The Unfortunate Story of Roddy Mayhem, Julie Steimle [i can read book club TXT] 📗

even create an alias if you want. New name. New life.”

Chuckling, Rick patted Tom on the shoulder, gesturing for Dan and James to follow him out of the office. The wolf guy walked as if with an air of “My work is done here.” I half expected him to sweep off in a cape.

“Cool place,” Dan murmured as he followed Rick into the hallway. “So this is where Matt and all of you went?”

“Not this exact location, like I said. I’ve never been here before,” Rick said as they went out of earshot, perhaps even to go outside. “Like I said, the school moves a lot for the students’ protection….”

Which I thought was interesting. It moved a lot for the students’ protection. Our protection. It was weird having someone want to protect me.

They were soon gone. I didn’t know to where. All I knew was that their imps no longer were in range.

Only Tom remained. He stood with us in the office, pointing out details on the forms, asking if we had any data on next of kin—just in case. He mentioned once more to us that his mother was in prison, and if we were also connected to someone like that, the school needed to know just in case of an emergency—or even for their protection. 

Mr. Wilderman eyed Tom severely as he supervised us. He even seemed impressed at Tom’s maturity. “So, Mr. Brown, are you off to another CIA adventure after this? Or are you going to settle down and be a mechanic like you told me you were going to do?”

A mechanic. Trouble? He had to be joking. I felt like laughing. It sounded like such a decent, regular job. But Tom doing that? Or maybe even me doing that. I started to daydream, wondering at the possibility. Making instead of taking. Fixing instead of breaking. I could do that. This was a fresh start after all. I didn’t need to be a genius for that.

Tom laughed. “Both, headmaster. Both.”

The four of us halfs stared up at him. We hadn’t known. This was a side of Trouble we had not heard about. This was Tom Brown, unembellished by imp gossip.

The headmaster shook his fat head, groaning as he waddled back into his office. “Imps…”

“What’s his deal?” Piranha asked Tom, thumbing his way. She had been nervous the entire time, clinging onto my arm during the entire trip to the school as if I were a security blanket and she was no longer angry at me. She was also eying Tom as if he was offending every paradigm she had ever had about imp-dom.

Grinning at her with a flirtatious wink, Tom replied, “The full moon.”

Which, of course, made no sense. Not literally anyway—though the man definitely had something lunar about him.

Laughing as he knew we did not understand, Tom collected our completed forms, handing them back to the secretary. With a nod to her, he said to us, “You gotta be flexible here kiddos. If you thought your life was full of weird, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”

He then gestured for us to follow him into another room.

All of us didn’t like being called kiddos. Piranha especially.

The other room was full of school uniforms. The secretary urged us to try some on, handing over what she thought would fit us. And she directed us into the near changing rooms.

“I already got clothes,” I muttered to her.

She merely pushed me in with a smile. “Not these.”

Ok, can I just say for a normal human woman, she was amazing? Not only did she pick my clothes size perfectly, but also she took our impishness in stride. And she grinned at Tom as if he were one of her favorite students.

“So,” we overheard her say to him as we tried on school shirts, ties, and pants, “I heard you and Selena broke up. Is that really true?”

Tom groaned. “Yeah. Unfortunately. Selena wanted a more… um… wealthy class of man, and…” he sighed, “She thought being connected with a CIA agent was too dangerous for her.”

“Selena said that?” The secretary sounded annoyed.

“I know,” Tom muttered. “I think it was an excuse, because she knows I know she can handle nasties in the world. Afraid the CIA indeed…”

“She can talk them into walking off a cliff,” the secretary said.

I froze. Tom was dating a woman with that kind of gift? What kind of woman was that?

“How do they fit?” Tom asked, clearly aware we were all listening in to the conversation. It was his way of calling us out without embarrassing us.

Each of us, stepped out of the changing stalls and showed that our uniforms fit perfectly.

Tom grinned and set his hands on the secretary’s shoulders. “She’s a genius, right?”

We all had to nod.

“Ok—” the secretary started.

But Wispy cut her off with a raised hand. “Do you have any hats?”

The secretary gazed at Wispy for a second, her eyes going to the girl’s head. She sighed. “No. I’m afraid not. We don’t usually wear hats in school. Do you want one?”

Wispy nodded, blushing. “So people don’t stare.”

Nodding understandingly, the secretary said, “I will see if I can get one. But… try to be comfortable with who you are. Everybody here is different. And they will get used to you.”

“So we don’t get sunglasses like Trouble has?” Spastic asked, clearly disappointed.

The secretary chuckled as Tom’s facial expression hung in grief at being called Trouble again. She said, “Uh, if you want them, if they make you feel safer, I’ll get some. But really, Tom only really needs them when he goes outdoors among the normies.”

Normies. I had only heard that term in relation to some internet thing.

“You need your classmates to see you as you are and accept you as you are,” she said. “There is nothing wrong with being yourself.”

“But would they accept us?” Piranha asked, her gaze steely.

Shrugging, the secretary replied, “It would be their problem if they didn’t.”

That was still no guarantee. All of us felt uneasy. Tom didn’t even give us an assured look that everything would be all right. Then again, he did point out that we would have to make a sanctuary for ourselves.

Once the secretary gave us five changes of uniform—including a school hoodie, gym clothes, monogramed socks and ties—Tom led us back through the office to collect our room assignments.

“I think I can get a single room for the two ladies,” Tom said with a glance to Piranha and Wispy, “but we might have to split you boys.”

I stared. A bed was a bed. But why did he sound worried?

Hearing our unrest in our imps, Tom explained, “I shared a room with my best friend Matt for a while until Rick Deacon came to the school. And since no one wanted to room with a werewolf, I got stuck with him.”

All of us stared, thinking about that rich guy who was, for all practical reasons, a really mild dude. No one wanted to room with him, just because he was a werewolf? That was mean.

“Not everyone can handle an imp for a roommate,” Tom explained.

No kidding. I knew that. And we exchanged looks. All of us knew that. Being with the Unseelie Gang, living with imps was the worst.

Ok, Gulinger Private Academy was weird. Can I just say? Seriously. The moment we left the office, was the moment we left conventional reality. As we followed Tom out and up the stairs to our new living place, I saw one senior girl go all chameleon and change to the colors of the things she touched. She waved to Tom with familiarity. An almost green-skinned guy with weird leaf-like dreadlocks flipped us off when we stared at him. One guy who looked like he was making things float in the air via telekinesis, threw at another kid a number of whiteboard pens, which that guy deflected with a similar power. A lizardy kid hopped after Tom, asking how long he would be hanging around… as clearly he knew Tom and worshipped the ground he walked on. Several of the older kids knew Tom in fact. There were mixed reactions from all. Some shied away.

And so did some of the teachers we saw. One glared at Tom then stared more wide-eyed at the rest of them. Tom winked at her. Her imps were screaming in horror for her to jump out the window and get away. The rest were gigging with glee at the fun they would have.

Indeed. The chaos in the imp community was unnerving. And to be honest, I had never been in a place with so many imps before. The beach was so spread out after all, and even the clubhouse was too small for that sort of gathering. A school felt dangerous.

Tom took us to our rooms first—specifically the girls’ floor. He led Piranha and Wispy to an open room in the middle of the hall, and as he did, a few heads peeked out.

“Shouldn’t you be in class?” Tom asked one girl who was peering at him with strange large eyes.

“I’m nocturnal,” she snapped back.

Tom halted, raising his eyebrows. “You have a teacher that teaches at night?”

She nodded. “Two.”

But her imps were telling her to make up another lie. Both had been lies.

Tom snorted at her. Gesturing for us to follow. “I’ll confirm that with Mr. Wilderman.”

“You’d tattle?” Spastic asked quickly following on Tom’s heels as the girl went ash white and rushed back into her room.

“The imps enjoyed it,” Tom said, grinning with a wink.

Which was true. The imps loved it—mostly the girl’s panicked reaction. Would Tom tattle on a chick clearly ditching class? Maybe, if it caused trouble. It was weird that trouble could also come in the form of holier-than-thou acts—though Tom wasn’t exactly acting like he thought himself holier than the girl as much as acting as an adult messing with a kid.  

He opened the dorm room for Piranha and Wispy. There were two beds with two desks, empty closet space and dressers. The back wall was like a soft bulletin board—all empty of course.

“How come this one is empty?” I asked, wondering about how full with weirdoes the school already looked.

Tom shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe they graduated or moved on.”

All of us stared at him, not exactly happy at how flippant he was about it.

But he added, “Kids at Gulinger come and go all the time. I can’t even keep track of all the people I’ve seen come and leave. Some of the mafi kids are only here until their court cases are over, and then they are relocated to other places under witness protection. Even some ghoulies are pulled out by their parents if they think their kids aren’t benefitting from being out of the mainstream school system.” He gazed at us meaningfully. “People like us with nowhere to go are the ones who usually stay here to the end. Gulinger is basically a place where the haunted and unwanted go.”

I felt that. It was how we all felt. Haunted and unwanted.

With a nod, Tom gestured to the dressers. “You to gals can unpack and settle in here. I am going to show the boys their rooms now.”

Piranha shot him a dirty look, but nodded. Wispy gazed around the space with the feel of someone who was lost. None of them had anything to unpack except the clothes they had come in and the stuff the secretary had handed them—things like towels, toothbrush and the like.

Tom took us up another flight of stairs, and then another, where we ended up looking at boys’ rooms. I found it weird that they put a floor of classrooms in between until Tom explained: “It was to keep traffic between dorms under watch to prevent hanky-panky.” Apparently the teacher’s rooms were in another wing altogether.

I was shown my room first.

A boy was in it. He lifted his eyes and stared at me a full minute as Tom marched right in and pointed to the empty bed. The boy in the room