Michelle Knudsen - Revenge of the Evil Librarian

Italian class is not what it used to be.

I am thinking this as I watch Signor OFlannigan list our summer vocabulary words on the board. Signor OFlannigan is young and enthusiastic and very, very nice. He flashes his sunny smile constantly and never yells at anyone and will talk to you in English outside of class without giving you a hard time about it. He is different from Signor De Luca (may he rest in peace) in pretty much every possible way. Almost everyone loves him.

But almost everyone has no idea what really happened to Signor De Luca. They dont even know hes dead. They especially dont know that the reason hes dead is because he was trying to help us defeat the evil librarian who was taking over the school and bewitching my beloved best friend.

They dont know that he would still be alive right now if Ryan and I had never gone to him for help. Which is something I keep trying not to think about, but its not easy. His memory is like a grouchy Italian dagger permanently embedded in my heart.

Today, incidentally, is the next-to-last day of school. (Tomorrow is a half day, consisting only of homeroom and an assembly, and therefore barely exists.) Its cute that Signor OFlannigan is trying to teach a final class. No one is paying any attention to him.

Annie, the aforementioned beloved best friend, is sitting next to me, not only here and alive but also free from the influence of any demonic love spells. (I know that generally goes without saying about people, but Annie is a special case.) She is doodling in her notebook and daydreaming about her not-very-secret love interest. Shes drawing little hearts and flowers and various intertwined versions of the initials A and W. (His name is William. Hes in third-period statistics with her, and she talks about him a lot. A LOT. Its adorable.)

One row over and two rows up from where I am sitting, the lovely Ryan Halsey is also here and alive. He is also now my boyfriend (!!!) which perhaps I may have neglected to mention thus far. He is not very subtly playing a game on his phone. I forgive him for doing this instead of sending me sexy messages or turning around to give me affectionate looks or using this time to write me a sonnet or something because I am a really awesome girlfriend.

I am observing the people I love in this room and basking in their continued here-and-aliveness, and feeling so relieved that none of us are consorts to horrible demons for all eternity. I know I maybe seem to be fixated on the whole still-here-and-alive thing, but it was a big question for a while there in the fall. We all almost died. Everyone in the whole school almost died.

Annie was the only one in danger of becoming a demon consort, though. Well, other than Aaron, but he is old and does not go to our school and is not someone I care about. Plus, he wanted to be a demon consort, so there really wasnt a downside for him. Oh, and Danielle, but that was very sudden and brief and hardly counts. Plus I dont really like her all that much. Although Im still glad she wasnt killed or made a demon consort.

It is possible that, out of context, none of this makes any sense at all.

Let us review:

During the fall semester, a ridiculously attractive but also very, very evil demon (Mr. Gabriel) set up shop in our high school as the new librarian and tried to steal away my best friend to be his demonic child bride. He killed some teachers, including poor Signor De Luca and our super-nice principal, and sucked out parts of a lot of kids souls or life forces or whatever, but in the end I totally vanquished him. Well, with some help. Some very welcome help, like from Ryan, and some less-welcome-but-still-necessary help, like from the demoness who temporarily posed as our replacement Italian teacher.

The help from the demoness was tricky because it required me to make a promise to return to the demon world twice more at times of her choosing. Because it turns out I have some innate demon resistance that she can borrow to use against other demons if I let her. (The rather insulting technical term for the kind of human I am is super-roach. Or at least thats the rough translation of the unpronounceable demon word.) Its kind of complicated, I guess. But the short version is that I let her borrow my resistance the first time to help her become queen of the demons, and in return she gave me some (highly questionable) magic items that (nevertheless) helped me to kick Mr. Gabriels evil ass and save Annie from him forever.

No one else actually knows about the thing where I have to return twice more to the demon world. Except the demoness, obviously. And the aforementioned Aaron, who used to be the guy who ran the esoteric bookstore and who later, sort of thanks to me, achieved his (highly questionable) lifelong dream of becoming the demonesss consort and going to live with her in fiery bliss until the end of time. He doesnt matter. The people who do matter Annie, Ryan, Leticia, Diane have no idea. Actually Leticia and Diane have no clue about any of the demon stuff at all. They just thought I was going through the usual tech-week stress during the time leading up to our Sweeney Todd fall musical production. Which I was, of course. There was just also a lot of extra stress involving multiple demons and Annie going temporarily crazy and many complicated and confusing feelings regarding Ryan, who confessed his growing affection for me right before I stabbed him with a magic protractor so I could get sucked into a vortex to the underworld.

But! All the stuff with Ryan worked out in the end. Did I mention that he is now my boyfriend? Also, he has forgiven me for said stabbing and for almost dying in order to save Annie. And for some lying that happened, since we agreed no more lying from now on. And so no more lying. Except about the two-more-trips-to-the-demon-world thing. But thats an old lie, not a new one, and so the rule does not apply.

Okay enough about all the demon stuff. I dont want to dwell on bad things. The bad things are over now. Now is the time of happiness and joy across the land.

Exhibit A: Annie is not a demon bride! Also, she is alive and well and beginning to have a non-demony real-life love connection with an actual human boy.

Exhibit B: Ryan Halsey is my boyfriend!

Exhibit C: In exactly eight days, I will be getting on a bus with Ryan to go to Allengate, the theater camp he has been attending nearly every summer of his entire life. This is because (a) he got his parents to talk to my parents about how great the camp is, and (b) thanks to Mr. Henrys glowing recommendation and my set-design notes and sketches for Sweeney Todd, I was accepted into the camps highly competitive set-design track, which means I will get to be set designer on one of the shows going up during each three-week session. I will be there for three sessions, and so that is three entire shows I get to design sets for, and I am incredibly excited about this. They even have mock Tony Awards at the end of each session, and I am going to win all of the set-design awards, because that is the kind of goal I like to have.

And while I am designing sets and winning awards, I will get to spend the