Exorcize This - Julie Steimle (read e book txt) 📗

in but never came out. Not alive at least. There were just too many vampires. He never stepped foot in those mountains himself. He wasn’t a fool, he said.

Then Deidre came into the classroom. She saw me, blinked, then walked to the other side of the room. Jane watched her, frowning.

“Why is she looking at you like that?”

Internally groaning, I said, “Because Becky Dominae just told her I was a monster—though your friend Sarah was actually nice and said I wasn’t.”

Jane smirked at me. “Told you.”

I shrugged. But Sarah never just hung out with Jane when she was with me, which was what annoyed me. It was like that song: “You’re Invited but Your Friend Can’t Come”.

Mr. Caoilfhionn called for us to hurry to our seats as he opened the class roll sheet to a new paper, taking out a pen.

Everyone dragged their feet, still chatting

He raised his voice in his Irish lilt, “I don’t have all day and neither do you.”

The rest of us rushed to our desks. Mr. Caoilfhionn was an amiable, friendly sort of man—but we had no clue what he would be like if angered as he was a pure Irishman. The mayor had lured him to our town to try to draw in tourists as our town back in its inception was mostly founded on Irish and Scottish immigrants who had settled together to maintain their culture when the world seemed to want to snuff it out. Mr. Caoilfhionn was hired especially because he knew how to speak Irish Gaelic, and he taught a regular night course for those who were interested—and a lot of us were. But currently he was teaching us the legend of Beowulf, which he felt was better reading than all the Greek legends combined.

As the lesson commenced, I overheard the imps in the room shout all sorts of things. A few people vocally complained about the room being cold, though they eyed Deidre and then the vents near her, wondering.

And the cold did follow her. It wasn’t the air vents. The air wasn’t even on.

“It’s really chilly,” Jane murmured. “How did it get so cold?”

I glanced to Deidre, who had overheard her and peeked our way. Our eyes met for a second—and I mean met in the sense that our gazes did. My sunglasses did their job in hiding my eyes. Her imps shouted at her to just jump out of the window—which would definitely cause a commotion. She had this squirmy desperation not to be among people and at the same time a yearning to be among people rather than… I didn’t know what. Something. And something was bugging her—like she had her own imps which I could not see.

But I knew she could not see the imps on her shoulders, and she was doing a good job of giving them the brush-off. Though they shouted depressing things at her for her to do to herself, harmful things, she appeared to grit her teeth as if she were silently chanting a mantra to herself—which frustrated those imps.

When the class ended and Jane and I parted ways again, this time Deidre did not follow me to the next class.

I did not see Deidre again until lunch. Around then Jane was talking to Sarah while coming into the cafeteria, walking together from PE, both sweaty and giggling together. An immediate pang of jealousy shot through me as Jane looked so happy with a normal girl. My imps were shouting at me to disown my best friend.

I swatted those imps away.

Like always, Sarah left once I came up to Jane. I could see Jane’s imps spit raspberries at the girl, almost with the same attitude I was feeling. Jane’s own smile seemed to fall when I approached her, though I was not sure why. She was not unhappy to see me, but she did seem a little sad about something, and her imps would give me no clue as to what.

I noticed Sarah join Tiffany Fitzgerald and Brigitte Caoilfhionn, which was weird, or so I thought at first. I realized then that they did hang out a lot together. But Sarah was like the school’s welcome wagon. She befriended newcomers. That was why her walking up to Deidre earlier was not unexpected.

Then Deidre came into the lunch room.

The air seemed to automatically go cold. It was like Deidre was the Bale’s house on legs. Everyone turned to look at her.

But then Sarah walked up to her and invited Deidre to join her and her friends.

“What gives,” came out of my mouth before I could stop myself.

Jane stared at me. “What do you mean? Sarah’s like that. She likes to welcome new people. So does Brigitte.”

I turned my eye over to her, frowning. “I know that. But… why is it they invite in Deidre who gives off a cold—”

“No kidding…” muttered Jill Saunders who walked by me. “It’s cold wherever she goes. Like she’s a walking icicle.”

Jane shot her a terse look. Then me. “They’re being nice.”

“Nice to her,” I snapped back, growing more irritated. “But they dodge away from me.”

Jane averted her eyes. I had nailed it.

“I don’t want to complain, but that is unfair,” I said.

Closing her eyes, Jane sighed. She shook her head and shrugged as she headed to the lunch line. “What can I say to you? It’s nothing new.”

And I knew that too. But I was jealous. I was jealous of anybody who could make friends that easily. My whole life, the only friends I had been able to make and keep beyond Jane were people connected to the supernatural.

Deidre ended up in one other class with me. Spanish. She spoke Spanish rather well. Señora Alvera was tickled pink that Deidre was semi fluent. But then Deidre’s mother was a native speaker. She said so. Señora Alvera had Deidre introduce herself in Spanish, which was how we found out all this. Her mother, apparently, had died in a car crash when she was eleven. And as she told the story, her imps screamed for her to tell us the entire story and not this ‘truncated piece of garbage that she always spewed out’. Clearly the complete story would cause trouble—the question was, for whom? Her or us?

I was intrigued.

But once class let out, Deidre left the room with no inclination to talk to me or anything.

I walked into American History with my mind whirling. The things her imps had shouted at her were disturbing. Weird. Deidre clearly had a story to tell, and her imps often used words like haunted, cursed, and damned. Mostly describing her. It wasn’t the same as the things Melissa’s imps were currently shouting at her—things like: worthless, trash, unimportant, unwanted. And upon hearing those imps, I glared at them with a renewed focus.

Melissa Pickles and I have never been friends. But we have never really been enemies either. She always avoided me like most of my classmates. She wasn’t like Becky or Jill or Martha Patterson who would take whatever opportunity they could to secretly make jabs at me. Of course that was before they found out I was a demon and not a kid with rare albinism. These days they wisely stopped and kept their distance. But I was worried for Melissa. Currently her imps were saying: “It’s hopeless. You’re hopeless. Just jump off the cliffs and let yourself drown. Or just let yourself fall. People will think it is an accident and they’ll never know the difference. No one would come to your funeral anyway.”

But Melissa’s eyes shot to me as I deliberately sat in the chair next to her, the expression in them saying that I would notice. And in a way, that gave her relief. I went surfing in that area. The cliffs overlooked the ocean, and I was always there when I had no other place to be. I would notice and I would catch her if she fell—because I had caught a stranger who had fallen from the cliffs a couple of years ago, and by doing so had revealed what I was.

“That meddlesome monster,” the imps muttered, glaring at me.

I would have stuck my tongue out at them, but then Melissa would think I was doing it at her so I didn’t.

As the lesson started, I tried to focus on what Mr. McDillan was saying about the Spanish conquest of South and Central America. Tried. The imps in the room were all abuzz with chatter, much of it gossip about the haunted house and the new ‘creepy’ girl. Deidre, everyone apparent had decided, was like some sort of cursed person. The imps were suggesting ways to tease Deidre, including my classmates coming to school in parkas as it was always cold around her. My own imps chimed in that I could ask her if she was Elsa from Frozen, which was a really dumb jab. All of it was stupid, really. And by the time class ended, I decided that it was best that I keep my distance from Deidre for her sake. Nearly all the imps were telling my classmates that they ought to set Deidre and me up as buddies—especially as Jane was now spending more time with Sarah and I was looking lonely. That last part hurt.

Worth of a Soul

 

I went surfing almost immediately after school. I had no homework. Dawn was hanging out with her mildly estranged, on again, off again Goth friends who for some reason she still valued even though I told her a thousand times they were backstabbing creeps and she could do better. And Jane was with Sarah. They had some kind of upcoming activity at the church to prepare for. That left me alone.

Never had I ever felt more lonely surfing. Never had I ever felt more jealous either. I realized that I wasn’t so much jealous of Sarah (whom Jane and I have known all our lives and she wasn’t much different now than from the past), as I was of the church that seemed to be taking Jane away from me. I could hear Jane’s imps, and Sarah was not the thing that was causing Jane to distance herself from me. Jane did not prefer Sarah over me. But Jane loved the things that Sarah was involved in and she wanted that life.

And honestly I could not blame her.

Jane was ostracized whenever I was around. People liked her when I was not near. She participated in several student committees at school. She had been voted best personality last year. And last year’s Homecoming dance was a huge success because of Jane’s leadership, and everyone was sorry she was not the head of the committee this year. Everyone blamed me. They said I was holding her back.

When I came ashore to go home, lifting my surfboard out of the briny water, I noticed someone standing on the clifftop. For a second I thought it was Melissa. But as I blinked and stared more, I recognized the shape of that new girl, Deidre.

Normally I went invisible and flew back home, but with some stranger watching, I was not so sure it was wise. So, heaving my surfboard across the sand, I walked to the stairs and climbed up the old-fashioned way. When