It wasn’t really pain or even weakness. It was fear. Food poisoning or the flu could both turn bad, I knew. If I died from that pom freezie, I was so going to sue freezie mix corporate for selling Shirleen rancid syrup. Except of course I’d be dead.
The tears that seemed to be coming much too readily these days spilled out of my eyes and down my cheeks. My knees gave out and I sagged to the kitchen tiles.
From down here, it was obvious someone had been doing a really shitty job of sweeping. For some reason, that made me cry harder.
And the tears were purple. Bright purple.
“What is happening?” I half-screamed the words, smearing at the drips as if I could force them away until both my hands were streaked with amethyst. I curled into a ball, crying and dry heaving.
I wasn’t sure how long I stayed there. Not long enough to die anyway.
But I had to sit up before I choked on my own sobbing snot. Oh hell, the boogers were purple too.
And for some reason, that made me…feel better?
Once, when Swann and I were kids, we’d been hanging out at the park, hanging upside down on the monkey bars, drinking freezies and talking idly about how we wished we worked there so we could drink freezies all the time. Some boys had run by, being stupid, and one said stupid shit about Swann. So I spit at him and it came out all Jolly Roger sour apple green. Swann had laughed so hard, and the boys had kept running.
Good times. Also, that explained what was happening now. I’d had Brayden’s nasty pomegranate and now my body was rejecting it just like I’d rejected that dumb-ass MageLord. It all made sense.
Carefully, I pulled myself up to the kitchen sink to wash my hands and face. The purple seemed a little less garish now, like it was fading, and what had seemed slick under my fingertips before now felt a little gritty. Yeah, I just needed to get all of yesterday out of my system.
I sipped some water from the faucet and waited a minute, clutching the stainless steel.
When nothing else came up—purple or any other color—I wobbled back to my room. Still a little shaky, but definitely better.
Until I saw the scorch mark on the wall.
I groaned. I was terrible at sweeping, and I was even worse at spackling.
Ignoring that problem for the moment, I surveyed the tangle of wires where I’d thrown all the gaming stuff last night when I realized that my life was a streaming disaster.
Grimly, I began to sort out the pieces. Something had overloaded my system, and I wasn’t plugging in again until I figured out what it was.
The console looked all right. But the gloves were toast. Literally toasted. I brushed my thumb along the jack and came away with charcoal smears. “This is crazy,” I murmured.
Mom would yell if she heard me use that word. She said it stigmatized mental illness, and her patients were deserving of the same compassion as anyone else. She still said that even after one of those criminally insane patients had nearly snapped her back.
I wasn’t crazy though. The crater in my wall was real. I also had over a thousand dollars of toasted electronics that told me whatever happenedhad actually happened.
Maybe I should’ve saved the footage last night. That could’ve given me a hint about what had gone wrong.
I grabbed my phone. While I couldn’t log into the game from my cheap phone to play, I could at least see what was going on in chat. Maybe even check on Brayden. Maybe I’d blasted his MageLord. That would definitely, definitely make me feel better.
I logged in. 999+ notifications.
Another crazy shock went through me. “What…?” I said weakly not even able to addthe hellorthe fuckor anything.
Frantically, I scrolled through. They all went back to one post.
“SirLancelot.”
Feeling sick again—not just fevery but furious—I clicked on the post. It was a screenshot of a video. It was me, wrapped in a towel, hair in conditioner-greasy Leia buns, face covered by the headset, gloved hands caught in mid-wave. I looked crazy, and even Mom would have to agree that was the right word.
The screenshot linked to a YouTube video.No. It was all my worst nightmares coming true. The triangle on the play button pointed forward to humiliation. But I had to click if I wanted to know what happened with my toys.
Gritting my teeth, I pressed play.
Inside the game, my EldWitch was an elegant, powerful being, versed in all the magic and mayhem of her world. From the outside… I groaned at the way I waved and wobbled at things no one else could see. And that stupid towel was one breath away from flashing my tits on my channel.
