Chapter Thirty-Three

  As April wore on, so did the smell in the trailer. No matter how many windows Alex opened, she couldn't get the smell of death from the room. When a chunk of hair fell out of her mother's head, Alex knew the end was coming faster than the doctors had said. It almost felt like her mother was rushing her dying so Alex could get back to her life.

  There were also the little comments and jokes her mother made, saying things like "you should just smother me with a pillow and get it over with" or "you gonna carry my old corpse around with you forever."

  One afternoon, things came to a head while Alex was feeding her mother soup with a plastic spoon so she didn't chip her teeth.

  "Mom," she said, hearing the way their roles had reversed in her tone, "you have to open your mouth to eat. You're thin enough as it is."

  Eyes bloodshot and hazy, her mother said, "I don't want to eat anymore. There's no point."

  "Of course there's a point," she said. "You have to eat to stay alive."

  "Alive," said her mother sarcastically, which only made her break into a coughing fit. "I'm a bag of bones with a basketball in my head. I just want to sleep without these pills, they're awful."

  "Mom, please," she said, holding the spoon in front of her mother.

  "No," she said, squeezing her lips together and crossing her arms like an insolent child.

  Alex pushed the spoon against her mother's lips. With surprising vigor, her mother knocked the spoon away, sending a spray of vegetable soup across Alex's face.

  "Mother!"

  "Just let me be," said her mom. "Let me die in peace, not with you hounding me."

  "Hounding? Hounding?"

  Alex slammed the bowl on the TV tray, spilling half the soup on the floor.

  "I'm just trying to keep you alive. You're my mother. My only mother. You only get one. I can't lose you too. I can't be alone in this world. There's no one left in our family but me. You can't die, Mom. You can't. I can't let you. You're all I got."

  The trailer suddenly spun around her. The walls closed in. Alex stumbled through the screen door trying to get air.

  Before she knew where she was going, Alex let out a primal scream and took off running up the trail to Preacher's Lookout. It was a miracle she didn't stumble or fall on the way up, feet bouncing off roots and rocks like a mountain goat. Every ache, every fear, every pain was poured into that run. She wanted to run forever.

  Then her muscles no longer cooperated, and her lungs burned like a forest fire. Alex stopped three-quarters of the way up the trail, leaning on a tree and looking behind her in bewilderment, because she couldn't recall how she'd gotten that far up. The journey was a blur.

  Alex pulled her glasses off and wiped the sweat from the lenses on her shirt. In the game they never got messy or dislodged, which was a godsend, but back in the real world, they were a constant source of worry.

  When she could catch her breath again, Alex continued up the trail, determined to reach the top, for no reason except that it was better than being in the trailer with her dying mother. She stepped over a ropey, segmented cord of scat, full of hair and bone.

  The size of the animal feces gave her pause, remembering the mountain lion she'd encountered last August on the trail. She thought about going back down, but her legs wouldn't move in that direction when she thought of her mother, which only made it worse because she wanted to have the last days be full of laughter and memories, not arguments and spilled soup.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Preacher's Lookout was the highest spot along a ridge that dropped away, offering a scenic view of the long valley. At the bottom, a creek meandered through the middle, water sparkling in the afternoon sunlight. Red-tailed hawks rode the air currents along the steep cliff, circling until they spied a mouse or snake, then fell unerringly on their prey.

  Alex leaned against a tree, the rough bark against her side reminding her of the Warped Forest. If she squinted, and imagined the distant trees had multicolor hues, the valley could be a region inside the game.

  A wistful smile passed across her face like a cloud across the sun, returning once more to sullen silence. Alex wondered what she might have done if she were still doing well in the game and she'd heard about her mother's illness. She wanted to think that she would have given it up and rushed home to take care of her.

  But it wouldn't have been easy.

  Had it been a blessing that she'd failed? It didn't feel that way. Her mother was right; when she was gone, Alex would have to get on with her life. Without the opportunity Gamemakers Hall had afforded, what was she going to do?

  But trying to think about that was like staring at a blank wall and expecting a television. She couldn't see anything beyond her mother's illness.

  When the evening winds picked up, Alex turned to head back to the trailer. Maybe she'd find that her mother had gotten hungry and eaten the soup, and they could move past the argument.

  Alex made it a hundred feet from the ridge before she saw the mountain lion stalking her. The months in the Warped Forest had attuned her senses to movement, and the tawny cat stuck out against the verdant foliage. She faced the creature, hoping that showing that she'd seen it might scare it away, but it kept coming, low and to the ground.

  She thought about trying the same trick she'd done back in August, but the mountain lion seemed emaciated as if it hadn't eaten much during the winter. A hungry predator was unlikely to be dissuaded by shouts and raised arms.

  When it was about fifty feet away, the mountain lion broke into a sprint towards her. Alex burst the other direction, dodging through the trees while adrenaline flooded her system. She made it a dozen yards before spinning around to make her last stand.

  The mountain lion's reddish brown eyes were trained on her as it sprinted through the undergrowth in long, graceful strides. It would have been beautiful if it weren't trying to eat her.

  Before she could think about it, Alex's fingers fell into their familiar dance. A jet of gray cloud shot out, crackling with electricity. When the spell hit the mountain lion, it jumped high, landing sideways, looking momentarily bewildered as it rocked.

  "Oh, shit," said Alex, staring at her hands because she hadn't expected the spell to work. She'd had no idea that Cloud Taunt was a real spell and thought it only a tool in the game.

  The mountain lion was recovering from the shock, shaking its head and making weird clacking noises in the back of its throat. Its eyes seemed unfocused when it looked at Alex, making her wonder if there was a "taunt" component like in the game. If there was then she might have made a bigger mistake in using that particular spell.

  "Go away, kitty," she said, picking up fallen tree branches and throwing them at the mountain lion.

  The cat faced her again, letting loose a gut-shaking growl. Before it could leap, she cast Wind Gust. The first attempt at the spell lifted a few leaves and rustled some branches as if a stiff wind had passed.

  Alex cast it again, refocusing her efforts on clear finger diction and pouring as much faez as she could into the spell. The strain felt like a shard of cold air had entered her brain, but when the spell completed, a whirlwind of forest debris whipped into the air, careening towards the mountain lion, which had no choice but to bound away under the assault.

  After the cat was gone, she bent over, squinting. It'd hurt her head to pour that much power into the spell, which made sense since her Merlin scores in school had been so low. It'd probably been the training in the game that had allowed her to even do that much.

  With the sun setting behind the hills, Alex headed back to the trailer. She didn't want the mountain lion to come back in the dark when she couldn't see it.

  The whole way back, she thought about the implications of what had happened. She hadn't expected that the spells she was learning inside the game would work outside of it, but now she understood why each new spell came with an explanation, showing her how to cast it.

  But it didn't change that she'd failed to reach her goal in the game. Ideas soared through her head, but they disappeared the moment she reentered the trailer and the smell of death assaulted her nose.

  Her mother was asleep on the couch and the soup had dried on the rug. Alex grabbed a wet rag and started scrubbing away the stain. While she was working, her mother woke.

  "Alexandria, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have done that."

  Squatting on the ground, Alex turned. "It's okay, Mom. I understand. This isn't easy for you."

  "I just want...I just want you to be okay after I'm gone," said her mother.

  Alex squeezed her lips together, holding back tears. She nodded to her mother and then threw herself back into the scrubbing.

  When she was certain her mother had fallen back asleep, she whispered to herself.

  "Me too, Mom. Me too."