The Unfortunate Story of Roddy Mayhem by Julie Steimle (free e reader .TXT) 📖

intention of paying for or actually riding inside, I realized that I had actually resented my imp side all this time.

The epiphany actually blew me away. I had honestly thought I was at home with what I was. But in truth, I resented the imps. I hated them because they were the reason my mother had rejected me. If I had been a normal boy with no horns or wings or orange eyes, she would have kept me. And I would have had a happy home, just like everybody else.

“Everybody’s got it hard in one way or another,” Tom said, clearly following my thoughts as the imps around me grumbled out things I could mutter in my jealousy.

“Oh?” I bit back, thinking that couldn’t possibly be true. “How?”

“You think because my mom accepted me that things were always great?” Tom asked, raising his eyebrows.

“It would have been easier if my mom hadn’t thrown me away,” I bit back.

He shrugged. “Maybe. Then again, maybe she would have had it hard being a single mom in… what did your imps shout? a puritanical church group? Those folk can be really judgmental.”

“Hanz wasn’t,” I said. Hanz was actually such a refreshing kind of person to be around. I could totally get why Eve was into him. He was a break from the nasty chaos of the world. His imps were struggling to even get him to drink a cola. The dude had stuck to a fruit drink.

Tom chuckled, nodding. “Yeah. But I have a feeling Hanz is a unique kind of being that you don’t even find all that often, even among Mormons. They’re a perky set—but you’ve got the judgmental punks too who just go to that church out of tradition. People are people.”

I frowned. It was unfortunately true. But I interjected none-the-less, “What about that wolf man Rick? He’s born to wealth. How does he have it hard?”

Tom laughed out loud. “Do you hear yourself?”

“What?” I stared back, thinking what I had said made total sense.

“That wolf man Rick—seriously? Your answer is in your question.” Tom continued to chuckle, shaking his head. “But if you want another reason—believe me, when we were roomies at Gulinger, I used to be really jealous about all his money. I didn’t understand back then that the Deacons work their butts off for it just so they can buy protection against hunters who chase after them. Every. Single. Month.”

I stared. His words sunk in a bit like knives. “He is hunted every month?”

“Three days each month,” Tom replied, sincerely nodding. “Every full moon. And he’s been shot a few times. You should have him show off his bullet wounds. He’s got a collection now. Top that for a crappy kind of life.”

I couldn’t, honestly. No one shot at me. And even if they did, I could make the bullets go right through me without making any damage.

“He’s also got strong allergies,” Tom added. “And a heap of people who know what he is and who want him dead.”

I paled more.

And the bus pulled up.

Tom yanked on my arm and dragged me over the air to the bus top. We hopped on it and sat on the roof, exactly as I had predicted. It was kind of fun, though frankly I had never really thought of doing it before. A surge of jealousy went through me again as I realized that I had been living below my imp potential all this time. I had been trying to be so human after all.

A thought occurred to me. “Wait a minute! You shared a room with the wolf man at that New York private school?”

“Yep!” Tom said with pride, grinning. “At least part of the time. He went back to Massachusetts in the middle of my senior year—his sophomore year. Those two other guys, Daniel and James, are from his hometown.”

“So you are all friends of his,” I murmured, thinking on that. For a wolf man, he sure had connections.

Tom nodded, smirking. “But not because he is rich. Rick is actually a decent guy. I mean, yeah, he snaps at me whenever I steal his wallet and mess with his cell phone, but he knows it is all in good fun. I mean, he doesn’t press charges or anything.”

I just stared at him. The man even thought like an imp. He talked like one.

“But anyway,” Tom said as we hopped on top of another van that was turning in the direction we wanted, “If you want to know about Gulinger, I can give you the short story. Gulinger High, or officially Gulinger Private Academy, is a school owned mostly by Rick’s dad. It was founded by his grandfather, actually—all of whom are werewolves.”

This made me sit a little more heavily on the van top, I was so stunned. My weight made a small dent in the roof. Tom slapped my arm and shook his head, urging me to lighten up. I quickly did, as we didn’t want the guy driving the van to find out we were riding on his roof.

“It’s actually owned by Deacon Enterprises, but Mr. Deacon owns most of the shares to that company,” Tom said. “The thing is, the kids who go there are sort of fifty percent ghoulies and fifty percent normal humans put there by the government.”

“By the government?” I said a little louder than I needed to.

Tom whopped me on the head and shushed me. “Dude, seriously.”

I shrugged with my head between my shoulders, though honestly I was too stunned to hold it in.

“Anyway, they’re there under witness protection,” he said.

“Oh.” That totally made sense. For a second I thought it was a prison.

“Now there is a sister school to Gulinger,” Tom said, his voice going even graver, “but Mr. Deacon does not have any influence there so I would not recommend going there unless you want the government taking over your life.”

“Like what you do,” I said, thinking about his CIA job.

Tom laughed, nodding. “Yeah, actually. They wanted me to go to West End Prep—to try to indoctrinate me into become a fully brainwashed spook. But, man, I really like my freedom, you know.”

I didn’t quite follow that, but I decided to take his word for it. After all, I liked my freedom as well.

“The thing is,” and he seemed to be following my train of thought, “You are going to have to adjust to the noise level of imps at school. And I’m afraid I don’t know how to help you on that one except to say you might need to find or make a sanctuary to go to when the stress gets too much.”

The stress? He was kind of freaking me out with that. What kind of stress was I going to be under?

“And you need to work hard so you can get a decent job when you graduate,” Tom said looking me solidly in the eye.

I stiffened. Honestly, I never really went to school. I mean, yeah, when I was in a foster home I went physically to a school for a few days at a time. But I don’t think I ever passed one test, or really did any homework, or (you know) done any class science project or anything. I mean, I can read. I do frequent the library and can read books and all that junk—but that was because it was a cool place to rest where there was actual quiet. For some reason imps don’t shout much in the library, as if they just didn’t have much to tempt people with. I mean, yeah, occasionally you got kids tempted to go through those adult drawing books with the nudes to gawk at them and stuff, and there were occasions when people were tempted just to walk out with a stack. But really, it was my haven. All that I knew came from what I read when I had nothing better to do.

“It was pretty hard for me to focus, actually,” I heard Tom’s voice murmur, cutting through my thoughts.

I looked to him, surprised to hear him say that. I could have sworn the guy was a genius. The imps all said so.

“One-eighty IQ,” Tom said, answering that, reading my imps’ remarks well as they were shouting for me to call him bluff and call him a few other rude names also. “But that’s my score if I am in a room alone with only me and my imps trying to get me to cheat. In a classroom full of kids and lots of noise, I’m seriously useless.”

So was I, I realized. I think all halfs were.

“So what I am saying is,” Tom winked at me, “You have to learn to play the game so you can survive. Because school is an entirely different ball game than street life.”

I stared ahead until he grabbed my arm and yanked me off the van. We were practically there. We landed on asphalt and easily dodged a car like a feather on the air. He had us walk the rest of the distance—two blocks to a high-rise where his friend Rick apparently had a penthouse apartment.

“So you’ve done the street life?” I asked, not quite believing it as I landed on my feet. Tom, despite all his impishness, seemed domesticated.

Tom shrugged. “No one ever let me. When my mom got arrested the last time for armed robbery, I was taken to juvy for a whole day, then claimed by one Officer Johnson whom I hardly knew, until later as father to a kid at school who can see ghosts—and the cop took me to Gulinger where I could cause less trouble. In fact, I think it was his son JJ who nicknamed me Trouble. Or maybe it was Tommy Whitefeather, who was there before me and hated me on sight. I don’t remember. It could have also been our headmaster at the time—the one I gave an ulcer to. Mr… no… um Pastor H—no, not him. Um… Oh, Ms. Hickney. Wait. Not her. Um…”

“Are these all headmasters?” I asked, stunned he was having a hard time remembering.

Tom snorted with a nod. “Gulinger has a high turnover rate with headmasters and teachers. Most are retired priests or something similar. The current one seems to be at the end of his tether, but he is a ghoulie alumnus, so he has stuck it out longer than most. Oh. Mr. Pinrup. Yeah. He was also at the end of his tether when I had arrived. He quit three months after I came and Pastor Oldham took over for about a year or two. Then was Ms. Hickney. That’s right. They were all in succession, and I was a bit dingy in the head at the time.”

I wondered what he meant by ‘dingy in the head’.

“Anyway,” he led his long-legged march toward the tall downtown building where he went right in, and walked to the elevator where he waited for me, “When you get there, be prepared to make adjustments.”

Make adjustments? I was already making adjustments. I mean, here I was, walking ‘home’ with the infamous Trouble to a penthouse owned by a rich werewolf where I would stay the night before I would then fly out to New York City to go to a private school for people called ghoulies. And that was after shopping with a demon who could rip my heart out with her fingers—and actually going out of the store with merchandise what was paid for. I hardly paid for a thing I could just walk away with. It was insane.

We got in an elevator, rode up several floors, got out and knocked on the penthouse door. There was no other door. Dan answered it in his pajamas, one hand holding a brownish sword, cast us both a look and stepped aside to let us in.

“So, did you have a good talk?” Dan whispered to Tom mostly.

Tom nodded, smirking at him. “Enough of one. Do we got beds or are we sleeping on the ceiling?”

Dan pointed to the