"I'm sorry," I apologized, taking a seat on the cot that had been set up next to my bed. "My mom's not usually such a dork . . . Oh, wait, yeah, she is. Regardless, I'm still sorry you had to go through that."
I think it is very nice," Azi smiled, setting down his backpack on my bed. "My brothers and sisters take up most of the attention in my home. It is nice that your mother cares so much about you."
Azi followed his backpack and seated himself on my bed, discreetly surveying my room.
I felt myself working up a blush.
"I redecorated it myself when I was ten," I explained, indicating the frilly pink bedspread, hot pink walls, and bountiful leopard print objects. "It's Cheetah-Licious. My mom won't let me redo it."
"I think it is very nice also. Charming."
I blushed harder. "You don't have to lie."
Azi looked thoughtful for a moment. "If you insist. It looks like a leopard ate too much cotton candy and then puked up your room."
I laughed. "Well then. Maybe if you tell my mom that, she'll believe me."
"Why does she not let you do what you want with your space?" he asked, still looking thoughtful. "I mean, isn't it supposed to be a representation of you?"
"It's actually not that bad," I managed not to agree. "My mom let me bring in a few things." Another sweeping gesture towards the many posters that lined the east wall of my room. My mom called that wall the "Wall of Depression," but I liked it.
After my mom had agreed that I could redecorate my room a little bit, I'd gone to the store and bought all the "Angel" and "Buffy" posters I could find. Pin-ups of pictures from various magazines dotted these photos in a seemingly abstract order, which, if you stood far enough back, spelled out "Spike."
The largest poster was a cast photo from the Twilight movie. Kristen and Robert stood in the middle of a raging river, an extremely hot Taylor Lautner as "Jacob" and Cam Gigandet as "James" to one side and a eerily calm Rachel Lefevere as "Victoria" to the other. (It always bugged me that Laurent wasn't there . . . Wasn't he a bad guy to?)
Other than that, my room was a ten year-old's fantasy. Which, trust me, I was well aware of as Azi surveyed it.
"I like your wall of posters," he said, after a while. "They're very expressive. But who is this 'Spike?'"
I smiled.
"Welcome to America , Azi. I've got a lot to teach you."
