“What are you doing?”
“Uh…making breakfast?” I said, glancing at him.
He smiled. “You forgot.”
“Forgot what…oh.”
I had totally forgotten I was suspended. I guess it should have been a good thing, since I wasn’t grounded and could probably go back to bed. But I had kind of wanted to go to school today. Liam was back. I slumped and grabbed the peanut butter anyway. Might as well stay up now.
“No monster in your closet?” Tom asked, taking a bite of his English muffin.
“No,” I said. “Or it didn’t try and eat me, at least.”
“That’s good.”
I scanned over him. His hair was done differently today; he usually just messed it up with his hand, but he’d actually kind of spiked it. Obviously it was still a little messy, but there was no mistaking the gel glistening in his sandy-blond hair.
“So…how’s Shannon?”
He stiffened a little. “What do you mean? Who?”
“The girl at school,” I said casually.
He shrugged. “Don’t know. Fine. Why do you ask?”
“New hairdo.”
“Is it really obvious?” he murmured.
I walked over and adjusted his spikes. “Just got to work the gel in a little. You have a crush or something?”
“No,” Tom said quickly. “Well, not completely sure. Never had one.”
I finished with his hair and took a step back to examine it. “Do you think about her a lot?”
“Kind of.”
“Before bed?”
“Maybe.”
“When you wake up?”
“That’s why I did my hair.”
I smiled and patted his shoulder. “Then you have a crush.”
He sighed. “I was afraid of that.”
“It’s no big deal,” I said as my toast popped. “It just guides your entire day, enters your dreams, and generally makes you do stupid things.”
“Oh,” he said, “well, that’s fine then. Is that how you are with Liam?”
“Pretty much. Except I also want to marry him. Hopefully you’re not there yet.”
He wrinkled his nose. “I just want to talk to her more.”
“Good.” I thought about something and glanced at him. “You think she’s pretty?”
“She is in the only way I care about. She’s nice and funny and smart.”
“And me?” I asked, smearing the bread with peanut butter.
“A radiant beauty,” he said.
I smiled and took a bite of toast. “Thanks, Bat Boy.”
I spent the day helping Stache with the basement renovations, which actually wasn’t that bad. Well, freezing cement floors and spiderwebs weren’t great, but I did like spending time with my dad, even if that meant holding a flashlight while he screwed in a toilet.
I don’t think Stache really knew what being suspended meant, since he seemed thrilled to have me at home and even got us takeout for lunch. Actually he never even really asked about the fight, except if it was a left or right punch.
But the best part of the day was a text I got from Shal at recess:
Liam asked about you!!! Mostly if you were going to be back tomorrow, but still!!!! He loves you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I thought about that for the entire day, and Shal and Mia called me the second school was finished. We spent a solid hour speculating about what this meant, and then another twenty minutes talking about Allison’s evil doings, Ashley’s risqué outfit, Carl’s new haircut, and other things that Shal wanted to cover. Mia also filled me in on the homework, which was slightly more productive. Math. Ugh.
So really it was a pretty good suspension day in general, and when I got back to school on Thursday, things were right back to normal. Liam kind of nodded at me, Allison and her seagulls gave me evil smirks, and Mia, Shal, and I went right back to our spot in the corner. That became the routine again, and for awhile it started to feel like I was having a normal kid’s life. Well, I was still heading into the elevator every night to train to crush monsters, but besides that.
—
Things in Derwin were getting a little better, though my progress was slow. The Warrior’s Way was still taking me about nine minutes, and that was probably leaving half of the monsters alive to eat me—if they weren’t stuffed with straw. Lee was giving me pointers, but I spent most of that time stealing glances at his warm brown eyes and wondering again why his sweat smelled like cologne. Needless to say it wasn’t helping that much, and when I almost hit him with an arrow, he kind of gave up and went back to talking about normal things. The fact that he talked to me at all was kind of surprising, but I wasn’t going to complain. It made training much more enjoyable.
But I was definitely getting stronger, and though I wasn’t losing much weight with all the muscle I was gaining, I was starting to very slowly look a little trimmer. I think I could still have eaten two Liam R. Kelps and had room for Mia, but it was a start.
Allison was just as evil as ever, of course, and she seemed to be making it her life’s mission to make me suffer. I probably cried three times through the rest of September, which really wasn’t bad. I didn’t punch her again at least, even though I wanted to. Liam and I talked pretty infrequently, with our longest conversation being about a math problem I was pretend having, and that was only about two minutes. So we weren’t exactly madly in love like I’d hoped, but he always smiled at me in the morning and said hi, and I still looked at his profile picture more than was probably advisable.
Mia, Shal, and I spent almost every weekend together now, hanging out at my house mostly. I made sure to keep them out of the closet, and everything was fine. Thankfully there was no more rattling while they were around.
There were a couple of incidents, of course: I passed out on my desk one day at school, much to the amusement of the class. I woke up, horrified, to find Ms. Haddock
