Tell Me What You Hate About Me

33: A Fine Line

What were we supposed to do with that information?

I probably knew that there was something worth investigating the first time it happened, but we told each other that we wouldn't acknowledge it again. That wasn't true, obviously, but he was the one who mentioned it. I just thought about it silently.

Dominic summed it up pretty well with his utterance of dammit, and as I waited for him to say something else, the birds continued to chirp outside. Wasn't it about their bedtime?

But Dominic didn't say anything. He sat back down on the chair and put his head in his hands.

"It's not the end of the world, Dominic. You're being a little dramatic, don't you think?" I asked. I was kind of cute, and even if I wasn't that great of a person, at least he seemed to know that I tried a little bit more than people gave me credit for. It was just a lot easier not to care.

"It is the end of the world. You literally represent everything I hate," he replied.

What did I even represent? All I did was try to keep up with a talisman and fail miserably. That was it.

Besides, I had ten thousand times more reasons to hate him. He wasn't a part of the original talisman squad and I still let him stick around because I was nice, and the only time he was remotely nice to me was when we were alone.

"Can I ask you a question?" I asked.

He didn't look up. "Absolutely not."

"How'd you know kissing was going to fix the sky?"

"I told you not to ask me anything," he said. "You could probably figure it out anyway."

The sky turned right after we sat down to study, but I got the feeling that he wasn't really in the mood to be around me anymore. It was probably better to leave him alone to figure it out before he got any more upset with me, even though it wasn't my fault that he was having a hard time with his feelings despite the fact that he wanted me to believe that he had none.

Even though Jack and Sierra most likely weren't back from picking up our pizza, I stood up. "I should really get going for dinner. You know what Jack and Sierra are gonna think otherwise."

I let out a laugh, but Dominic didn't even crack a smile.

"I'll see you, Lindsay," he said, and I turned for the door.

I was half-expecting him to let me leave in silence, which I would have preferred by a mile. It would have been more awkward, but at least I would have had the last word.

I didn't even have time to think about what I felt about it because I was so concerned about his opinion.

***

Although Sherwood was a bit of a drive from Tillamook, I didn't mind having the weekends away from school. It wasn't like I had escaped magic, especially since I spent my time working for Butterfly, but it was different. It was a controlled magic that didn't rely on me (and someone else, it seemed).

The store was slowly being put back together after my incident with my mother and Dominic, and although it had taken years for Butterfly to stock her shelves with her potions, crystals, and aura-cleansers, she already had something on half the shelves once again. But Sierra had the one item I cared about—the second, silver talisman—and even though I didn't know how it fit into the picture, at least it wasn't in the hands of a xenophobic dentist, as Butterfly called him.

Butterfly usually tried to keep me away from all the breakable stuff on the shelves by having me type the prices into a calculator and gently handing the merchandise back to the customer, and I had to put my talisman in the back room before I even started my day. It was a little disrespectful, but I would have made me do the same thing.