[2020 Watty Award Winner!]
[BOOK 1 OF THE HAVOC SERIES]
❝you may be the best web-slinger
around, but you're terrible
at keeping secrets.❞
in which even though peter has a new,
high-tech suit, it doesn't stop a girl with
common sense from discove...
┌────── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ──────┐ chapter twenty-one SUIT UP └────── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ──────┘
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───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────
SHE SITS WITH GRAHAM for the rest of the night, until the darkness pouring in from his window elongates the shadows lurking on the walls and floor. For the first time, she realizes that they seem to stretch toward him. Beckoning him. But, as the edges of her lifelong friend begin to blur until she can't completely discern where his arm ends and the darkness begins, she begins to wonder if the shadows are actually a part of him.
Lena had left Pa a voicemail explaining her absence at home, telling him that Graham had an emergency that she'd left to tend to and that she wouldn't be back until later. She'd also quickly noted that she'd finished her homework, which isn't true. The lack of sleep doesn't bother her— look how much Graham had lost over the past few weeks. She'd happily salvage some of her comfort to support him.
She hopes, prays, that her parents won't ground her.
"I found out I could shadow-travel a month ago," Graham begins a bit quietly. They're the first words either of them has spoken in more than an hour— she hadn't wanted to force anything out of him, instead waiting until he was ready to speak. "The first time, I thought I was just so tired that I'd forgotten walking to the other side of my room. But then it happened again. And again. I realized it was occurring every time I was subconsciously standing in a shadow. It sucked me away, hurtling me through nothing but pitch-blackness until I popped out of the other side."
Graham's voice is somber, a bit fearful of his own abilities. Of himself. Lena knows the feeling. She cuddles closer to him, curling her smaller body around his because she doesn't have any comforting words to say. The two friends have been platonically cuddling since they were children— neither of them understands why it isn't more common in friendships. Sometimes, when words don't suffice, a hug is the best medicine.
When she does speak, her voice is soft. "What's it like? Shadow-traveling, I mean."
Graham ponders this for a moment before responding. "Terrifying. Or, at least, it was. One of the first times I did it, I was so delirious from lack of sleep that I forgot to force myself to come out. I was trapped in the darkness... and not like the darkness we're in now. It was a living thing. A place where light doesn't exist, where you can't see your hand in front of your face because you don't have a body. I felt like something was watching me. I was clawing, screaming with no voice, until I finally emerged where I'd entered. It took so much of my energy that I slept for seven hours afterward and woke up at four in the morning."
Lena trails her gaze around her friend's bedroom. A pale sliver of moonlight shining through the window is the only thing keeping them from being swallowed up by the shadows. She catches glimpses of nondescript things she hadn't noticed before— empty mugs that had probably been housing coffee, cans of energy drinks such as Monster or Redbull littering his desk and the edges of his wooden floor. A mostly empty bottle of sleep-aid syrup sits on his nightstand.
