Roommate from Hell, Chapter 3, Julie Steimle [bookstand for reading txt] 📗

Chapter 3

Crack of dawn. Morning. My roommates had hangovers.
Perfect.
It is so much easier to sneak out when those I lived with were conked out. I mostly wanted to catch the surf before anyone knew I was gone.
The most wonderful thing about being the child of an imp, my birthmother, was that I could go invisible and walk through solid objects, including walls and floors. So when I left the dorms that morning I pulled my wings out, went immaterial as well as invisible and stuck my surfboard under my arm. I could make the entire thing vanish with me, a handy skill to keep from being watched.
As I left, I took one glance back towards Dawn’s window, counting aloud what I had to do that day. The truth of it was, I had several errands to take care of before going into the city after surfing. The first would be to pick up my textbooks. Then I had to find a local church. I had promised Mom that I would make Dawn still go while we were at college.
Thinking about that, my mind flitted to Tabitha. She was a religious kind of girl. I didn’t know what denomination she went to except that she was Christian. However, as I thought it over I didn’t think it was a good idea to spend so much time close to her. She was fanatical and had seen me without a reflection once already. Most normal people would have just questioned their sanity and done a double take but Tabitha had instantly thought ‘demon’ and planned to stake me. Her imps made that plain.
“She’s a psycho,” I muttered to myself with a harder flap, soaring even higher into the sky. The sun rose over the flat stretch behind me, burning warm.
Yeah, I had to find out which church Tabitha went to and go to a different one.


The surf was great. The guys riding the waves with me were hot. I almost didn’t want to leave. However, the sun was getting high and I needed to return home from the beach and slather on more sun block.
When I returned from surfing via the invisible skyway, I flew straight to my room, through the outside wall to set my surfboard aside, hoping no one had woken up yet or at least were no longer in the room. Unfortunately upon entering, I knew I could not materialize into visibility right away. Both Star and Lisa were up, and they were talking about me.
“I just don’t get her,” Star muttered from her seat at her desk, looking at my made bed and then at the wall I had covered with surfing posters where I would have put back my surfboard had they not been there. “How can she go on so little sleep?”
“Maybe she takes naps,” Lisa suggested, stretching her muscles with toe touches.
“But don’t you think that she is a little freaky in a way?” Star asked.
Oh, that. I had heard a billion conversations like this growing up. I had hoped to leave the freaky Eve McAllister reputation behind, but I guess it would follow me to the end of my days.
“That isn’t nice,” Lisa said, now reaching for the ceiling. “She can’t help the way she looks.”
“Nice?” Star slipped from her chair where she had been sitting. On the desk was a drawing in colored pencils, Japanese cartoon style, of a super hero kind of girl. Star really was an oddball. And she was calling me freaky? “Lisa, have you noticed her teeth? She’s got fangs like a vampire. Don’t you think her dentist father would have at least tried to make them more, I don’t know, flat or something?”
My teeth. Hmm. I guess I couldn’t hide them all that much after all. I had tried.
“Besides, with the way that Raines girl came running in here this morning with that cross, I’m telling you, something is weird about those McAllister sisters.” Star frowned.
“Tabbit is an idiot.” Lisa gave a snort, tossing her hair as she started into waist twists. “She sees vampires in the shadows and hears voices. Check her with a mirror. Honestly! How paranoid can she get?”
Tabitha had been there? I almost sat on my bed, but just then Star crossed to get something from off her bed. I quickly pulled my board and me out of the way, holding my breath as I listened to their beating hearts. Star really was anxious.
Star took out her makeup mirror and set it on the desk. “Paranoid? Lisa, have you read the paper lately? Another girl got killed last night. Your idea to go clubbing last night was stupid. We could have been the next targets.”
“Our roommate is not a demon from hell,” Lisa snapped back, twisting to the other side.
I looked to the mirror, wondering if Star wasn’t so sure. She had tilted the mirror to face the doorway.
Rolling her eyes, Star nodded then took her makeup kit out from a drawer. “Ok, so I think Raines is overboard on that. But last night I know what I saw.”
“You were drunk.” Lisa rolled her eyes, now stretching her arms and shoulders.
“Eve shoved that man against the bar.”
“Eve is a prude.”
“Eve threatened him, and I could swear he freaked.” Star twisted the lid off of her foundation bottle, tipping the contents quickly onto her fingertip.
“You were drunk, Star.” I watched Lisa let go of her shoulder stretch, heading to where I was.
With a jump, I flapped and landed flat against the ceiling, clutching it with my claws to stay aloft. It was hard with the weight my surfboard under my arm—harder still to keep hold of the board so it wouldn’t fall on her head. Lisa passed under me and opened a drawer to take out a tee shirt and shorts. Her imps were telling her she was fat again, suggesting she get some laxatives on her jog through the neighborhood. I saw Lisa cast Star a look from the corner of her eye.
Star had rolled her eyes, huffing. “I wasn’t as plastered as all that. Dawn flipped out when Eve muttered something about a vampire. Those girls are weird.”
“Eve is not a serial killer,” Lisa said. She shoved the drawer closed and bent down to open another one.
“Ok.” Star threw up her hands. “But you have to admit, she’s weird.”
I looked at Star. Half her makeup was on, one eye heavily lined the other looking tiny and pale like a clown.
“Raines is not going to let a weirdo like her get by unscathed,” Star finished, lining her other eye. “I think half the people in the dorms now have heard her call Eve a demon from hell.”
Oh, crap! I wondered what Dawn was thinking about that. She probably hated me now. I decided to go search for her to find out.
I slipped through the wall with my surfboard, going back outside. Carrying it to the roof, I left it there then counted down which window Dawn had to be at and then stuck my head through the roof. Dawn was in there alone with an ice pack to her head.
“I am never drinking again.” She moaned.
Tabitha wasn’t there so I dropped in to the floor and materialized.
Dawn jumped. “Eve! Don’t do that!”
Shrugging, I opened the door and peeked out. “Where’s your roommate?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t care.” Dawn flopped back to her pillow, groaning again. “She thinks you’re the devil. If it weren’t for this headache, I’d shout at you more.”
Never had I been so glad that she had a headache. I could tell from her scowl that Dawn was not happy at all.
“She woke me this morning and started throwing this smelly ‘holy water’ on me,” Dawn said. “Shouting, ‘Out demon’.”
I blinked, staring at her. “She did?”
“She thinks you’ve possessed me.” Dawn then closed her eyes.
I scratched my scalp. “Funny. Her imps didn’t imply that—”
Dawn sat up, the ice pack falling to the floor. “She saw you flying off to go surfing this morning! Eve! Can’t you be more discreet?”
I blinked at her again. “More discreet? I was invisible!”
She returned the stare of disbelief. “She saw you when you were invisible?”
Dawn slid her feet off the bed.
Immediately I dropped right next to her, sitting down. “That’s impossible. She’d have to be half imp for that to happen.”
My sister closed her eyes, setting her hand to her head with another moan. “Crap. I’m too tired for this.”
So was I. I didn’t need that sort of thing happening again.
Rising up once more, I started to pace. Both of us were silently stressing over this new development, as it was bad for both her and me since that meant sneaking out at night and in the morning would become impossible if Tabitha could see me—especially if she was still inclined to stake me.
“Where did your roommate go after she tried to exorcise you?” I asked at last, looking to my sister.
Lifting her hand from her head, Dawn cringed. “Where else? To get more holy water.”
I raised my eyebrows at her, about to ask where someone bought holy water when the door handle rattled. Instinctively, my wings popped out again and I whipped back into my invisible state. Of course, if Tabitha could really see me it was pointless and I was doomed.
However, when Tabitha walked in, she only looked at Dawn, her heart hardly jumping.
Carefully, I inched around her to a far corner and watched without a word as Tabitha took out some prayer beads, lifted up a cross with a miniature figure of Jesus on it, and opened a bottle of what I guessed was holy water. It smelled like water with a little bit of olive oil in it.
Dawn slapped her hand on top of the bottle. “Would you stop that! I’m not possessed!”
“But that girl is a demon!” Tabitha spat out as her arm trembled with real distress that her ‘cure’ wasn’t working. Her face was white, her heart racing with a boom-boom-boom in my oversensitive ears. “I saw her this morning flying with a surfboard under her arm with wings so black they were from the devil! And I heard her say I