled. "I can't see!"
"Please do your homework. If the beast is west and you go north, where are you both? You are not its friend," she said.
"Stop," I yelled.
"Together," someone said.
I looked behind me. Everyone dissipated into dust and mist and the blackened waters. I was alone.
Then Haru sat in one of the desks, his hair dark with ballpoint ink and eyes trained on the teacher ahead. He kept tapping his textbook, letting their words bulge out like filling veins.
The world swam.
"You're together," he said. "Beasts don't travel alone. East and west are too far for them and the north is the quickest but they cannot go alone. Five locations are ideal." He tapped the page again, and a single word broke in two, spilling pulsing blood that dripped down the desk. Drip drip drip. "I have the maps."
YOU ARE READING
Suicide Buddies
Teen Fiction"My mother once told me there are three, and only three, truly defining moments in your life. One: When you don't know. Two: When you realize you don't know. Three: When you know. This is about the third one." --- Angel Young is going to die. Or at...
