“Class, I’d like to introduce our new student, Jake.” Mr. Clarinval announced. Megan sighed, head in hands; she was really getting tired of these introductions.
Megan had already heard this little speech twice today – her genie had somehow managed to be in her history class and her math class. And now, it looked like he was in her Spanish class too. She would have known that, of course, if she’d actually bothered to wait for him after history. But she didn’t really see the point in that – wasn’t it enough that she was letting him come to school in the first place? Did that mean she actually had to hang out with him too? When he asked if he could come to school with her, she didn’t really think he meant he’d be with her every single minute of the day!
And of course this was now her third teacher who was asking the class to make him feel welcome. Normally, Megan would have been happy to make the new kid feel at home – even if that new kid was just some genie she’d picked up on the street almost three weeks ago. But hearing all of her teachers drone on and on about how hard it was to be new in school was just so annoying. After all, she was pretty sure he could just magic his way through any real challenge he faced. Wasn’t that what genies did?
Jake – as her genie was apparently calling himself now – smiled at the kids in class, pretending to be kind of nervous about his first day. But Megan knew better. What would he have to be nervous about anyway? She felt a little bad for thinking it, but she couldn’t help wondering if her genie was trying to upstage her. He was probably just trying to get the class to feel sorry for him – that was the only reason she could come up with for why he might be acting so hesitant. Where was all that confidence he’d had when he insisted school was easy?
For the first time in her life, Megan was liked. And not just liked, but actually popular. And now here he was, the new kid at school? It sounded pretty convenient to Megan. And somehow, he’d managed to be the center of attention for at least three minutes in every class so far. Sure, it was just as the teachers introduced him, but so what? Megan wasn’t convinced that new kids would usually be introduced like that. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she wondered if he’d set it all up.
When Mr. Clarinval was finally done, Jake took his seat. Megan pretended not to notice. In fact, she decided to ignore him completely. That would show him. She was just glad he wasn’t going to sit by her – all the seats near Megan were taken.
She would have thought him being across the room was a stroke of luck. But then she saw him sit down next to Greg, and suddenly that feeling of relief was gone. It was almost enough to make Megan abandon her plan of ignoring him. But what could she say? She couldn’t just march up to him and demand he not make friends with Jen’s new boyfriend. Well, she could, but it would make her look like a lunatic for sure. Besides, there was a very good chance the genie didn’t actually realize who Greg was. But if he found out about Greg and Jen, Megan knew he’d do everything he could to make sure he and Greg became friends, just to get to her. And there was no way Megan was going to let him have that kind of leverage.
She watched Greg and Jake out of the corner of her eye for a few minutes. They didn’t seem to be talking to each other. In fact, they didn’t pay much attention to each other at all. Megan breathed a sigh of relief. Now that it looked like they weren’t going to be instant best friends anytime soon, Megan figured she didn’t have to watch them quite so closely. Besides, if she’d kept on staring at them like that, it would only attract attention.
“He’s cute, isn’t he?” the girl next to Megan said.
“What?” Megan asked, bringing her attention away from the genie.
“He’s really cute, isn’t he?” she repeated, staring in the same direction Megan had been looking in. Megan stared at her for a minute. What was her name again? Emily, maybe?
“He said his name’s Jake, right?” Emily asked, leaning forward in her seat.
“That’s what he says.” Megan grumbled. She resisted the urge to point out that it was a lie; sabotaging the genie wasn’t worth it.
“Think he’s single?” Emily asked. Megan stared at her wide-eyed for a minute before answering.
“I don’t think he’s available.” she said finally. There was no way the genie would be having a better social life than her.
“Well, that’s a shame.” Emily said, looking disappointed. “If that changes, let me know?”
“Sure.” Megan said vaguely. Like that would ever happen.
Megan kept watching that genie out of the corner of her eye. She might not like him being there, but there wasn’t a lot she could do about it in the middle of class.
As long as he didn’t eclipse Megan’s new title, she guessed she had no reason to complain. But Jake had better believe she’d be keeping a close eye on him. His being in all of her classes so far had gotten her wary – and if she even suspected he was thinking about messing with her at school, she’d send him straight back to his bottle.
“Everybody partner up – we’re going to start on our dialogues for this chapter.” Mr. Clarinval announced.
Great. Megan hated doing dialogues. She looked around frantically, trying to find the smartest person she could. Now all she’d have to do was think of a really good reason for why they should team up with her.
“Hey – want to be partners?” Emily asked.
“Uh, sure.”
Megan had never had anyone ask her before; usually she just got paired off with whoever was left.
“Megan! I thought we were partners – I mean, we were last time.”
Megan turned to see that pimply kid Tony actually looking disappointedly at her. Megan would have almost felt bad, except she remembered how unhappy he’d been to have her as a partner last time.
“Actually, I was going to be her partner.” someone else said.
“What about me?”
Megan realized almost half the class wanted to be partners with her. Well, this was a switch. Especially since she knew perfectly well she was near-useless in Spanish. It looked like the only person in the room who wasn’t particularly interested in partnering up with her was Jake. And that was perfectly fine with Megan, since she wasn’t interested in being partners with him either. When he caught her eye, she could swear she saw him smirk.
“Megan?” Emily asked, bringing Megan back to her current problem. Although, as far as problems went, this was a pretty good one to have.
“Emily asked me first, sorry.” Megan told the small crowd.
She heard a few grumbles, but it was hard to feel too bad. Actually, it was a little disconcerting. She’d kind of gotten used to it in classes like English where it was mostly reading and opinions – especially with the way Mrs. Boyd taught. But in Spanish, she had almost no idea what was going on – and she was pretty sure at least half the class knew it. Megan just hoped she’d managed to keep the look of bewilderment off her face; she really didn’t need her genie seeing just how annoying his wish really was for her.
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