Chapter 7
“You seem excited today,” Oli commented dryly, leaning against my bedroom door in those tight black jeans he always wore. Did spirits even need to change clothes? Or did Oli just have a million pairs of the same pants?
“Am I?” I asked, sat on my bed, pulling my knee-high socks on. “What am I excited about?” Pseudo-casual.
Oli gave me a look that clearly said ‘don’t-play-dumb’. “You know what you’re excited about.”
“But I’m really not excited,” I said, wiggling my foot into the shoe. “I mean, all he asked was if I could play something for him. It’s not like it’s a big deal or anything. I’m definitely not excited.”
“If you’re not excited,” he snorted. “Then how did you know I was talking about Cay?”
“Shut up,” I retorted, throwing a glare at him. I grabbed my bag from the corner of the room, stubbed my toe on the dressing table, cursed and opened the door. It passed right through Oli, which I ignored. I’d gotten used to it by now – last night, I’d had a fun time chucking things through his head. What I found most amusing was the wince Oli made every time. “You coming?”
“Of course I will come with you to school and sit with you through your classes. Because I have nothing better to do.” His voice was heavily laden with sarcasm, which I ignored.
“Shut up,” I repeated. I was not feeling patient today. Oli was right. I was a little excited. “Are you coming?”
“You only want me to come so I can tell you the answers to everything,” he complained. Oli was right. I’d been slightly abusing his mind-reading power.
He saw the annoyed look on my face and took the hint. Three minutes later, we were out of the house. The trip to school was longer than I remembered. I spent most of the time eating. Since school now started twenty minutes earlier (but had two hours lunch break instead of the hour I’d had at Javotte) I was compensating by eating breakfast in the car. No way was I getting up any earlier.
I’d indulged myself the last couple days by overeating. I would eat anything – cheeseburgers, fries, hot dogs – as long it had a high fat level and was saturated with calories. After all, I was trying to put on some weight. Being a size zero was just creepy.
Oli watched me distastefully as I bit into the huge Starbucks muffin.
“Are you still not full?” he said, winkling his nose.
“You’re not a human, Oli,” I said condescendingly, revealing teeth brown with chocolate. We had a screen up, so Sam couldn’t here me talking to a guy who wasn’t really there. “You don’t know how much I need to eat.”
“I used to be human,” Oli sighed. My eyes widened.
“What? You used to human? You never told me that. When were you alive?”
He smiled. “About a millennia ago. When you’ve been around as long as I have, you don’t keep track.”
“So what happened? You were really, really good and became an angel or something?”
Oli snorted. “The complete opposite. I was bad. Really bad. What I’m doing now is community service, almost. You think I’m here helping your sorry ass because I want to? I’m telling you, if this was the reward people got for being good, there would be a lot more criminals in the world.”
“What…what did you do?” I knew Oli was bad, but…
He raised an eyebrow. “We’re not having question time,” he said. You didn’t have to be a mind-reader to know he was deliberately avoiding the topic. “Plus, we’re at school already. You should brush your teeth.”
