Almost Alive by Christina Barr Page B

you.”
                  If I didn’t know Julian, I would have been terribly offended.  “We’re just friends.”
                  “Julian doesn’t feel like he can afford friends.  He’s been extremely paranoid ever since his revival.”
                  “‘Friends’ might be too strong of a word.”  Especially since I hated him.  “He’s just helping me out a bit.”
                  “What do you need help with?”
                  I couldn’t lie.  I couldn’t tell her the truth.  I didn’t even know if Julian had said anything to her.  Even if he did tell his sister about his demon, that didn’t mean that I wanted her to know about mine.  “What’s with all the questions?”
                  “I know I’m only the little sister, but I wanna look out for him.  He’s not the same kind and fun guy who used to love life and the people around him.  Sure he’s had his Emo clique, but he and his friends aren’t what you think.  They’re just like everybody else.  They just like to wear a lot back clothes and eyeliner.  They played laser tag and ate pizza just like normal kids.  Now he won’t even talk to them.”  It did concern me.  I was afraid that Julian was overreacting and I didn’t want to end up just as alone as he was.
                  “What about you?  Do you talk to those friends anymore?”
                  She started to look embarrassed and stared at her hands in her lap.  “I don’t have any friends.  Everybody at this school thinks I’m a freak.”
                  “Why?”  She was an odd girl and I probably would have never been her best friend before my death, but there must have been tons of weird kids in our school.  They outnumbered normal people.
                  “I’m the weird sister of the freak who killed himself and came back to life.  There were already rumors about us before.  Kids can be cruel.”
                  I couldn’t let that slide.  I was too concerned for my wellbeing.  “What kind of rumors?”
                  “I don’t wanna say.  Forgive me, but I think it would be nice if one person could just judge me by getting to know me first.”
                  “I completely understand.”  Maria’s eyes were so sad that it made me feel guilty, as if I somehow participated in the gossiping myself.  In my head, maybe I was.  I didn’t think any theories, but I wanted to hear them in case I was in danger. 
                  “Besides, Julian didn’t make things better.  He was completely off the rails when he came back from the dead.”
                  Well, I couldn’t help but be interested in that as well!  “How so?”
                  “He started doing drugs; he was drinking, and partying every night.  He’d disappear days at a time.  I didn’t know where he’d run off to.  He was even a little violent.”
                  I instantly thought of all of my fears while the two of us were under that bridge.  I knew it was the demon that made me think that I couldn’t trust him, but just because it was evil didn’t mean that what it was saying was completely unwarranted.  “Did he ever hurt you?”
                  “Not me.  He might have been crazy at the time, but we were still emotionally close then.  He got into a lot of fights, but always outside of school.  He always won by a landslide.  He’s lucky the cops never took him in.”
                  Maybe the demon was right and it was looking out for the body it was trying to steal.  Julian talked about war so much and he wanted to turn me into a demon hunting machine.  It was clear that he had no remorse for going after people who were once human. “I want your honest opinion.”  It was freaky how he caught that tire iron and