Chapter Three
Oh my God, indeed.
Mom and I have just walked back in silence to our car to find my sunglasses and we’re both trying to put the pieces together. She seems as surprised as I am, so at least I’m not going through this on my own.
A year ago I had no idea demons were real, and now I’m sharing a room with one.
“I’m sure we can request a switch,” says Mom. “You don’t have to stay here if you don’t want to.”
I look out the front window, at the still-raging protest outside Clark Hall.
Maleilius said something that stuck with me.
He mentioned how important he thinks our pairing is for relations between humans and demons.
Seeing the size of this protest, I get why.
Demons are up against almost all of history saying they’re the embodiment of pure evil.
In almost every story in human history, demons are the bad guys.
They sometimes offer power, but it’s always at a price.
The moral is always that they can’t be trusted.
But I guess if demons were untrustworthy and deceitful, that’s probably what they’d want me to think.
As for me, I didn’t get the impression that Maleilius, Lysteria, or Zarmenus are in any way evil. Just because they aren’t human doesn’t mean they’re monsters.
“What are you thinking?” asks Mom.
“I’m worried he’s going to be a distraction.”
Mom smiles softly at me. “From what?”
“School,” I say, letting myself be honest even if it makes me sound a little selfish. “I won’t be able to forgive myself if I screw this up.”
“Why do you think you’d screw it up?”
I hesitate before answering. Mom doesn’t know this, but their financial situation is why I care so much about securing my future, and why I cared so much about my grades last year.
I don’t ever want to be as financially vulnerable as they have been.
I don’t want to go through the nights of agony they’ve both gone through.
Mom and Dad have always made it work, but it’s been a scramble for as long as I can remember.
The last thing I want is to spend the rest of my life with that worry.
That means I need to go to a good school and get an amazing job that pays enough to live well.
It kinda sucks that I have to do all that to live comfortably, but I’ve seen just how taxing a lack of funds is. I’ll do anything to avoid it.
I’m not sure how sharing a room with a demon will get me there. From where I’m standing, it seems like the only thing it’ll do is pull me away from my goals.
“I don’t know,” I say. “What do you think?”
“It’s up to you,” she says. “But to me this sounds like the adventure of a lifetime. How many people can say they got to share a room with a demon?”
“Yeah, but I’m not here to go an adventure.”
“College isn’t all about getting a job,” says Mom. “It’s about connections and, God forbid, having a little fun. Plus, life doesn’t always go exactly the way you planned. Sometimes the best parts are the unexpected ones.”
That sounds like something Ashley would say. She’s always been better than me at embracing uncertainty—it’s a trait I’ve always admired in her.
“Right,” I say. “But there’s that, and there’s rooming with a demon prince from Hell.”
She ruffles my hair. “Sounds like a good time to me.”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t expecting to make a decision like this today. I thought I’d just go here, unpack my room, maybe check out campus. Now it feels like my whole future hangs on this one choice.”
“Let’s leave it to fate,” she says. She retrieves her wallet from her bag and finds a coin. “Heads you stay, tails you switch, all right?”
“Sure.”
She flips the coin, then catches it and covers it with her hand. She peeks at it.
“It’s tails,” she says.
The emotion is obvious, even though it surprises me.
“I’m disappointed,” I say. “Is that weird?”
I don’t really know where the feeling is coming from, but this emotion swirling within me is unmistakable.
As uncertain as it is, the newness is still exciting.
If I switch rooms, I’m sure I’ll always wonder what it would’ve been like to share a dorm room with the prince of Hell.
I already know whoever I get paired with will be nowhere near as interesting, even if they are less distracting.
A part of me feels guilty for wanting to indulge this, knowing it’ll distract me from my studies.
But hey, it’s not like I chose this. And I can always go study in a library or something if I have to.
If I learned anything from the very bad thing that happened last year, it’s that I’m pretty good at avoiding distractions when I need to.
“That’s your answer,” she says, showing me the coin.
It had landed on heads; she lied about the result.
I should’ve expected this. Mom always knows what I want to do before I do.
She sent in my dorm application while I was second-guessing my decision to come here without Ashley, after all. “Should we finish unpacking?”
When we get back to the room, Zarmenus is still lounging on his bed. The music playing through his headphones is loud, audible even from this distance. I think it’s some sort of heavy metal, as I can hear crashing drums and electric guitar. He doesn’t even look at me.
A new worry takes over. A lot of people are still having a really hard time with the exchange.
The protest proves that. Some people are totally against demons for religious reasons, and others are afraid of demons because of the way they’ve been portrayed in horror stories.
What if, one day, one of those people interviews me and doesn’t give me a job because they somehow found out I was roommates with the prince of Hell?
Maybe it’s a stretch. But hey, if a few years of high school have taught me anything, it’s that people care about deeply weird shit sometimes.
I push down my mattress, testing it out. I can feel the springs through it. Mom presses her hand on the bed and winces.
“I’ll order you a mattress topper,” she says, already taking out her phone to do just that.
I feel someone watching me. Zarmenus is still lying down, but he’s pulled his headphones down so they’re hanging around his neck. The sound of a wailing heavy metal singer comes through his headphones. It sounds like an eighties band, complete with crashing drums and screaming vocals.
I unzip my suitcase and start putting my books onto my shelf.
Only a few of these are textbooks or texts that I’ll need to read for classes.
Most of them are novels I love so much I needed to bring them with me.
As I put them on the shelf, I feel a familiar itch on the roof of my mouth. I sneeze, and my eyes start to water.
“Bless you,” says Mom. She sucks in a breath. “Oh, sorry, Zarmenus, is that offensive?”
“Why would it be?”
“I’m actually not sure.”
It wouldn’t be. I can tell Mom is nervous and trying her best to be polite.
There has been a lot of research about it, and the conclusion that was reached is that Hell is simply an alternate dimension, not the afterlife.
No human, not even one deemed a sinner, has ever appeared there after they died.
I sneeze. It’s my allergies. I’m used to them.
The weird thing is I only have a reaction like this around cats.
My aunt Mackenzie has two cats named Blueberry and Muffin who I love, but whenever I visit they always make me feel exactly the same way as I do now.
But that doesn’t explain why I feel like this with no cat present.
The roof of my mouth itches and I sneeze again.
“Allergies?” asks Mom.
“Yeah,” I say, blowing my nose on a tissue.
“Here,” she says, handing me a nearly empty packet of antihistamines from her bag. “Must be something in the air.”
I swallow the tablet. From experience I know they kick in quickly, so I try to ignore the itchiness until it goes away. Could I be allergic to Zarmenus? Is that even possible?
I focus on ordering my bookshelf, sorting books by author surname.
It doesn’t take long to unpack everything. Mom and I manage to do a really good job. I have a Spider-Man poster on the wall, and a picture of my family on my desk next to a ceramic cactus Ashley got me as a going-away gift. Mr. Turts sits on my bed.
As I add the finishing touch, plugging in my rainbow desk lamp, I notice Zarmenus is watching me.
“Looks good,” he says, nodding in approval at my lamp.
“Thanks,” I say.
I check the time on my phone and a new fear creeps up. It’s time for Mom to go.
It is exciting, sure. But also terrifying.
“Walk me to the car?” she asks. “It’s nice meeting you, Zarmenus.”
“I know, I’m a treat.”
“Be nice to Owen, all right?”
“I’ll think about it, but I don’t take orders from anyone.”
I pull Mom out of the room before she can snap back.
“I’m sorry,” I say, as if it’s my fault he was such a jerk just then.
“It’s fine; he’s feisty, I’ll give him that.”
Oh shit, this is really happening. For the past few days I’ve had Mom to keep me company, and it’s been amazing.
We’ve checked out Waltham, going to some of the best food spots that I found online.
They were all hipster places, the kinds that serve whatever is on trend, like souffle pancakes, kimchi burgers, or weird varieties of milkshake, like red velvet and glazed donut.
It must be because it’s so close to Point, but the city has become a foodie hot spot.
Each place we’ve tried was amazing. More than the food and the sightseeing, I’ve loved having Mom here because it means I’m not alone.
Because I’m sure that’s what I’ll feel like as soon as she leaves.
Like, yes, I might be sharing a space with Zarmenus, but he’s not family.
When we reach the car, tears have welled up in her eyes. Oh man, this is really happening. It’s fine, though, I’ve always known I’d get emotional today. It’s one of the biggest days of my life, after all.
She unlocks the car and the headlights flash. “Well, this is it.”