Free Haunted by Meg Cabot Page B

coronary if she’d caught me wandering around school in my bare feet.
    “Oh,” I said, mad that my dramatic exit had been spoiled. “Yeah.” I went back to my desk so I could jam my feet into my mules.
    “Before you go, Cinderella,” Paul said, still smiling, “you might also want to take this.” He held out my trig homework. I could tell with a single glance that he’d finished it, neatly and, I could only assume, correctly.
    “Thanks,” I said, taking the notebook from him, feeling more and more sheepish with every passing second. I mean, why, exactly, was I always flying off the handle with this guy? Yeah, he’d tried to kill me—and Jesse—once. At least, I thought he had. But he kept saying I was wrong. What if I was wrong? What if Paul wasn’t the monster I’d always thought him? What if he was…
    What if he was just like me?
    “About this Craig guy,” Paul added.
    “Paul.” I sank down into the chair beside him. I had felt the gaze of Mrs. Tarentino, the teacher assigned to supervise the computer lab, boring into me. Popping in and out of your chair in the lab is not smiled upon, unless you are going back and forth from the printer.
    But that wasn’t the only reason I sat down again. I’ll admit that. I was curious, too. Curious over what he’d say next. And that curiosity was almost stronger than my fear.
    “Seriously,” I said. “Thanks. But I do not need your help.”
    “I think you do,” Paul said. “What’s this Craig guy want, anyway?”
    “He wants what all ghosts want,” I said tiredly. “To be alive again.”
    “Well, of course,” Paul said. “I mean, what’s he want besides that?”
    “I don’t know yet,” I said with a shrug. “He’s got this thing with his little brother…thinks he should have been the one to die, not him. Jesse thinks—” I stopped talking, suddenly aware that Jesse was the last person I wanted to bring up in front of Paul.
    Paul looked only politely interested, however. “Jesse thinks what?”
    It was, I saw, too late to keep Jesse out of it. I sighed and said, “Jesse thinks Craig’s going to try to kill his brother. You know. Out of revenge.”
    “Which, will, of course,” Paul said, not looking in the least surprised, “get him exactly nowhere. When will they ever learn? Now, if he wanted to be his brother, that would be a different story.”
    “ Be his brother?” I looked at him curiously. “What do you mean?”
    “You know,” Paul said with a shrug. “Soul transference. Take over his brother’s body.”
    This was a little too much for a Tuesday morning. I mean, I had already had a pretty crummy night’s sleep thanks to this guy. Then, to hear something like this come out of his mouth…well, let’s just say I was not at my sharpest, so what happened next can hardly be described as my fault.
    “ Take over his brother’s body? ” I echoed. I had lowered my books until they rested in my lap. Now I reached out and gripped the arms of my computer chair, my nails sinking into the cheap foam-padded armrests. “What are you talking about?”
    One of Paul’s dark eyebrows hiked up. “Doesn’t sound familiar, eh? What has the good father been teaching you, I wonder? Not much, from the sound of things.”
    “What are you talking about?” I demanded. “How can someone take over someone else’s body?”
    “I told you,” Paul said, leaning back in his chair and folding his hands behind his head, “that there was a lot you didn’t know about being a mediator. And a lot more that I could teach you, if you’d just give me the chance.”
    I stared at him. I really had no idea what he was talking about with this body-swapping thing. It sounded like something from the Sci-Fi Channel. And I wasn’t sure if Paul was just feeding me a line, something, anything, to get me to do what he wanted.
    But what if he wasn’t? What if there was seriously a way to—
    I wanted to know. My God, I wanted to know more than I had ever wanted