“Sure.” I picked up the eTab, pressed the home button, and handed it to him.
He took it, an eager expression on his face. I watched as his adept fingers moved across the touch screen, opening apps, closing them again. He clearly knew his way around electronic devices. He handed it back to me a moment later. “Thanks.”
“No problem.” A two-word response. Fifty percent improvement, but still a long way from where I wanted to be. I tried to think of what Selene would say and decided to go for honesty. “I’m surprised you know so much about using it.”
“Sure. I guess I’m a geek that way.”
I smiled. “You are definitely not a geek.”
He grinned. “Hel-lo,” he said, pointing at himself. “Student library aide.”
I laughed, half-tempted to point out that at least he was a hot library aide. And he definitely didn’t get those bulging muscles in his forearms by shelving books. “Could be worse. You could be a hall monitor.”
His grin broadened. “I’m Paul.”
“Dusty.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“You do?”
He brushed the hair back from his eyes. “Sure. Who doesn’t?”
“Oh, I get it. Your parents went to school with my mom, right? And they’ve warned you that any daughter of hers must be a real nightmare.”
Paul chuckled. “Well, you don’t look scary to me. Just the opposite.”
A warm flutter passed through my stomach. The air felt charged with electricity, like in those rare moments when you know the person looking at you thinks you’re attractive, and the even rarer moments when the feeling is mutual. Now at a complete loss for what to say, I was both saved and foiled by the warning bell.
“I guess you’d better go,” Paul said, putting his hands on the library cart.
I smiled. “Yeah, I guess so.”
“See you around.” He walked away, disappearing behind a row of books.
I took a moment to catch my breath, then headed off for my psionics class. In the excitement of my brief interlude with Paul, I’d almost forgotten about Eli until I spotted him sitting in the top right-hand row beside Lance. The classroom had an auditorium setup that was more common in colleges than high schools. I took my usual seat in the left-hand side of the second row, determined not to let his presence unnerve me.
Our teacher, Mr. Ankil, arrived a few minutes late as usual, announcing a pop quiz as he came through the door. The whole class groaned.
Ankil put his hands on his hips and pretended to be disappointed. “Come on, guys. We have a new addition to our illustrious ranks, and the last thing we want to do is make Elijah think we don’t have a blast in here. Am I right?”
“You’re right,” Lance said, giving him the finger-gun salute and doing a perfect imitation of Ankil’s flamboyant, over-the-top style.
Mr. Ankil grinned. He was one of those teachers always trying to act like your friend rather than an authority figure. For the most part, he pulled it off. It didn’t hurt that he wore his hair long and unkempt and favored the jeans-and-sandals look. He also sported multiple piercings in both ears, and he wore rings on all his fingers, including his thumbs.
Most of his success, though, could be attributed to his ability to influence our emotions with his empathic abilities. Ankil was a psychic, extremely gifted in all types of mind-magic—telepathy, telekinesis, and so on. Perfect for psionics, the study of mind-magic.
I wasn’t very happy about the quiz. Psionics was my best magic-based subject, but it required a calm, focused state of being, something I sorely lacked today.
“Now, all you have to do is place your tennis balls inside the basket with no hands.” Ankil motioned toward the storage closet on the other side of the room, and the door opened at once. At least twenty bright yellow Wilson balls flew out from it and began distributing themselves to all the students. Then Mr. Ankil summoned his wastebasket from beside his desk and placed it in the center of the room in front of us.
As pop quizzes went, this one was absurdly easy and well below even my skill level, but it was typical Ankil. He liked any excuse to give everybody a passing grade.
Easy or not, I still managed to bomb it.
I started off okay, lifting the ball into the air just by thinking about it, but then I heard Lance whisper loudly, “Be careful, Eli. There’s no telling where this thing might go.”
“Oh, I’m sure you’re right,” Eli said. “I’ve seen her in action.”
Mortified, my concentration broke as memories of my disastrous encounter with him two nights ago flashed in my brain. I lost control of the ball, spiking it upward. It zoomed across the room like a yellow missile and smacked Lance in the forehead. I sunk down in my seat as several people laughed at my unintentional bull’s eye.
His face flushed in anger, Lance picked up his tennis ball and winged it at me. There wasn’t time to catch it, but I managed to swat it away with the back of my hand. It went flying again, and this time struck Mr. Ankil square in the chest.
Mr. Ankil shrugged it off like it was no big deal, but he summoned Lance’s ball with his telekinesis and sent it sailing across the room where he set it on the desk in front of Lance.
“Since you seem so keen on throwing the ball,” Mr. Ankil said, “why don’t you try and make it into the basket using just your hands and no mind-magic.”
Everybody recognized the challenge in the task and the chatter of voices from my classmates reacting to the scene died away, leaving an almost breathless silence. For me, I couldn’t help but feel a swell of affection for Mr. Ankil. I knew as well as he did that Lance would miss. Magickind—wizards and witches in particular—weren’t very skilled at hand-eye coordination.