Book of the Dead: AESLI-00: (A reverse harem, post-pandemic, slow-burn romance) (The JAK2 Cycle, Book 1)

by V. E. S. Pullen

  Sasha: This place is a fucking abomination with all the food available and being wasted and she can’t even eat it?

  Me: Okay, well, I didn’t know any of this. And I swear I didn’t do anything horrible, she saw me and realized I wasn’t Tai and went ballistic.

  Tai: What do you mean?

  Me: I walked past her in the hall and she thought I was you, called me Soldier Boy. And I probably should have known something was up, but I wasn’t thinking. She got so pissed and I thought it was about the detention but she started ranting about us being twins, along with you triplets and the Callises. Like we’re here because of her or something.

  Tai: Huh.

  Sasha: Has anyone been told why we’re here?

  Tai: No. Not us. Don’t know about the Callises.

  Sev: What did she say? When she got pissed.

  Me: That she’s not stupid and this is “heavy-handed bullshit” that she’s not going to fall for. And also she gives no fucks about me.

  Tai: She’s def a difficult personality, but I kind of like it. Mouse talks about her constantly, and even if only half of it is true, there’s a lot to admire there. I’m not usually into chicks treating me like I’m a fucking idiot, but for whatever reason it’s okay when she does it, like there’s something else going on so I can understand it and cut her slack. At least for now.

  Me: Fucking shit. Yeah. Same. She challenged me, and she was fearless, and I LIKED it.

  Luka: She’s nice to me!

  Me: Fuck off.

  Tai: Go fuck yourself, Luka.

  Sev: Wtf is going on around here? And who is Mouse?

  Sasha: I think the Chandler brothers have a crush on Azzie, who’s like a decade younger than them.

  Me: She’s not 14, asshole.

  Sev: But she IS your student, Spider…

  Luka: Yeah, I mean, at least WE are socially acceptable for her.

  Sasha: Hold your fucking horses, Luka. I’m not interested in her like that.

  Luka: Yeah, right.

  Sev: Good. Then stay away from her.

  Sasha: Are you saying you are?

  Sev: I’m not saying anything except stay the fuck away from her if you aren’t interested. These waters are already muddy enough with that fuck Jason Callis hanging around.

  Luka: I’m saying it! I’m into her! She’s already my bestie and I want more. So yeah, stay away from her. Girls get wack over you.

  Me: She’s your bestie? Well that changes things.

  Luka: I’m fucking awesome and you know it.

  Tai: How is she your bestie? You just met yesterday.

  Luka: Two souls like ours that vibrate with the harmonic resonance of the universe are bound together regardless of time or space.

  Sev: You are so full of shit right now.

  Sasha: Dude. You like her because she hit the truck and gave us the finger. There’s no harmonic resonance there, you like crazy bitches. Always have.

  Sev: And if you ARE interested in her, you might want to reconsider having some other bitch on your lap in the cafeteria.

  Luka: I was mad at her. She got upset because I hit that fuck Jason Callis after he manhandled her, and I made a poor life choice. She’ll forgive me. Eventually.

  Sasha: Uhhh… yeah, I’m not totally sure she gives any fucks. After you had your tantrum in Geography, I told her you’d be fine and just give you time, and she said she doesn’t care whether you’re upset because she doesn’t like drama and isn’t interested in being involved in ours. And I saw her when she walked in to the cafeteria. She looked over where we were, and was blank. No reaction. I’m not saying she won’t forgive you or whatever, I just don’t think she cares at all.

  Luka: Fuck. Fuck. FUCK.

  Me: She told me pretty much the same thing, to stay out of her way because she doesn’t need this bullshit.

  Sev: I’m just putting this out there, but have any of you ever had a woman blatantly dismiss you like this? I’m not saying things aren’t suspicious as hell around here, but are we only latching onto her because she so clearly isn’t interested in any of us? At any level, like not even as friends?

  Luka: SHE IS MY FRIEND. MY BEST FRIEND.

  Sasha: You’ve known her less than 24 hours and talked to her like four times. She’s not your best friend.

  Luka: Bullshit. I knew from the second she flipped us off that she was going to be my friend, and I told you that right there in the truck. I was already trying to figure out who she was when all that went down with Callis in Geography, and I know she likes me. I know it. She was hurt and sick and tired, and she leaned against ME. It was like instinct.

  Sev: But yet you had your tongue down that Marissa bitch’s throat. And you know damn well that regular chicks don’t deal with that, even just friends, only the sluts don’t care. You might as well have hit her.

  Sasha: Why DID you do that? You were fucking furious when she sat with Callis and got mad at you for hitting him. I was going to give you smack for having a crush on her but then you pulled that shit with Marina. Oh, and Sev? The one you were macking on is Clarissa, not Claire like you keep calling her. Marina and Clarissa, not Marissa and Claire.

  Sev: Like I give a fuck what their names are.

  Luka: I wanted to make her jealous. :(

  Sev: Yeah? How’d that work out for you?

  Luka: It kinda did. Sorta. She was def salty about Marina, which I thought was a good sign. But after everything Sasha just said, I’m not so sure.

  Tai: Jesus. You all sound like high school students.

  Me: Pretty sure no “bitches” like watching their man kiss another woman. Not even the “sluts.” I feel like we really need to have a talk about how to woo girls. And your fucking vocabulary.

  Tai: No, we don’t. Let them fuck it up with Azzie.

  Sasha: It’s a cultural thing. But you do have a point.

  Tai: ??

  Luka: Don’t worry your pretty little head about it. I’ll win Azzie back, don’t you worry. Every good relationship is based in friendship, and I feel like I shouldn’t need to repeat this again, but we’re besties.

  Sev: And worst-case, he’s not opposed to locking her in our basement and waiting for Stockholm Syndrome to kick in.

  Me: I’m sorry, but I don’t think she’s your friend anymore. She said that me and Tai should take the “other” twins and the “fucking triplets” and leave.

  Tai: I’m going to just pretend I didn’t see any of that. But if she disappears, I know where to look first.

  Sasha: Based on that, I’d say she def thinks we’re here because of her.

  Sev: Do you think it’s true?

  Tai: There is absolutely something weird about her situation here. My coworker in the lab too. That’s Mouse, by the way. It’s like the whole lab is set up just to draw Azzie’s blood once a day, and then Mouse just does whatever the fuck she wants the rest of the time. It doesn’t make any sense, but I’m trying to figure it out. And you should probably know that I promised Azzie I’d tell her why I’m here once I know.

  Sasha: Uhhh…

  Sev: Was that really the smartest thing to do? What if it IS about her and she’s not supposed to know? Or it has nothing to do with her and it fucks everything up because you involve her.

  Luka: Shut it, Sev. Let them fuck it up with Azzie.

  Me: I don’t believe in coincidences. There’s a reason I was placed here, overseeing two of her classes, and Tai was placed in the lab she goes to daily. How many classes do you all have with her?

  Sasha: At least two each. The Callises too.

  Luka: I have three. See? The universe has spoken. Harmonic. Fucking. Resonance.

  Me: And is there anyone else that we all have contact with? Asking rhetorically. It’d be different if it was just us here at the high school, but with Tai at the hospital?

  Tai: Not unless you all know a tiny psycho named Mouse.

  Sasha: Nope.

  Sev: Not me, no.

  Me: Luka?

  Luk
a: Nope.

  Me: Okay, me either.

  Tai: We need to work under the assumption that we’re here because of her, and go from there. We’ll talk later, gotta go.

  Azzie

  The Computer Science classroom had five long rows of tables set side by side, no aisles except on one side, with seating and terminals for six students per row. The rows are spaced pretty far apart, allowing for a teacher to move around behind the students and look at their screens or help them. The teacher’s desk and terminal were at the back of the room, projecting onto a large screen at the front if necessary.

  This was my fourth year of Comp Sci — so I suppose it was Comp Sci 4? Mega-advanced? I don’t know, and up until now we had followed a preset course of materials put together by some professors somewhere. Like everywhere on base, all the terminals were air gapped with local network access only, so there was more than a strong possibility that everything we were learning was horribly out of date. The teacher up until now had mostly just answered questions (when he could) or napped in the back, but he’d abruptly resumed covering only gym classes, and now Spider Chandler was in charge.

  What kind of fucking name is Spider anyway?

  I wondered if he was even a real teacher, then I wondered if my increasing paranoia and ability to see conspiracies everywhere was a result of being lonely or if these things were really as suspicious as they seemed.

  Nah, they were suspicious as fuck.

  Lunch has never exactly been a party I didn’t want to leave, so I always get to class early and snag the back corner on the side farthest from the door and teacher’s desk. I always turned my monitor just enough so that the screen wasn’t easily viewable from his desk, but not so much that it was obvious. And then I always proceeded to do the assigned lesson for the day in less than ten minutes and spent the rest of the time doing whatever I wanted, which was usually just reading shit in the gaming forums or trolling Clarissa and Marina and their squad of Beckys as they tried to hook up with new recruits on the social forums — they could very well all be legal now, but old habits die hard.

  Back when we were in the ninth grade, Marina got someone I knew thrown off base and possibly dishonorably discharged (though I never found out for sure) — he wasn’t a predator, he was a socially inept nineteen year old fresh off a farm who never once imagined the sophisticated, experienced girl he met on the base-sanctioned dating forums was fourteen. After that, I made it my mission to out those bitches before they could ruin any other lives because they were bored and daddy didn’t pay enough attention to them.

  They might suspect it was me but I’d never been caught, since I’m a fucking genius compared to them. And the teacher has always left me alone to do my own thing since my assigned work was done.

  Everybody else usually took the whole hour to complete the assignments. The work wasn’t difficult, but most everyone spent their time either just talking to each other, or on the restricted, outdated, and borderline-useless equivalents to social media that we had access to. Mouse had told me, at length, what used to be available — or possibly still was but just not here — lamenting our choices as “like if Orkut and Myspace had a baby,” whatever that meant.

  Sometimes, when our assignment for the day was more difficult or time consuming than normal, it was fun to watch the entire class scramble to finish it before the end of the hour after they’d been procrastinating the whole time.

  I had a feeling Spider was going to be a little harder to deal with.

  I was so busy contemplating the impact that Spider Chandler would have on my day, I wasn’t thinking about much else, so to add paste-flavored roses to the frosting on the shit-cake that was my life, of course Sev walked in the door.

  I focused on my screen but I saw him notice me out of the corner of my eye. He hesitated, then one of the beautiful girls last seen clinging to Sasha like barnacles on a ship stepped up beside him and said something, and he dutifully followed her to seats two rows in front of me.

  She loudly directed them into place like it was her job. “Emma, you sit on the end, then Sev, then me and Ryan.” I heard it all clearly, but didn’t bother looking up. “And have I mentioned how much I love your hair? It’s such a pretty auburn and really compliments your skin tone. That’s not always the case with redheads, it often washes them out.”

  It didn’t take a genius to figure out that was directed at me, I was one of two natural redheads in the senior class, and point of fact, Emma didn’t have auburn hair. Her hair was orange, and though arguably a really pretty girl, she didn’t like that her complexion was heavily freckled so she caked on makeup to cover them. She tended to look like a plastic, ginger Barbie doll.

  Not that I have room to judge, I was pale to the point of looking sickly. My hair was healthy now, but in the past it had gotten brittle and broke off, and I’d had excruciatingly oily dandruff for a time in junior high when my lack of circulation killed a lot of my epidermis and caused it to flake off, including on my scalp. I seemed to fluctuate between “gaunt” and “puffy” depending on what was going on with my body, and when I looked in the mirror, I frequently saw a hideous monster. That’s why I tend to let comments solely about my appearance — good or bad — roll off my back, very little of it was under my control.

  When a thing that touches virtually every single part of your body, like your blood, is fucked up and frequently not working right, it’s always a toss-up how your external shell will respond. My skin was sensitive to sunlight, chemicals, dyes, and touch; it often felt like it was burning, at random times in random locations, and it itched to the point where I left scars before Rachel started making her magic homemade lotions, creams, and bath oils.

  My perfectly balanced diet of all the necessary nutrients and nothing extra would have given me the healthiest, shiniest hair in the world, but the sometimes erratic blood flow to my scalp wasn’t doing me any favors. It was still thick and pretty healthy, but it didn’t really grow and sometimes hurt, like hurt to the point where I couldn’t brush it. Have you ever felt your hair hurt? It kinda sucks.

  I do have nice eyes though. They’re hazel, more green than brown, and sometimes a bit yellowish like a cat depending on the light, but what I like most about them is that they work. Being blind for a few weeks had a big impact on me, and I don’t take my vision for granted — I do whatever I need to do to protect my eyes, and I carry eye drops with me 24/7 in case they get dry or irritated.

  I don’t ever want to lose my sight again. I know you can live a full and happy life without your eyesight, but I’d rather not find out if I’m the exception to that.

  I must have tuned out some really good stuff because next thing I know, a chat alert popped up from Sev. I clicked on it.

  Sev: I don’t know what Gemma’s problem is. Maybe that stuff isn’t directed at you at all, but if you think it is, just ignore her. She’s a fucking bitch.

  Me: Is that her name? Gemma?

  Sev: Uh, yeah. So are you okay?

  Me: I actually have no idea what you’re talking about, I haven’t been listening. She made a crack about red hair and then after that I just tuned her out.

  Sev: For real or are you just saying that? Because you don’t have to pretend. If she hurt your feelings, I’ll deal with it.

  Me: What happened to me just ignoring it?

  Sev: So she DID hurt your feelings?

  Me: No, I wasn’t lying, I haven’t heard a thing she’s said since telling Emma that the carrots growing out of her scalp are pretty. Clearly she has no taste. ;)

  Sev: At least I’m not the only one you ignore. :P

  Me: Nope, you’re one of millions.

  Sev: Usually the saying is “one in a million.” Implying unique and special.

  Me: Do you need me to tell you that you’re a special snowflake? Did your…ego not get stroked enough at lunch?

  I heard him bark out a laugh two rows up, and several demands to know what’s so funny. He ignored them.

  Sev
: Don’t be jealous, baby, I’ll let you stroke whatever you want.

  Me: So tempting! But I’m not really into sloppy seconds.

  Sev: OUCH. That burn was third degree. Are you calling me a slut?

  Me: If the condom fits, pretty boy.

  Another loud laugh and then Spider was telling him to get back to work. Apparently class started when I wasn’t paying attention, but we were following the same “lesson plan” as the previous teacher. Good. I enjoyed my free time.

  Sev: At least you think I’m pretty.

  Me: That’s your takeaway?

  Sev: What can I say? I’m self-absorbed and conceited.

  Me: At least you know yourself.

  Sev: Normally, a nice person would have jumped in to contradict that, saying something like “You’re not self-absorbed and conceited! You’re perfect and so handsome! It’s not bad to recognize your own flawlessness!”

  Me: And a normal, nice person also uses that many exclamation points?

  Sev: Yes.

  Me: I don’t buy it. Feels fake.

  Sev: Don’t you want to be nice?

  Me: Fine. How’s this? “Oh, Sev, you don’t have to admit to being self-absorbed and conceited, you’re so perfect and dreamy that no one will ever notice!”

  Sev: So you think I’m dreamy?

  Me: …

  Sev: You do. You think I’m dreamy.

  Me: Sure. Yup. What a dreamboat you are. Such a catch. That Clarissa is one lucky girl. And so are Emma and Gemma. For expediency, from now on I’m just going to refer to them as G/Emma. That work?

  Sev: Sure, but flirting at lunch doesn’t mean anything. Sitting with people in class doesn’t mean anything. I’m not *with* any girl.

  Me: And girls everywhere are sighing and clasping their hands, sending up little prayers of thanks that you’re still on the market.