Languish by Alyxandra Harvey Page A

you!” I had to shout, but I wasn’t sure if she could even hear me. For someone who looked about a hundred years old, she sure had a set of lungs on her. I backed away.
    â€œYou’ll get us all killed!” she hollered. “Want Himself to break our bones and suck out the marrow?”
    â€œUm, no?”
    â€œThen go! Get away!”
    That was when she started to throw things at me.
    She flung the roots out of her basket and they tumbled to the ground, looking like pale, disembodied fingers. She plucked up the acorns and whipped them at my head. The first one bounced off my left cheekbone, narrowly missing my eye.
    â€œHey! Ow!” Three more followed. “Shit!” I dove behind one of the rocks while she continued to pelt me with acorns. She had wicked good aim. “Stop it!” I fumbled for my cell phone, dialing Jo’s number.
    â€œHello?” She sounded cranky.
    I was crankier. “Where are you?”
    â€œIn the caves. Is someone screaming?”
    â€œYes!” I poked my head out. An acorn grazed my hair. “Get out here!” I wasn’t sure what she could do to help, but since it was her fault I was here in the first place, she could get walloped with bits of the forest at my side. It was only fair.
    â€œWhere are you?”
    â€œRight outside.”
    I hung up and saw a shadow block the candlelight for a brief moment. “El?”
    â€œOver here.”
    Jo ran toward me, ducking acorns. She hunkered down beside me, her long hair trailing in the dirt. “Um, Eloise?”
    â€œYeah?”
    â€œWhat the hell?”
    â€œWorst night ever.”
    â€œI’m getting that.” She picked up one of the acorns and threw it back. “Why are we throwing acorns at an old woman?”
    â€œShe started it!” I inched to another boulder, in the direction of the path. “Where’s the rock star?” I asked.
    â€œCouldn’t find him,” she said, frustrated. “He disappeared.” She shook her head. “Just as well, I guess. He’d really think I was a nutter if he saw us right now.”
    â€œYou
are
a nutter.”
    â€œYou’re the one getting beaten up by Granny over there.” She tilted her head. “Is she yelling about deer?”
    â€œI have no idea. Count of three and we make a run for it?” I suggested. “One, two … three!”
    We ran. An acorn pinged off the back of my head and then we were on the path, on the other side of a copse of pine trees and out of range. I rubbed my head where I felt a bruise throbbing. Mean girls, wild hawks, and crazy old women were officially too much for one night.
    â€œI’m going home,” I muttered. “Because this party just sucks.”
    â€¢ • •
    Mom and I lived on the second floor of a small brick building near Rowanwood Park. The walls were crammed floor to ceiling with her paintings and photos, with masks and books of every description. Jo’s parents’ house had silk wallpaper and matching furniture from a catalog; under the framed pictures, our walls were magenta. And Jo soon learned that all the books were in order of subject matter; the CDs sorted by mood; and if you forgot to use a coaster on the antique chest we used as a coffee table, you’d get lectured. And then lectured some more.
    Which was still nothing to the lectures I’d gotten when Mom caught me trying to pick the chest’s lock with a bobby pin. It had been locked for as long as I could remember; it was the only thing my exhibitionist mother was rabidly privateabout. Irresistible, right? But the stupid lock held tight no matter how much I tried to jimmy it.
    Our cat, Elvis, meowed impatiently at the window leading out to the roof. Mom was on a date with some guy whose name I didn’t know. I hadn’t met him yet, which meant he wouldn’t last the month.
    â€œOkay, your highness,” I muttered when Elvis batted my