A boy with messy hair turned around in front of me with an overstated expression of annoyance. He said in a singsong, “Hellooo . . . Morgan? Time to wake u-u-up . . .” I guessed it was the face and words of his mother.
I looked him in the eye and said, “I am awake. Just go, you little dork.”
His new expression was delicious, and he cut through the kids in front of him as he scurried away. Only later did I realize that my words were not what had alarmed Little Dork. It was young Morgan’s sudden change of voice and manner.
My “buddy” refused to rejoin hands with me, instead continuing to stare as he walked a safe distance away from my side. The look was more suspicious than frightened, but I simply shrugged and skipped gleefully along with the group.
A week later is when it really dawned on me what I was and, more importantly, that I needed to do a little more research before climbing into one of you people. For one, certain religions will make life a living hell for a demon. Exorcisms are obnoxious. Second, you have to know a bit about the person you’re taking over. How they talk, mannerisms, posture, details like that. Little Morgan was a big rookie mistake on my part, and a huge waste.
See, when walking in her body, I had more of a skulk than a walk. I imagine that it looked like this cute little girl was lurking to the water fountain, creeping onto the school bus, and prowling to the dinner table. And I wasn’t using her voice. Kids moaned “stop talking like that!” Mom and Dad were initially amused, then it turned to “Okay, honey, enough with the voice.” But I didn’t know how she had sounded previously, so they thought I was sassing them when trying out different pitches and tonalities. Eventually, I got perturbed with Father and told him if he didn’t like my voice, maybe he should go read the dirty magazines under his mattress and make the blankets go up and down again. It didn’t go well.
The Opal (Book 2 of the Matt Turner Series) Page 32
