Tora denied her accusation, and she wasn’t quite surprised by it. She certainly got a rise out of him, which was exactly what she was aiming for. Pressing her lips into a thin line to hide her smirk, Jocelyn chuckled under her breath, finding no end to her amusement in the way that Tora reacted. He wasn’t gay, or so he said, and he seemed to generally hold some fascination with her legs. Maybe he wasn’t ready to come out of the closet? She might have come up with a clever retort, actually had one forming on the tip of her tongue about how if he found some skeletons lingering where he was hiding he should let them be, but she was silenced by the comment about him being at her house viewed as a date. A date! She’d shave her head and paint it pink with blue polka dots before anyone ever got the idea she and Tora were dating. And why the hell did he keep staring at her legs? ‘Men! How completely, and utterly annoying they are. No wonder there’s so many lesbians out in the world.’ She thought to herself, still unaware that Tora could hear her thoughts from time to time. 

Jocelyn was overwhelmed with confusion, all of it stemming from the boy who was now seated in the same room with her. Why had he suddenly transferred to her school, which was pretty much out in the middle of scenic nowhere? Her town wasn’t big enough to be more than a blip on the map, and there was nothing noteworthy about it that would have made anyone eager to move there. Her aunt had moved them there specifically for that reason, believing that urban life would lead Jocelyn into temptations that would ultimately end up with her in jail, or dead. Jocelyn really wasn’t stupid enough for any of that, but her aunt wasn’t willing to take the risk. She had too many reasons to skip school, and there were too many dropout outcasts for her to associate with in the city, which was why her family had been moved to the middle of suburbia nowhere. And why exactly did he seem to attach himself to her? There were plenty of girls in school that would be happy, no ecstatic, to hang out with him. Why couldn’t he go bother them? 

“Anything interesting happen in school today, Joc?” Aidan asked, stirring the girl from her thoughts. She glanced over at her brother, shaking her head slowly. “Not really. Same ole, same ole. Bitchy little girls wanting to start crap. Boring classes. Same crap, different day.” Aidan looked from her over to their guest, lifting a brow in question. Turning her head, she stared at Tora for a moment. “Oh yeah, and someone let him in the school. Animal Services must be on vacation or something.” Aidan snickered, opting to keep his mouth shut rather than to encourage his sister to go on. 

For several minutes the two ate in silence, Jocelyn’s thoughts going back to the same line of thinking. There was something off about Tora, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. It wasn’t just his strange appearance in her hometown, or even the fact that he was playing the part of her shadow. He didn’t act, talk, or look like the other boys at school, who either dressed as preppy as the girls, or looked like they’d rolled out of bed and walked to school. She hadn’t heard him talking a bunch of slang, and completely degrading her. He was tame, even when they were going back and forth with each other, which was uncharacteristic for any of the boys in her school. Add to the fact that he hadn’t made her feel like a complete outsider in any way because of her attitude, he was more like an alien sitting in her dining room rather than some random teenage boy that had showed up at her school that morning. ‘Maybe he is an alien. That would explain a lot.’ She mulled the thought over, coming up with more evidence that supported that idea than she could that he was a normal, teenage boy who’s parents had left him alone in the U.S while they returned to their home country. ‘What kind of parents would leave a seventeen year old boy alone in a different country all by themselves? Aren’t they worried that he’ll end up getting trouble?’ 

The house phone rang, springing Jocelyn and Aidan out of their seats to answer it, the latter reaching it first to pluck it off of its charger. “Hello Aunt Alicia. Are you on your way home? We’ve already eaten so you might want to pick something up for yourself.” Jocelyn froze in terror with her brother’s greeting, realizing what that meant for her in the short term. If her aunt came home and found Tora in their house, she would automatically assume that Jocelyn had some type of crush on him, or worse, that they were dating. That could not happen! If her aunt got that idea in her mind, Jocelyn would never hear the end of it, and she would be asking Jocelyn about Tora every chance that she got. Panicking, Jocelyn began to motion to her brother, trying to get him to give her an idea of how long she had to wait until their aunt returned. She had to get Tora out of the house, or at least out of sight before then, and with the way he was making himself comfortable, she had a feeling that was going to be more difficult that she imagined. Aidan shrugged, keeping her clueless to the amount of time she was working with, and before she could reach to grab the phone from him to ask herself, he ended the call. “She’s about an hour away, relax. Let Tora eat and I’ll take him home.” Aidan assured her, the redhead dropping down into her seat with a heavy sigh of relief. “Fine. But he has to go before she gets here! All I need is for her to meet him, she’ll be chasing me around the house for hours asking about him.”