Nobody Likes Megan McGowen

27. Dinner

Jake might have used magic to make that chart for her, but he actually did do her Spanish homework. Megan was seriously jealous as she watched him scribble down answers, barely even glancing at the questions. Why couldn't she be that good at school? Three minutes later, he was done.

"Want to come downstairs with me so I can start dinner?" he asked.

Megan just nodded.

She followed Jake downstairs to the kitchen, history book in hand. He started opening up cabinets and stared, taking stock of what he had to work with. Megan just watched. Finally, he turned to the refrigerator.

"You sure do have a lot of frozen pizza." he said after a minute.

"Yeah, Ben makes them for us a lot." Megan said, coming around to peer over his shoulder. "My parents don't get home early most nights." she added.

"Yeah, I know." Jake nodded.

"Yeah? How?" Megan asked. She didn't remember telling him that.

"I might not come down for dinner, but I do live here." he reminded her.

"Yeah, I guess." Megan mumbled. Suddenly she felt bad that she'd never once asked him if he wanted anything to eat.

"Shouldn't you be doing homework?" he asked suddenly, looking back at her.

"Yeah, maybe." Megan muttered.

She didn't really want to do it, but she'd already agreed to this. At least it was only the twenty fill-in-the blank questions at the end of the chapter she had to worry about. But when she sat down and looked over the questions, she wasn't nearly as confident. This might be a lot harder than she thought.

"So Napoleon was...King of France?" Megan guessed. "From when to when?"

Jake stared at her disbelievingly, pan hovering over the stove.

"Emperor. From 1804 to 1814." he said flatly. Megan wasn't sure she liked the tone.

"Thanks." she said, shrugging. At least that was one answer taken care of.

"Don't you pay attention in class?" Jake asked her, rifling through the pantry.

"Of course I do." she snapped.

Sure, she could probably try to focus a little more, but it wasn't like it really mattered anyway. When Jake just shrugged in that noncommittal way of his, her curiosity got the better of her.

"Why?" she asked slowly. Was it that obvious she didn't know this stuff?

"Well, it's just that we went over this on Monday."

"Oh, I'm sorry. Was that before or after we got to discuss my amazing opinion on the French aristocracy?" Megan asked, eyes flashing. Jake just grinned.

"I forgot about that." he told her.

"Really?" Megan found that hard to believe.

The topic had lasted almost ten minutes, and there'd been a small debate as to whether or not a group of upper class people Megan never met and who'd died a long time ago would really be worth killing. Or would they be as great as Megan? Some idiot suggested that maybe it was all just a misunderstanding. Megan hid her face in her hands – no one was really this stupid, were they? This had to be Jake's fault.

"Guess I wasn't as involved in the discussion as you were." Jake told her. He turned away, but not before Megan saw the look on his face; he was enjoying this.

Megan accidentally let a pathetic sigh slip.

"I can see how class might be a little distracting for you." He tried for sympathetic, but Megan heard him snicker quietly to himself.