What Crawls Below

8 § Going Nowhere Fast

Aunt Mary's lecture was brief, but direct: she wouldn't ask what kind of mess Tuesday was caught up in as long as she stayed away from the boy Mary found in her bed.

It was fair enough. Tuesday could live with that commandment; there was no way Mary would know she broke it, as long as she worked on her lying skills. Oh, and never fell asleep on the watch like an idiot.

With the new rule laid out, Mary had gone straight to bed, leaving Tuesday alone to prep herself for school. She couldn't keep her hands from shaking, and decided to forego makeup for the day. She couldn't get her aunt's reaction to Cyrus out of her head. On the one hand, not many people took a liking to him, so it wasn't all that surprising; on the other, it was like she could sense something was off about him.

It was still engrained in Tuesday to immediately push suspicions like those out of sight, out of mind. Under her Christian teachings, she'd been raised to regard anything unearthly, as long as God was not concerned, as false. Back then, she hadn't known just how big the universe was, though. Maybe some people were extra sensitive to the strange and unusual; maybe Mary was one of those people.

Whatever was going on there wasn't Tuesday's greatest concern. As she slung her backpack over one shoulder and started out for school, every part of her begged to go in the other direction. She had no clue where Cyrus had gone, but if she didn't have Mary's wrath to worry about, she'd tear New York apart looking for him.

She just got him back. Why did that have to end so soon?

It was easier to focus on how much she missed Cyrus than the things he'd done. No, those things she carefully filed away for later. Life was complicated enough. What wasn't so easy to push aside, however, were the other stories he'd told Tuesday. Specifically, the ones about Acheron.

How close she'd brushed with death that seemingly innocent morning in Cyrus's kitchen--Lord, how was she supposed to cope with that? How was she supposed to take in the information that a, well, a thing she couldn't really bring herself to name, had wanted to kill basically everyone on the planet?

And to learn Cyrus had killed him--well, that definitely came as a shock. He'd always seemed so attached, so dutiful.

It seemed the general consensus was wrong...people really could change.

The first part of Tuesday's day was uneventful. The classes dragged, and even Shakespeare couldn't lift her spirits. She stammered and stumbled over her lines until the teacher took pity on her and reassigned her role, letting the student beside Tuesday take a turn at being Lady Macbeth.

If she was being honest with herself, the scene had hit a little too close to home; that's what had made it so hard to read. Somewhere during her recitation, her mind wandered from the fictional scene and drifted to real life memories that would best remain in the past.

By the time lunch rolled around, Tuesday was beginning to think she could benefit from another trip down marijuana alley; she figured with how weird she was being, though, that she wouldn't get another chance to hang with Jordan and the others. In case she was wrong, Tuesday skipped her normal appointment in the library to brave the cafeteria.

Talk about sensory overload. About twice as many kids as there were seats were crammed into the space, the sounds of their chatting and jesting rising to a thundering cacophony. Gripping one strap of her bag tightly, she gritted her teeth and forced her way through the crowd. There were no empty spaces and no familiar faces; she was just about to turn back and make a mad dash for the library when she heard her name called over the din.

A few feet away, Jordan was rising from a bench, a bright smile splitting across her face. She motioned Tuesday over, lightly pushing Layla down the bench to make room. Across the table sat Chris and a few other kids she didn't recognize.