His Paper Heart ✓

•24|His Haunted House (Old Man Joe)

"I QUITE REMEMBER YOU SAYING MY TEST HAD AN F WRITTEN ALL OVER IT?" I say, flaunting my citizenship test in his face. Sure Mr. Segal didn't read it in front of the class like he did Alleya and Imogene's but I think he understood what I meant.

Gray shrugs with a smile hovering his lips. "I also said you can be mysterious. Congratulations on your first A."

I frown. "This isn't my first A. I have had lots of other As and I would have gotten one in physics as well if you hadn't intervened like you always do. And now I have to tutor Imogene? She scares me. She scares everyone."

He smiles. "Nay. She's just scared."

"Okay, I know you are the world's best psychic but you can't read Imogene. She is not scared of anyone. In fifth grade, she stuck a stick up a boy called Jake Martin's ass and it came out of his nostrils."

Gray erupts with laughter whiles flinging his arm over my shoulder as we strode down the hallway to the large, doubles doors. "I'm so glad you believe that rumor," he says. We are both silent, just the sound of our shoes squeaking on the tiled floor. I clench my fist, nails digging in my palm when his breath hits my temple as he sniffs me again. Just like the night he was sick.

"What are you doing?" I whisper.

"You smell nice."

"What do I smell like?" I chuckle.

"You smell like home."

"You're so weird. . ."

"Okay, tell me more about this Imogene character. Where's her mother? What happened to her father?"

"Her mom is a nurse at the local hospital. You met her, Nurse Steward, remember?" I ask. I catch a smile on his lips and I roll my eyes. "You slept with her, didn't you?"

"No, I didn't."

"And I'm supposed to believe you why?"

"Do you have a choice?"

I decide to tease him back. "This is just like that one time I kissed Matt Winters in eighth grade and Didi asked and I lied about it," I explain. Gray comes to a halt. I hide my smile as I turn to him in the hallway.

"What?" I can barely hear his voice when he asks.

"I said in eighth grade, there was this boy named Matt Winters and one time he-"

"I heard what you said. You told me you've never ever kissed a boy."

I let out a laugh. "Oh you thought I was serious? Wait, you believed me?"

He narrows his eyes a while and sighs. "Why would you lie to me?"

"You lied to me bunch of times." I shrug.

"Yeah because I'm a very sick, twisted person and your innocence is slowly healing me but now, you're a liar, I'm a liar."

"So who's going to heal who now?" I bite my bottom lip to conceal a smile.

"It's 'who's going to heal whom', you grammatically deprived nincompoop and you're right-"

"Calm down, Gray."

"Who's gonna heal whom?" he asks and I chuckle. "It's called a yin and yang, Genevieve. Not a yang and yang, for the love of God. This Matt Winters, is he still alive?"

"No, he's-"

"Good, cause I would find him and kill him myself."

"You're overreacting-" I stop when Gray grabs my cheeks and studies my face thoroughly.