Alvaro's roommate is possessed by the devil. Nitiya strangles people in her sleep. Gracie's lung donor shows up to ask for her organs back.
For an amateur food blogger, a creative writing professor, and a recovering ICU inpatient, living with the p...
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I sit at my desk and grade papers, heart pounding, as my students pack their things. The other professors tell me I'll get used to teaching in no time. Going over the material is no big deal; I was a Grad TA for three years, after all. The main problem is that, even having graduated, I still feel like a college student, and lecturing a room of college students makes me feel like I'm playing dress-up.
It's worse that Theo had to enroll in my class. He has no use for WRIT102, of course. Having a student who used to be my study buddy makes me feel even more like an impostor. As a grad student, he must be bored out of his mind, and yet he sits there every class, grinning as if my newly acquired authority is the funniest thing in the world.
Ugh. Troll.
As the rest of the class filters out, Theo slings his backpack over his shoulder and approaches. He puts his hands on my desk and tries to get a look at the paper I'm grading. I tilt the page away and he grins.
"We're heading over to Moxxie for Raya's birthday," he says as if we were just talking about this. "Saturday, around 8 pm. It'll be me, and Jen, and Landon, and all the other lowly grad students you used to hang out with. Come out with us."
He pounds the desk with his hands to emphasize each word. Come! Out! With! Us!
"Nah, it's weird," I tell him, shuffling the papers into a tidy stack. "I can't go out drinking with students."
"It's not weird. You're barely a professor," Theo says, waving a hand, and my impostor syndrome flares up again. Then, just as suddenly as he began talking in the first place, Theo switches topics. He leans in close and whispers, "It's still there, by the way."
Theo is not the whispering type. I know what he's referring to even before he clarifies, "the thing. The ghost thing."
"Did you put out a bowl of salt water like I told you to?" I ask, filing the papers into my bag and standing.
Theo pushes open the classroom door. "I was going to, but then Clara emailed me back."
"How do you have my step-sister's email?"
Theo gives me a look, and I realize my question is dumb. He got her email from the massive billboard of her face that she just purchased off the side of I-80. The whole city has my sister's email.
"Anyway," he continues, "I told her you recommended the salt water thing. She said 'that's an old trick.' She called me a luddite."
I roll my eyes. The bowl of salt water isn't an old trick, it's a classic, and ghost hunting is nothing if not a classic sport. Good to hear that Clara is still taking every opportunity to dunk on my extremely rusty ghost hunting skills.
"What did she have you do instead?" I ask, trailing behind a glob of students progressing toward their next classes.
"A thing with a gopher," Theo says, waving away the question. "Whatever, I couldn't even find a gopher; where does a person find a gopher? I went to a pet store and got a gerbil."
