“Listen, my folks will be there,” he said looking less than enthusiastic. “And they want to meet you.”
“They do?” Hailey stopped and gave him a quizzical look.
“Yeah,” he said apologetically.
Hailey nodded then shook her head. “I’m sorry, you have parents? I mean…they’re still alive?”
“Eh…yeah. Look, just pretend that they’re normal, I’m normal, you’re normal, everyone is normal and nobody’s cursed, and Bear Towne is just another university, okay?”
“Okay,” she said with a shrug.Why not?
“Why do your parents want to meet me?”
“Long story, Hailey. Just—” Fin sighed heavily. “—suffice to say they want to meet the girl I…that I…”
“That you what?”
“That I met in Pittsburgh.”
“Oh,” she said, sounding more disappointed than she meant to. She recovered with some quick small talk. “What do your parents do?”
“They’re both doctors, but now that my dad’s retired from his practice again, he’s a roof shoveler.”
“Awhat?” said Hailey.
“A roof shoveler. He shovels snow off people’s roofs in the winter.”
Hailey’s face pinched, and Fin continued, “…so they don’t cave in from the weight of the snow…? He enjoys heights.”
Hailey shook her head. “Alaskans are just bizarre.”
“Said the girl who works for a zombie librarian and lives with a demon.”
Hailey bit her lip.
“I’ll introduce you to them real quick after the game. Just meet me in the locker room when it’s over, okay?”
“In the…likeinsidethe locker room?”
“Yes,” he said sarcastically. “Hailey, it’s real simple. You open the door that says ‘Locker Room,’ you walk inside, and you keep walking until you see me.”
Hailey shook her head. “I’ll just wait for you outside.”
“No, Hailey,” said Fin, looking more annoyed. “Everyone will be outside. I won’t be able to find you. I’m giving you a backstage pass—use it.”
“I don’t want—won’t you guys want some privacy? I don’t want to see…anyone…you know…” Hailey hesitated to say the wordnaked, and Fin was at the end of his patience.
“Hailey,” he said sharply. “Just come straight down to the locker room after the game, find the gaggle of reporters, and file inside with them.”
“Oh. Okay,” she answered, more comfortable knowing there would be a whole group going in, and Fin rolled his eyes before jogging away.
At precisely twelve noon, an entirely normal bus, carrying an entirely paranormal group departed from Chinook Hall and bumbled four hours south to Anchorage.
Hailey sat next to the most avoided student at the school…well, second to herself… In fact, the last few students to board the bus actually came to blows over who would sit in the seat across the aisle from Giselle.
In the end, nobody sat there, and the student who lost the fistfight ended up sitting on the floor in the back of the bus.
“I’m not sitting next to that thing,” he’d muttered as he sped past her, squeezing himself as far to the other side of the aisle as he could.
