Tell Me What You Hate About Me

34: Kinda Sus

"Where did you get that?" Dominic asked from the seat next to me in the ASL classroom. His eyes were on the tiny pinkie ring I had acquired a few days prior during my shift at work, but I couldn't blame him. I liked looking at the way it sparkled in the window light too, and it was a pretty reminder that my birthday was coming up soon. Maybe the talisman would do something nice for me for once.

"Butterfly," I said.

He certainly didn't need any more explanation than that, especially since I already heard plenty about it from Jack. Stealing is wrong, Lindsay, and you know that. That makes it extra wrong. But charging seventy dollars for a cheapo pink tourmaline ring was also wrong, but he wasn't ready for that conversation.

Either Dominic didn't hear me or that response satisfied him, and he turned to get his notebook and textbook out of his backpack.

That was fine with me. There were plenty of conversations he and I could have been having, but that topic was the last thing I wanted to discuss. I wasn't sure if he was mad at me or mad at the situation the talisman was putting us through, and for once, it absolutely wasn't my fault that weird things were happening. This time, it sure as hell seemed like it was his.

"Lindsay. Dominic," Dr. Rainier said as he set his case of papers on the desk in the front of the room.

I had been a little better with attendance ever since I did my required chat with Harvey for the class, but I couldn't imagine that it was enough to warrant a personal welcome unless it was sarcastic. There were plenty of other people in the classroom who showed up and participated much more than I did (but not nearly as much as Dominic, of course).

"Good morning," Dominic replied.

"How's that—" Dr. Rainier hesitated for a moment— "situation that you two are involved with?"

I looked over at Dominic. How the hell did he know about our situation?

Right. Dr. Reed asked him to help with the markings on the talisman. He was an expert in languages, after all.

I turned back to Dr. Rainier and nodded. "The same as always, I guess. It's as normal as it can be."

He chuckled. "I don't suppose you had anything to do with the sky incident on Friday?"

I shook my head. "Nope."

"The sky incident that was only over Tillamook and had no known meteorological cause, according to local news sources?"

"Who knows whether that's true or not. You can't trust the media these days, since everyone wants to be the first to report the stories instead of being truthful and accurate."

Dominic nodded from beside me. "It's true. Everybody's got an agenda they're trying to push."

"Right, because everyone wants to be the special town in Oregon where the end of the world began," Dr. Rainier said, and even if his tone wasn't dripping in sarcasm, I still would have known that he wasn't having what we were trying to say.

Besides, maybe everyone did want to be the place where the end began. That would certainly be an accomplishment.

"Do you have any more information on it? I mean, we've definitely given you enough time to inspect the photos that Dr. Reed gave you," Dominic asked.

He shook his head. "It's nothing I've ever seen before."

I bit my cheek. We knew that already. No one had ever seen anything like it, blah, blah, blah, but I wasn't an idiot. There certainly had to be some sort of comparable object out there. And it was very possible that no one with the proper resources cared as much as I did to find it.