Chapter 6
“Alright?”
Slowly, I looked up, a glare ready for the boy, spirit, man – whatever – who I’d been waiting to appear. That was Oli’s way, I was quickly learning. He always appeared right after the chaos, an I-knew-that-would-happen-because-I’m-just-so-goddamn-magical smile on his lips, his expression apathetic to the extreme. Oli had to be the worst Guardian Angel in the world.
He stretched out a hand, silently offering to help me up from the floor. Stubborn, I ignored the hand and just stared down at my feet – partly because I was a little mad at him, partly because I didn’t I could stand up, even with his help. My hands were shaking a little, and my knees weak.
The burning silence was gone now, replaced with hushed whispering as the class slowly came back to life. They were all doing their best to avoid looking at me and I knew Cay’s warning had been uniformly accepted. I didn’t blame them. If I were in there position, I would have done the same thing. No, I was mad at myself. Why had I been so helpless in that moment? Why didn’t I fight back? I wasn’t the type of person who could be easily kicked around – or so I’d thought. What was it about Cay that made me lose the courage to fight back?
Looking up, I unwillingly made eye contact with Oli. He was looking down at me placidly, in his smug little I-know way. This sent a hot flash of annoyance through me. If he knew the answer to my question, why couldn’t he just tell me? Did he like making me suffer?
“It’s more fun this way,” Oli admitted. Grumbling an angry cuss under breath, I placed my palms against the floor and tried to push myself up. I managed to get my butt half-way off the floor before my knees completely surrendered and I landed back on the ground with a loud smack. A few people glanced over, but essentially I was ignored.
Wincing, I cursed. Great. Add broken butt to my long list of injuries. Thank God this wasn’t my body, because the way I was going, it would be dead pretty soon. Oh. That was an interesting thought. What would happen if I died in this body, I wonder? Would I die forever, or just go back to my old body?
“You would die forever,” Oli answered almost immediately. “Your immortal soul would be sent to the afterlife and then there would be no retrieving it.”
Good to know. So, if I died in this body, I would be screwed. I had to take better care of it from now on.
I lifted myself up again, using my thighs, but fell down once more.
“This is ridiculous,” Oli muttered. Leaning down, he gripped my waist and softly tugged me to my feet. At the sudden loss of balance, my arms automatically grabbed at his shoulders. I knew how this must have looked to my classmates – me, being pulled up by some invisible force that was leading me by my crotch.
Once I was up, he settled me down on my chair. Once I was sure I wouldn’t collapse, I stared stubbornly outside the window, waiting for the class to start. I half-thought that Oli might start consoling me about what had just happened, but that was not the way my ‘Guardian Angel’ operated. He didn’t ‘console’. He ignored and then disappeared in the most inopportune moments.
Sure enough, when I glanced back again, he was gone.
***
The weather was a clear blue again today – rare for Manhattan. I breathed in, and out. The air here really was clean. It tasted different from Javotte’s air…even though the two schools were only about a few hundred yards apart. Maybe they imported good air here. It didn’t seem like something they wouldn’t do.
Word of the whole incident had spread through the school, so now I was officially a social pariah. It wasn’t as bad as clichéd chick flicks made out, to be honest. It was definitely preferable over the treatment I’d received yesterday. No one was coming to bother me any more, but the staring increased by tenfold.
