“Swallow it.”

“W-wait, what?” I stammered. I looked down at the weird foaming and fuzzy mixture in the glass. It was changing from

color to color but not beautiful bright colors like you might see in a children’s nursery book, no sir-ee, these were dark, odd, hideous colors that made me wanna puke. When I looked up at Bryce, he was giving me a look that made it clear he wasn’t gonna repeat himself. I took a deep breath and downed the entire glass at once. And then I started choking.

Hidden in the drink had been some kind of hard, rough ball or something and it got stuck in my throat. I gagged and coughed and waved my hands around frantically but Bryce just stood there staring at me with a poker face that almost made him look like

Cillian Murphy. After hacking and pounding my chest for a couple minutes, I chugged a nearby bottle of water and the ball finally went down. I turned to Bryce and glared at him but he didn’t react he just….stared at me. At first I was annoyed but then I remembered what I’d just drank and bad feelings started welling up inside me. I opened my mouth to apologize but when I looked into his eyes, all I saw was pain.

Guilt bubbled up inside me and I felt like an utter idiot. Sure I could have really used his help a couple minutes ago when I almost died, but that didn’t excuse what I had just done. Some part of me just wanted to make excuses. I mean, after all, he gave his consent to me drinking it, begrudgingly of course, but he gave it nonetheless. Bryce suddenly whipped around and walked out of the cabin. I wanted to call after him but the potion was still sizzling in my throat and all that came out was the muffled sound of a soda can opening. I stood there in the middle of the log room with my best friend’s potion sizzling inside me. The potion his father had left for HIM. The potion HE was supposed to drink. The potion that was supposed to give HIM the power of the hawk, so he could lead our people fiercely, like his father once did. But of course, I had convinced him and our people to give it to me, like the greedy little pig I was.