Lost King Piper Lennox (ready player one ebook .TXT) 📖

only one second from pacing away and announcing, “Wait, I forgot: one room left. Sorry.”

I exhale slowly, watching it streak the glass. “No problem,” I mutter to my reflection. What a stupid, reckless girl she is.

Following Theo out into the hall, I hold my breath so I won’t have to drown in the trail of his scent. It’s an amalgam of deodorant, detergent, the scent of his house, pheromones or whatever the hell his sweat produces that’s got me so frazzled, and....

Lavender. That’s what I keep catching.

Damn, it smells good on him. Lavender’s always so delicate and airy, but not when Theo wears it. Rising off his skin, it hits me with heavier base notes and this deep-woods spin I can’t get out of my head. I want it swimming in there forever.

“No one really spends time in here but me,” he explains, “so it’s not too dirty, but I spilled soda on one of the rugs a while back. Know a good chemical cocktail?”

Blinking, I nod and tell him sure, I’ll give it a shot. My mom taught me well: there’s almost nothing on this earth I can’t soak, scrub, or bleach out.

I’m about to rattle off a list of stain removers when I stop short, frozen in the doorway of the bedroom.

It’s the same one from before.

The one where we kissed, and touched...where he filmed me.

Where he left me.

“You can come in,” he laughs. “The all-white color scheme is way less intimidating than it looks. I don’t know why my dad picked it. Maybe because he figured it would keep everyone out. Which...I mean, it kind of does.” He motions to me, as if I’m proof.

As if the fear of tracking dirt into such a pristine room is the only reason my heartbeat’s in my skull, right now.

Skulls.

I look to the right. Sure enough, there they are—row after row of grinning, sightless skulls.

Theo follows my gaze. “Oh, those?” he asks, like I’ve spoken. “They’re from my dad’s zoologist days. He collected animal skulls that labs were getting rid of, because they’d break or whatever, and fix them up to resell or keep.”

Gently, he flicks a tiny bird skull; we watch it rock back and forth like a cradle. “But mostly keep.”

“I saw the ones downstairs,” I nod distantly. But those were different. They weren’t front-and-center, like these. “You, uh…you don’t find them creepy?”

“No. Should I?”

“Unless you like staring Death in the face every day, yeah, I’d say so.”

Again, he laughs. I force a smile, because it’s the only way I can keep from bolting from this room.

That, or tearing this entire shelf away from its anchors and burying Theo in the wreckage.

“I guess I find them…beautiful. Not creepy.”

“Beautiful.” I blink at him. “Heaps of animal skulls? Really?”

“Yeah.” Gingerly, he picks up a small one, some kind of bird, and holds it up in front of his face. Then he hefts a bigger one off a lower shelf, as though weighing the two.

“Sparrow, coyote,” he says, huddling close so I have to look at them. “No matter how meek or tiny, or large or powerful an animal was…they’re all just as fragile underneath. Made of the same stuff. These intricate, amazing frameworks that did incredible things in life, but now have to be held together with wire and glue.”

Theo flips the skulls over and angles them towards me. Reluctantly, I peek inside. I don’t see much of the wire or glue in question, but enough to know he’s right. If we were to drop either skull hard enough, bird or coyote, beast or beauty…they’d both break, just the same.

“But I get it,” he smiles self-deprecatingly, placing the skulls back where they belong. “I’m in the minority, finding these things beautiful instead of….”

“Creepy as hell?”

“There’s nothing like that for you?” He tilts his head. “Something you find, like, absolutely incredible, that no one else fully gets?”

I start to shake my head, then stop. My hand goes to my earlobe, even though I’m not wearing my mom’s earrings today.

“Pearls, I guess.” I shrug. “But it’s not really the same. People don’t find them creepy; they just don’t like them as much as I do.”

“What do you like about them?”

My mind takes its time finding the words. I know exactly why I like pearls so much. I’ve just never told anyone who understood, and I already know Theo will. I’m not so sure I want the first person who gets it to be him.

“The way they form.”

Theo nods. “Irritation.”

“Exactly. It’s so much better than that overhyped ‘pressure forms diamonds’ mindset, because that’s so…passive. Pressure can also crush and kill. You shouldn’t sit there and accept all the bad shit, hoping it’ll magically transform into something better.” I try to stop talking. I don’t want to share this with him.

But that stare he’s giving me, those bright green eyes showing me he’s actually listening….

“But everyone gets irritated and scraped up,” I go on, once again touching the earrings I’m not wearing. “Some things in life, they’re inevitable. So I say, defend yourself.”

He smiles again. “Turn it into pearls.”

I nod. For some reason, I feel out of breath, as though I just spilled a full-on speech.

My eyes roam the empty sockets again. I try to remember which one Paige picked up first, that night. Which of these grinning faces hid Theo’s cruel, dark trick.

The coyote, probably, or the cow. Their size is ideal for webcam camouflage.

Maybe my mind just likes the symbolism. An unassuming, smiling coyote next to an innocent, fat cow.

When he touches my arm, I jerk away so hard I hit the shelf. Two skulls topple. I don’t stop