Chatoyant College Book 9: Sundered

Chapter 108: Off Studying

Friday, December 5

In the morning, Annie unlocked her door and Corrie collected the poster for her. Annie seemed to have slept well enough considering she was in a sleeping bag on the floor in the same room as her crush, but Corrie decided not to ask her about it. She just told her she would take the poster to Professor Lal and find out what was going on with it.

Once she had the poster, she and Dawn knocked on Roe's door, and then Corrie took out her phone to call Edie.

"What's up?" Dawn asked, nodding toward the phone.

"Edie was already gone when I got back from my run," Corrie said, listening to the phone ring. It cut off mid-ring and wasn't answered. She frowned at it and put it back in her pocket. "She doesn't have any classes this early and she's usually still asleep when I get back. I don't know where she is. Hey, Roe." With Roe joining them, they headed down the stairs.

"And she didn't answer?" Dawn asked.

Corrie shook her head. "But it didn't go to voicemail. I guess she just shut it off."

"She might be at the library or something," said Roe. "Not supposed to talk on your phone there."

"That's a good point," said Dawn. "It's getting more and more crowded these days, with finals coming up. She probably didn't get as much work done last night as she wanted to."

"True," said Corrie, but she still felt troubled. Edie's day yesterday had been pretty awful, and Corrie tried not to worry about her all the time, but she couldn't help it when she wasn't around.

They had some breakfast—Corrie piled on the eggs and poured herself a large cup of coffee to make up for yet another night low on sleep—and about ten minutes before the three of them had to leave for class, Edie showed up. Corrie sat up straight with a sigh of relief and waved. Edie smiled and waved back, but didn't join them until she had gotten some food.

"Where were you this morning?" Corrie asked her. "You didn't answer your phone."

"Oh, shoot, I forgot about that. Sorry." Edie took her phone out of her pocket and looked at it. "If I'd noticed it was you I would have gone outside to talk or something."

"It's okay," Corrie said. "I just didn't know where you'd gone off to."

"The library," said Edie.

"I was right!" said Roe with a grin.

"I'll probably be there a lot for the next couple of weeks," Edie said apologetically. "I have a lot to study up on, and I think I'd like to focus on my schoolwork for a while."

Corrie nodded and slurped up the last of her coffee. "Yeah, I don't blame you. Maybe I'll join you some of those times."

"We can make a group thing of it," said Dawn. "I'll be working some extra hours starting next week. Of course, that depends on whether any other crises assail us."

Corrie tapped Annie's poster, sitting on the bench next to her. "I guess we'll find out soon. Ready to head to class?"

She gave Edie a hug around the shoulders before she left, and Edie smiled up at her. Corrie really hoped she would be okay. If only someone could actually find Leila and talk to her to find out why she was in Faerie. Maybe one of the other campus faeries would do it... not that she could ask any of them. Maybe Ever.

"Oh," she said out loud on the way to class.

"What is it?" Roe asked.

"I just had a thought. Humans can't go to Faerie, right, and the faeries—or at least Professor Lal—won't."

"Right," said Roe.

"Well, what about the Djanaea? Maybe Troy can go there without messing things up."

"Do you think it would be any easier for him than for a human?" Dawn asked.

"I don't know." She shrugged. "But Roe would know better than me..."

Roe's eyes widened for a moment, then she shook her head. "I don't have the first idea. But I could ask them."

Corrie wanted to bug her about whether she was still dating Troy, but it was clear Roe didn't really want to talk about it. Every other time one of them had brought it up, she'd changed the subject. So she kept quiet about it.

They took their usual seats in the front of class, but Corrie couldn't decide what to do with the poster. Finally she got up and set it behind Professor Lal's desk, leaning so it couldn't be seen from the front. If sleeping under it was giving Annie nightmares again, she didn't think that hanging onto it could be safe, anyway. Better to leave it where the professor would see it when she came in.