Tell Me What You Hate About Me

17: The Same Page

I watched Dominic study for an hour and a half. We didn't even have an exam or presentation (or even class, given the whole professor having a heart attack thing) in ASL, but he still worked through every exercise in chapter three twice.

What the hell was wrong with him?

"Is there any reason you're still sitting here?" Dominic said after signing something to himself.

I shook my head, even though I was just making sure that my counter-wish had gone through to whoever was supposed to make the talisman work for me. "Just because. Is there any reason you're working on something that wasn't even assigned?"

He looked up from the book. "I know you think sign language is worthless, but I take it seriously."

I didn't respond to that. How could I? I did, in fact, find it boring and useless, and he definitely cared too much about it.

"Do you want to see if we can find anything else with the metal detector? I'm so bored," I said.

"You can go do that. I'm busy," he replied.

"That's not gonna work for me."

"And why not? All you're doing is irritating me."

I hesitated. What was I supposed to tell him? "Look, you don't want to know what the talisman, which has a mind of its own, might do to you."

"Should I mentally prepare to have a heart attack at nineteen?" he asked.

"No." I held up my hands and forced out a small laugh. "I think I fixed that. I'm just trying to make sure that it's working."

He let out a sigh. "You need serious psychiatric help."

That sure was hilarious coming from him, but I smiled anyway. "I'm doing just fine."

Neither one of us spoke for a moment. I wasn't sure why he didn't believe me and, on a bigger scale, why he didn't like me at all, but I was going to find out.

Usually, it wasn't hard to get a read on someone. Jack liked me a little too much and in the wrong way. Sierra just wanted to fit in with the rest of us and stuck her nose where it didn't belong so she could. And while I didn't have Dr. Reed completely figured out, I did know that she loved the archaeological part of her job but not the teaching aspect. And I couldn't blame her there. Dead people were much more interesting than living.

Jack thought I didn't ever challenge myself, but Dominic was exactly that. I had to find out what he hated about me. There wasn't much material to work with since I was a pretty cool person who didn't care what people thought, but I needed to know.

My one goal for the day was supposed to be to get a hold on controlling the talisman, and even though I slightly failed at that, there was still plenty of time to figure it all out as long as no one else found out about it.

"Don't you think I'm safe now? Nothing bad has happened yet," Dominic said as he finally shut his textbook.

"We gotta wait until midnight. I don't want to feel like a murderer for the rest of my life, and as soon as it's tomorrow, whatever happens to you isn't the talisman's fault and therefore my problem," I said.

He laid his head down on his backpack. "I would literally rather be dead right now."

I didn't respond to that. Sorry for trying, dick. Why did Jack want me to care? All it was doing was irritating me.

"Sometimes I wish you didn't ask me about the coin at all. Then we could just go our separate ways and never have to deal with each other."

I raised an eyebrow. "You're not serious, are you? I tried to un-involve you, but you kept finding me everywhere and ruining everything."