“Where… are… we?” It took all my strength to say three measly words, leaving me exhausted and drifting off to sleep again. “Tired,” I managed to slur.
“I don’t care if you’re tired,” Logan snapped, nudging the bottle against my lips. “I need you to drink something.”
No, I thought, reaching up, fumbling with the air before finding his hand. I attempted pushing him away, though he didn’t budge.
“Drink something!”
“Sleep,” I whispered, closing my eyes. And the world slipped away once again.
Lucas and I were stretched out over freshly cut grass, sharing a pair of earbuds. The overhead sun glistened on our skin; our backpacks and forgotten textbooks spread out around us. Two empty beer bottles and half a pack of cigarettes sat between us.
“That’s not ironic, Will!” Laughing, Lucas played with my hair, wrapping one of my braids around his finger. “I mean, maybe there’s some situational irony there, but that’s about it.”
“What? Come on! A ‘no smoking’ sign on a cigarette break—that’s ironic.”
“Nope. It’s only ironic if they didn’t already know the sign was there.”
Blinking over at him, I chewed thoughtfully on my lower lip. “Okay, so what about meeting the man of your dreams and then meeting his beautiful wife—that’s definitely ironic.”
“Meh, kinda. I think that’s still situational irony. You wouldn’t expect to meet the man of your dreams only to then meet his beautiful wife, right?”
Making a face at the sky, I shook my head and said, “Can you imagine how shitty that would be? To meet the person of your dreams and they’re already with someone else.”
Lucas rolled toward me, pressing a soft kiss to my temple. “Good thing we found each other, huh?”
“What the fuck, Luke—I thought you said you were going to the library.”
Logan stood above us. His short blond hair spiked with sweat. He was fresh from football practice, a duffel bag brimming with gear slung on his shoulder.
Lucas scrambled to sit, hurrying to stuff the empty beer bottles into his backpack, drawing Logan’s attention straight to them.
“Are you kidding me—you’re back here,drinking?”
“It was only one beer,” Lucas mumbled.
“Yeah, and who does that sound like?” Logan demanded. “This is bullshit—you know better.”
“Hey, crazy,” I snapped. “He only had one beer—calm down!”
Logan’s jaw tightened. Ignoring me, he said to Lucas, “You keep fucking offlike this, you’re never going to get out of here—is that what you want? To be stuck in this shithole forever,with her?” Not waiting for a response, Logan continued bitingly. “I’ll be in the truck—if you’re not there in five minutes, I’m leaving without you.”
“Oh no,” I called after him. “However will he make it home without you? What with you living three short blocks away and all.”
Logan’s shoulders stiffened, though he continued stalking away. I glared after him, feeling myself growing angrier. I didn’t understand why he hated me so much.
“Great.” Lucas flopped backward on the grass with a groan. “My whole family is crazy—can I move in with you?”
“Yep,” I said, settling back beside him. “And wouldn’t that be ironic.”
Lucas began to laugh. “No, Will, it definitely wouldn’t be—not even a little bit.”
I awoke to grunts and groans, scraping and scuffling noises. I knew those noises, I knew what they meant; only, just as quickly as my panic rose, my thoughts drifted away as my eyes drifted closed.
There was an audible thump to my right; my eyes flew open. A rotten stench filled my nostrils, making my stomach churn anew. The world was blurring in and out of focus, but there was something there, just to my right.
“Lucas?” I whispered, his name sticking in my throat. “Is… that you?”
My vision continued to blur in and out of focus, until I could suddenly see, and what I saw was Lucas, his beautiful face drawing closer, a smile splitting his lips.I lifted a quivering hand, reaching for him. As my vision wavered again, Lucas’s features began to morph into the decaying face of a Creeper. Growling, it grabbed at me, gripping a handful of my hair and painfully twisting it. Its jaws snapping like angry traps, its mouth a fetid black hole, it used its grip on me to pull itself closer.
