things away.”
“Fwah! Even if I did forget—and I didn't, because unlike some members of this family who are so ancient they can recall what the Holy Grail looks like, I can remember things—but even if I did forget, I would not have thrown all my underwear around the room. Thus, therefore, and all that other stuff, either there's an ax-murdering maniac with an underwear fetish living in the basement who came up here while I was hooking up the computer downstairs, or this room is haunted.”
“Emily—”
“I'd prefer a ghost to an ax murderer, thank you.”
“You can always use another room if you don't like this one.”
“But I do like it,” I said, grabbing the rest of my things and stuffing them back into the drawer. “It's the only cool room in this whole nightmare of a house. You always say I have to make the best of a bad situation, and in this case, that means I get the cool room. It's only fair.”
“Fine,” he said, running his hand through his hair again. It only made the horn stand up even more. “If you're done having this morning's histrionics, I have work to do. The dean of the college I'll be working for is coming by in a few minutes. I trust you'll be available to greet him?”
What is it with parents having you meet all their cronies? All they do is criticize your hair and ask you what you want to do when you grow up. I’m grown up. But never let it be said that I, Emily Williams, let an opportunity slip past me. “Let's make a deal,” I said.
Brother groaned. “Not now, Emily—”
“The deal is this: I come down and be charming and pleasant to your dean, and you take me to the nearest mall.”
“I don't have time to drive you around. I've got to be ready for the start of term next week—and speaking of that, so do you. Don't you want to bone up before you start school?”
I shuddered. Well, you know my feelings about that whole school thing—it's going to be even more of a hell than my life already is. I don’t know anyone in England! I don’t even know what they study here! What if they think I’m weird because I’m American? GAH! I figured I’d better change the subject. “About the mall—”“Not today, sweetling,” he said as he creaked and popped his way out of the room. I rolled my eyes at the “sweetling.” He uses those medieval words on purpose. He thinks they're cute. Fathers! “Maybe your mother can take you. I'll expect you downstairs in fifteen minutes.”
“I can't.”
“Why?” he asked, pausing at the door.
I waved my hand at the wardrobe. “I don't have anything to wear. That's why I have to go to the mall.”
“What you have on is fine. Downstairs in fifteen, missy, and none of your sulks, please.”
I hate it when the parents pull that authority crap on me. Sulks—excuse me, I'm sixteen! I don't sulk! I have never sulked! I don't even know how to sulk!
I thought about ignoring the order altogether, but figured it might peeve off Mom if I did, which would lessen the chance of getting her to drive me to the nearest mall. Besides, it wasn't like this dean person was anyone important. It didn't matter what I wore. Right?
A few minutes later, there I was, the picture of everything fabulous, sitting in the room Brother calls the library, but which really looks (and smells) like a mouse's playroom—it's full of a bunch of boring old books, not even the good kind like that Victorian erotica book I found (you remember, the one with all the “manly pillars of alabaster”). This stuff is sermons and other deadly things like that—and Brother brings in this old guy who's the head of the college or something. I start to stand up to shake his hand, when this totally fabulous hottie comes in behind the dean. Girl, I'm telling you, I must have swallowed back gallons of slobber!
So I'm standing there and Brother does the introduction thing, and I find out that this hottie is named Aidan, and he's the dean's son, and I'm thinking that this is it, I've met the perfect man. He's all blonde and hunkalicious and has dark gray eyes, and I swear to you, he's got a mustache! A MUSTACHE!
Oh, poop, I have to go. Mom insists I go with her to the grocery store, and since we made a