Book Six, Chapter 26: Ravel

If I never went to hell again, it would be too soon.

I managed to make it to bed by noon the day we got back, and I didn’t wake up again until noon the next day. Even then, I didn’t want to get out of bed. I didn’t have to. No one was going to make me.

But as I lay awake in my empty room, I got a sudden burst of loneliness and wanted to go see people.

I knew they would be around there somewhere. It wasn’t like they could easily leave the Loft without me.

Ruck had run off before we even got our rewards the day before, but as I walked from my room into the kitchen, I saw something sitting on the table. It was the mixtape he had made for Avery.

I called out her name. No response.

She wasn’t in her room either. That meant she was either down in the restaurant or up on the roof.

Camden was in the living room, reading the Atlas, as he often did. I had gone through a phase like that. There was something very comforting about a big book of secret knowledge.

“Where’s Avery?” I asked.

“Don’t know,” he said.

“Thanks.”

I guessed the roof. I took the tape with me.

“We need to talk about By the Slice,” he called after me as I walked away.

I responded with a wave to let him know I’d heard him.

Truthfully, I didn’t want to talk about that storyline yet. I was still digesting it. It was so easy to undersell how upsetting my voyage, technically voyages, to hell had been. Even if it was just a surreal pizza parlor down there, there was a hopelessness that came with it.

Being hopeless in Carousel was corrosive because you couldn’t really use logic to crawl out of that hole. Logic would only lead you further in.

But avoiding the problem until you’d forgotten enough of it, or become numb to it? That was a great option for lesser ailments.

Avery was, indeed, up on the roof.

She was up there with Cassie and Anna. It was a lazy day. I realized I didn’t know what day of the week it was, but it was a lazy one.

I held up the tape and asked, “Do you mind if I listen to this?”

Avery shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t care,” she said. “Russell gave it to me.”

She must have gotten to know him pretty well in hell to be using the name his mother gave him.

“Was this a Token of Affection?” I asked. Was that what it was called when you received an object from someone romantically interested in you in a storyline? I couldn’t remember. I hadn’t thought about it in a long time.

She nodded. “I got a ticket for it,” she said.

That meant when I had asked her yesterday about all the tickets she had won, she had either neglected to tell me, forgotten, or not really cared. It was my job to assess my team’s capabilities. How could I do that if they hadn’t told me what tickets they had won?

This was madness. Anarchy. Tomfoolery.

Of course, even if she had told me, it wasn’t like I knew exactly what we were supposed to do with these tokens.

I had received a Dear John letter, if that was the right word, from a masked sorcerer who had feigned interest in me so she could ask about the black snow showing up earlier than it was supposed to.

It had also been a Token of Affection. But what use was it? Supposedly, some tropes used them as resources, but I wasn’t exactly the type to attract tropes like that.

Kimberly also had one, a handful of mixed seeds given to her by Benny, the Haunted Scarecrow.

Between the letter and the seeds, I would have preferred the seeds. Maybe when she got back from the jungle, I could convince her to let us grow them on the roof. Then we would get some use out of one of the tokens, and we could taste exactly how sweet love was.

I took out my Walkman. As I started to set it up to play the tape, Avery, Cassie, and Anna gathered around. I unplugged the headphones so that the sound would play through the little speakers.

And I hit play.

Suddenly, Ruck’s voice came to life as he nervously said, “Avery, I just want you to know that every time I see your face, it makes me feel exactly like the guy in this song feels.”

Then a song started to play. It was a typical 80’s ballad. Maybe. I wasn’t exactly an expert.

“This is real music,” Cassie said with sudden excitement.

“Well, let’s not get carried away,” I said. “It’s… okay.”

“No,” she said. “This isn’t Carousel music.”

It was funny how Carousel music had taken on an entirely different meaning. Far from the carnival sounds it had meant back home, “Carousel music” was what we called the weird, slightly off-brand music that could be heard over the radio in Carousel. The lyrics were always a little odd, and maybe a bit ghoulish, so it was best to ignore them.

Cassie was right. This wasn’t Carousel music.

“He got you music from his world, I bet,” Anna said.

They oohed and ahhed, as if that was a super romantic thing to do. And I had to admit, it was a pretty good gift.

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The first song was all right. Something meant to hype you up while cruising around town in your Trans Am.

After it was over, Ruck came back on.

“Back off,” he said, speaking to someone. “I’m recording a tape for my ladylove… Avery, I’m sure you get this a lot with your trope that makes people fall in love with you, but I just wanna say how special I think you are. You may not remember this, but we actually met at a party at Delta Epsilon Delta. It’s been over a year, maybe even two. Time flies in Carousel, but not in a straight line, you know. You were trying to pump me for information about the storyline we were in, and you didn’t realize that I was always going to be an obnoxious jerk, and you kept trying to be kind and flirty in hopes that you might get through to me and learn something. And the whole time you were talking to me, I wanted so bad to break character. I still dream about that moment. Well, here’s another song. This one is a bit more romantic. And older. My parents played it at their wedding. I should know. I was 14 at the time, and I drank a bunch of champagne. Gramma chased me around with a fly swatter for that. They waited so long to get married because procrastination runs in the family. It has to run, because we’re always late. I’m the latest of them all.”

A romantic song started to play, something from the ’50s or ’60s, in the vein of Elvis, but the singer didn’t have the projection. His sound was smaller, more vulnerable. He sang, “Love can’t wait.”

It was one of those songs that’s a happy song if you’re with someone, and a sad song if you aren’t.

I went back and forth on it.

We continued listening. Occasionally, Ruck would chime in, but for the most part, the remaining songs were just normal music, not particularly romantic, but always authentic.

His world must have been pretty similar to ours.

“I’m gonna have to cut this out here,” I said. “Batteries aren’t cheap.”

That was true. We could steal anything from the Eastern Carousel General Store, but it was set in the ’70s, but they didn’t have the battery the Walkman needed. I would actually have to buy those.