Fifteen

Eliot

Penny is dying. My own boyfriend stabbed him. Tried to kill others.

So I killed him.

This is the second man I've killed. Maybe that's what makes me special, among other things. That I've killed, and they're all innocent children around me. They don't know what it feels like, after you kill. The torture, the nightmares.

Maybe the boy I killed, my bully, was an accident, but this one was intentional. What makes it ironic is that my bully, I killed by accident, but my lover, I killed on purpose.

I guess life is a whole new kind of messed up. I always new that it wasn't fair. I never had the great life that I pretend to have. I'm my own creation, a facade. I play it so well, I've done it so much that I can't even tell the difference between real and lie anymore.

Life isn't fair, so why in the hell would death be any different? Sometimes, I want to do something that can change, make a difference, but it's just my ego. I mean, who am I really, to think that I could change this screwed up world?

So I've sucked up. I take life and death as it comes. I don't question it, I don't cry about it. I try not to dwell on it.

I just drink. A lot.

I took a sip of a concoction I'd made earlier and Margo rolled her eyes.

"This is not the time." I shrugged. She shook her head, not even bothering.

"Spill it, Q. How do we save Penny?" Margo asked.

"Well, in the Fillery books Jane's doll was accepted in the place of her heart. A sacrifice. It only accepted it because it was her most precious possession. We need to find Penny's."

"But we don't know what his precious possession is. We hardly know the guy," Alice supplemented. She was right. All we knew about Penny was that he was a traveler and that he wasn't a very open guy.

"Girlfriend?"

"None that we've seen." Margo shrugged.

"Parents?"

"Dunno." Alice bit her lip, worried.

"Well, let's look through his room, see if we can find anything. A picture or object that might be important to him." With that, we all rushed to his room.

Penny's room was really messy. I didn't even enter. It was not my kind of place to be. I watched as they tore the place apart, finding nothing of importance.

A few hours passed and we finally called it quits.

"You know, in Fillory, there is this spring that heals. If we could go there...," Quentin mumbled. Everyone exchanged looks.

"How do we go to Fillory?"

"We can ask Eliza or the Dean. I think they know a way," Quentin informed. There was something mysterious about Eliza, but I wasn't sure what it was yet. She knew something about the Beast that she wasn't telling us.

I got up, stretching. "Well, what are we waiting for?" It wasn't like Penny had all the time in the world. This was somewhat my fault. Or maybe I was being silly. I wasn't sure, only that I felt guilty for dating Mike, and not knowing he was some kind of evil.

"I'll go. It's better if I go alone." Quentin looked around, waiting for anyone to disagree.

Nobody did.

He left. While Alice used magic to fix Penny's room, Margo and I went back to the hospital ward, where Penny was.

"How is he? Can we fix him?" Margo asked the doctor.