He looked around the classroom. “Students tend to come and go. Not many stick with this class.”
“I’m not going anywhere. I love reading! The only reason I didn’t take your class earlier is because I was so busy with the others.”
“That seems to be the case these days,” he mumbled as he returned to his papers, trying to figure out where we’d left the Dorian Gray discussion. “Back in my day, the classes at Grim Reaper Academy were easier. Less rigorous. And the teachers understood the need for creative extracurriculars.”
Same old, same old. The old generation pitying the new. Sometimes, the supernatural world was no different than my world.
Next Friday, the Literature class was full. Mr. Lovecraft had to find more chairs. Paz and GC had decided to take Literature with me, so we’d spend more time together. That was fine. But Sariel was here too, sitting right behind me, his silver eyes boring a hole in the back of my neck, and Francis, of all people, was sitting next to Pazuzu. Sammy, Sheba, Kitty, Pandora, Klaus, a bunch of MDC and NDC students, and half of the VDC.
“What the hell is going on?” I asked GC.
“Oh, you haven’t heard? Where you go, everyone follows now.”
“What the fuck?! Why?”
“Because you’re Mila fucking Morningstar, and they want to be your friends. Or your acquaintances, at the very least. And if that doesn’t work for you either, then they want to be in the same classes as you.”
Corri flapped her translucent wings and sat on my right shoulder to whisper in my ear. “You’re popular now, Mistress.” She giggled, her voice like a crystal wind chime, which only drew even more attention to us. To me.
I sighed and buried my head in my notebook. I’d re-read The Picture of Dorian Gray and taken some good notes I wanted to share with Professor Lovecraft and the three MDC girls plus one RDC guy who’d attended the class the week before, but now I just wanted to make myself small, so they would all leave me alone. And here goes the only class where I thought I could be myself… I closed my notebook and rested my hands on top of it. I wasn’t going to read my notes or participate in the discussion. I just wanted to get out of there.
The minutes went by slowly. Most of the students hadn’t read The Picture of Dorian Gray once in their almost immortal lives, which only made Professor Lovecraft’s job harder. When the bell finally rang, I gathered my things and headed for the door, hoping to put some distance between me and the crowd of people following me before they swept me away and attempted to make small talk.
“Hey, wait up!” Pazuzu ran after me and sneaked his hand into mine, matching my quick pace. “Are you okay? You were so silent.”
“Yeah.” GC took my other hand. “You didn’t shut up about Dorian Gray all week, and now you didn’t say a word.”
I sighed. “I don’t like this.”
“What? That you’re popular?” GC laughed. “Welcome to my world, goddess! See? I told you it’s not easy. Girls drooling all over you… I mean, boys in your case.”
“And girls, too,” Pazuzu chuckled. “Did you see how Sheba and Kitty were looking at her?”
GC laughed louder. “Oh, man! Like they wanted to eat her or something. In a good way.”
“You know,” Paz turned to me. “If you’re curious, we wouldn’t mind.”
“Curious about what?”
“Shagging a chick or two.”
I pulled my hand free. That was it. Pazuzu had just lost his boyfriend privileges for the rest of the day.
“Come on, don’t be like this,” he whined. “I was just kidding.”
“No, you weren’t.”
GC saw this as an opportunity to hog me. “He wasn’t. He was totally not kidding.”
Bu
t I wasn’t stupid. I pulled my hand free from him, too.
“What did I do?”
“You’re both acting like children! This is serious. I don’t want this! I want everything to go back to normal.”
I was so busy arguing with my boyfriends that I didn’t see Sariel catch up with us.