Page 61 of Malice

“Thank you,” Hudson says, taking the mug from me. “Everything okay? You look a little off.”

“Do I?” I sit in the armchair beside the couch. “I’m fine. I was just doing some quick research while the coffee brewed.”

He sips his coffee, gazing at me over the lip of the mug. “How is everything? Is he still there?”

“Kind of. Weakened, as we heard. I had no trouble making the coffee.”

“What did you find out in your research?”

Crash appears behind the couch, waggling his eyebrows at me.

“Nothing pertinent right now.” I settle into my seat. “What are you doing?”

His smile brightens as he sets his mug on the coffee table. “It’s kind of amazing, but I got an idea for this book I’ve been stressing out about for months. I’ve had the worst case of writer’s block.”

“Understandable.”

He nods. “I guess, but it’s unlike me. Normally I write five to six hours a day, no problem.”

“Wow. That sounds like a lot.”

“It can be, but it’s the only thing that makes me feel alive. Like I have a purpose.” He scoffs. “That probably sounds so dumb to you. I write gay fantasy smut. I’m not exactly curing cancer.”

“Hey, don’t short sell yourself. Books can be a lifeline for a lot of people.”

“You believe that?”

I nod as memories of my high school best friend flood back. “I had a friend in high school, Liz. I met her because I was struggling with the concept of this book we had to read in English and I always admired her answers in class. I saw her in the library one day and asked if she could help me understand it.” A smile tugs at my face. “She was shy, but she said yes. We started meeting every day after school and talking about books. She loved them and had a rough home life. She told me how escaping to these fictional worlds saved her life more than once. She saw beauty in the world beyond her own experience.” I rub my forehead and clear my throat. “She wanted to be a teacher when she grew up.”

Hudson’s face falls. “What happened to her?”

“Rare form of blood cancer. She was sick for months with all these weird symptoms, but her mom was too checked out on drugs to get her help. When Liz started losing weight and doingpoorly in school, a school counselor called for a welfare check. She was taken to the doctor and at that point the cancer had progressed beyond being treatable. Her family couldn’t afford it anyway.”

“Oh my god. She died?”

“The summer after junior year. I was with her that day. My parents took her in because her mom couldn’t deal with the guilt and ended up overdosing. She was in the hospital the same day Liz died.”

“Aster. God.”

I nod, sipping my coffee. “I felt shitty for so long. Like I should’ve tried to get her help sooner. I should’ve gone to the school, but she begged me not to.”

“You were a kid too, Aster.”

“I know. It was a long time ago and I’ve worked through it for the most part. Her mom actually came to see me once. I was about twenty-four. She had finally gotten clean and wanted me to have Liz’s favorite book. It was about these kids who had troubled lives, but they found a treehouse in the woods and whenever they went through the door, they entered a world where their lives were different. They had loving parents and plenty of food and nice, safe homes.”

“That sounds nice.”

“It was. They always had to go back though. When the sun set, they had to return home. But one day, one of the girls decided she wasn’t going back. She would stay in her make-believe world even if she died.”

Hudson nods. “I know that book. She wouldn’t die. Everyone else she loved would.”

“If she stayed, yeah. So she had to decide whether her happiness was worth the sacrifice of everyone else.”

“She went back, if I remember correctly?”

“She did. In Liz’s copy, she wrote in the margin that she would go back too so I wouldn’t die.”

“That’s powerful.”

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