She grimaced. “I think there’s a national registry. It’s online at eat-crap-dot-com.”
I forced another smile.
“So I guess he was popular at your old school?”
“Um, yeah, you could say that.” Back at Chickery High, I’d been fairly popular, too. I didn’t inhabit the inner circles Eli did, but I had plenty of friends, most of them my teammates from soccer.
“Well, he is pretty cute,” Selene said, looking him up and down. “Not that I care one bit about that. Looks shouldn’t matter when it comes to judging a person.”
I snorted. “Yeah, right.”
She grinned. “So you think he’s hot, too.”
I shrugged, feeling suddenly warmer than before.
“He must be Lance’s new roommate.”
“Looks like it.” I glanced over my shoulder. It was weird to see Eli looking nervous. He was usually so cool, almost to the point of being aloof, but right now he appeared on the verge of bolting for the door. No wonder he’d glared at me. Two days ago he’d been a normal high school boy in a normal human world. Now he wasn’t.
And it was my fault.
I turned back to my breakfast, contemplated another bite, then stood and approached the nearest trash deposit area. I sorted out the recyclables into the appropriate bins and dumped the rest into a large rectangular trash can nearby. At once the plastic lining the bin started to rustle, but I paid it no mind. That was just the trash troll, a small, ugly creature that lived inside the bin and fed on the waste. Nearly all the trash cans at Arkwell contained trash trolls. They were mostly harmless, unlike their giant-sized kin that lived in the more remote areas of the world. Even still, it was a bad idea to try and fetch something out of a trash can once you tossed it in. At least one student in my year had lost a finger that way.
“Geez, Dusty,” said Selene as I returned to the table. “Why do you look like someone just broke your favorite spell?”
“Well, I’m not exactly excited about Lance and his cronies getting a firsthand account every time I screw up dream-walking.” Lance was the school jokester, the king of pranks and rumors. I could hear it now—jokes about how much I weighed, jokes about my lack of sex appeal, because let’s face it, even though there was nothing sexual about dream-feeding, the mechanics of it were a little kinky.
Selene shook her head. “You don’t know that’ll happen. Eli might not tell those guys anything.”
“Sure, and Lance is going to ask me to homecoming.”
“What’s homecoming?”
I sighed, hating it when I mixed up magickind traditions with ordinary ones. “It’s like the Samhain dance.”
“Oh, that’s right. I knew that.” Selene wrinkled her nose. “Well, who cares what he says one way or another? You shouldn’t worry so much about what people think. If you want my advice you should sit back and enjoy the ride.”
This painted far too vivid—and accurate—an image in my mind. “Ugh, I think I’m going to be sick.” I gathered up my things, ignoring Selene’s bemused stare. There was nothing I could say that would make her understand. I wasn’t like her. I couldn’t just bat my eyes and pout my lips and make Eli adore me. She hadn’t heard the way he’d called me a freak. She couldn’t understand how much he intimidated me on a purely physical level.
Selene patted my arm. “If it bothers you that much, why don’t you try really hard to get good at this dream-seer stuff. Maybe once you catch the killer, the senate will let up and you can go back to normal.”
“Yeah, sure. Because my life used to be so normal.”
I slung my backpack over my shoulder and hurried for the door, doing my best not to glance at Eli. I felt better once I was out of the cafeteria. I shouldn’t have to worry about seeing Eli again anytime soon. Arkwell was big enough that chances were good he wouldn’t be in any of my classes.
Except three minutes before the homeroom bell rang, Eli walked in. I froze in my chair, braced for another glare from him, but he didn’t even look at me as he walked past and took an empty seat in the far corner. Knowing he was there made my skin prickle. For a second I contemplated moving to the other side of the room, but I didn’t want to look like a coward. Plus, I was too chicken to move.
When the class started a few minutes later, I decided to pretend he didn’t exist. It was just homeroom, after all. I could handle twenty minutes. I lingered after the bell, making sure he left the classroom before I did. As soon as he was gone, I took a deep breath. No more Eli.
But when I walked into Miss Norton’s classroom, there he was sitting next to Katarina. I told myself this wasn’t a pattern, just coincidence. No matter my principal belief that there was no such thing as coincidence in the magical world.
Sometimes I really hate being right.
Eli followed me to spell casting and then to history afterward. I would’ve seen him at lunch, too, except I decided to skip it and head to the library to do some research on Keepers. The place was practically deserted at this time of day, giving me my pick of computer terminals. I sat down at one in the corner and woke up the screen with a push of the mouse. A pop-up box with a smiley face and the words “Hello, student!” immediately displayed on the screen. The animation phenomenon was particularly prevalent in the library.
I gritted my teeth and contemplated switching to another terminal in the hopes that it would be less lively than this one, but decided it wasn’t worth the time. None of the computers in here were new.