Everworld Book 8 - Brave The Betrayal by K.A. Applegate

Author:K.A. Applegate [Applegate, K.A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2012-02-13T00:34:37+00:00

Chapter

XIII

CNN: Breaking News.

Now what? I wondered. The near burning in the demon tree sent a shudder through me, an actual, physical shudder. I clutched my hands together on my desk to stop them from shaking.

I was in school, sitting in calculus class, watching the back of Miyuki's head and occasionally glancing at the blackboard.

Class was almost over. The bell would ring any minute.

I had decided this was the place to ask Miyuki out. This was where she knew me, our one area of common ground. I'd been steeling myself for the ordeal. And then, just as I was tensing up and practicing my carefully casual lines and planning my graceful exit strategy for when she said no, it was time for the update from Everworld.

I was asleep, surrounded by sharp sticks, stalked by some minor African deity with a grudge because we didn't want to cow down to him and his fellow immortals.

Great. A crapstorm was going to come down on the other me. Once again, there was the pressing question of what happened to me if Everworld Jalil died. Once again, no way to know.

It all made me tired. Too tired to think about asking Miyuki out. This wasn't the time. Too much going on over there, over in my other life.

"Yeah, right, Jalil, just give up on this life. Why even bother.

Just crawl into bed and wait for the updates."

Everworld was eating away at my real-world life. I lived here, in school, at home, at work, in the world of parents and friends and homework and counting the cash in your pocket to see what, if anything, you can do on a Saturday night. But into my brain flooded images of another life. Images that were so startling, so vivid, so electric that they made my own present-day life seem like the distant memory.

I was playing Pong in this universe and rocking with Lara Croft in the other.

The bell rang, I jerked in surprise, and the teacher began yelling out the assignment as all of us surged toward the door, already dismissing him from our onrushing lives.

"Just do it. Jalil. Just do it," I told myself. "Great, I'm a Nike commercial."

I sucked in a deep breath and slid past a pair of seniors to catch her. I fell into step beside her.

"Hi," I said.

"Hi."

"Um, my name is Jalil."

"I know that." She laughed, a little derisively. Not good.

"Good class, huh?" There you go, Jalil, that was smooth.

She nodded, glanced at me like I might be on the edge of becoming a problem in her life.

Screw it. Walk away. No. No, don't walk away.

"Miyuki? I was thinking maybe sometime, if you wanted to, we could study together. Or else go on a date."

What? That wasn't the way I'd practiced.

"Which one?" she asked.

I shrugged, a casual act that might possibly have fooled a blind man. "Which one? Either one would be fine with me."

She stopped walking, faced me, glanced over her shoulder.

"I can study with you, but I can't go out with you.

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