All You Never Wanted

7. Jake

Last week on Wednesday, Jake had walked into class actually looking forward to the day. He had met up with Megan in his first class, as usual. He didn't know yet that this day would end up being one of the worst of his life.

"Morning." he nodded.

He said it casually, like he hadn't been sitting in her room with her before school. She just rolled her eyes, making him grin.

"You really are enjoying this, aren't you?" she asked.

"What do you mean?"

He'd been going to school with her for over a month now. And even though he'd learned a lot about how humans spoke to each other, he still didn't always understand what she was talking about. Usually the people in charge were much more direct with him; these interactions with both her and his new friends were taking some getting used to.

"You like pretending you're just some regular kid going to school, don't you?"

Of course he did; it was what he'd wanted for as long as he could remember – longer, probably. But he also enjoyed seeing her look just a little bit annoyed. It was something he always did to whoever was in charge. The only difference was that she didn't seem to mind it quite as much as she pretended.

"But I'm not just some regular kid." he told her, grinning. "I'm dating the most popular girl in school."

"I'm going to go sit down now." she said flatly.

He knew she still found it ridiculously annoying that he'd made her as popular as he had. And his wasting – as far as she knew – of her second wish by making himself her boyfriend. Of course, that had been before he actually knew her.

He'd actually surprised himself when he realized that he really did like her. He liked her enough that he was almost sorry that he'd made her as incredibly popular as he did. He'd actually even thought about toning it down for her a little bit. But he didn't. Part of it was the fact that it was remarkably hard for him to change a wish after it had been granted. He'd only managed to do it once or twice – and those had been times when the person had specifically asked him.

The other reason he didn't change it was because it would mean admitting that he'd kind of made a mistake. And he never admitted to mistakes – not even on the rare occasions when it actually would have made his life easier. Mistakes were much more likely to be punished.

Megan had seemed annoyed by his comment, but Jake was pretty sure she was exaggerating. Besides, if she thought he was going to stop saying things like that to her just because she'd agreed not to get rid of him, she didn't know him half as well as she thought.

When she'd first met him, Megan hadn't trusted him at all. Of course, that wasn't new for Jake; no one ever trusted him. And he didn't trust them either. But after watching her for a while, he realized that he didn't actually hate her. And then when he got to go to school with her, he could finally have fun for once. After that, it was only a matter of time before he started becoming friends with her. He'd never been friends with one of them before, but somehow he actually liked doing things with her.

It had taken him a long time to get her to actually trust him, but it had worked out incredibly well for him. Now, he got to go to school, he had friends of his own, and he was allowed to do most anything he wanted. He never would have thought his life could be this normal.

For the most part, Jake breezed through that Wednesday like he did ever other day. History was easy – he'd lived through most of it, after all. Actually, the hardest part was resisting the urge to correct his teacher, Mr. Wilson. It wasn't Mr. Wilson's fault that he was wrong on as much as he was; Jake knew that. It was more a case of history being written by the winners, as Jake knew only too well. And there was also the fact that most history books couldn't exactly put Jake's particular influence into any of the events that he did happen to be involved in, however tangentially.