Chatoyant College, Book 1: New Student Orientation

Chapter 11: Not in High School Anymore

They returned to the dorm after dinner. They said goodbye to Rico and Duncan at the fourth floor, then headed up. As soon as they were on their own hall and safely behind the mostly-soundproof fire door, Corrie burst out, "You like him!"

"I do not!" exclaimed Dawn, turning bright red.

"Oh yeah?" teased Edie, grinning. "Then how did you know she was talking to you?"

"Maybe she wasn't! How do you know she didn't mean you?"

Corrie and Edie both laughed. "I'm a lesbian," she giggled.

"Uh. Naomi?" Dawn looked down at her roommate hopefully.

Naomi shook her head, still grinning (though the only time Edie had seen her lose the grin when she had discovered at dinner that her pizza was frozen in the middle and ceremoniously taken it over to the trash). "Don't try to pin this on me. We all know who we're talking about here."

"Oh," said Dawn, deflating a little. "Well, I still told the truth," she added defensively.

Edie and Corrie exchanged knowing looks. "Right," said Corrie, trying to hide her smile.

"Sure." Dawn stuck her tongue out. "You could have meant Duncan."

They giggled about it the rest of the way to Corrie and Edie's room. "So you admit it, then," Corrie said, grinning over her shoulder as she unlocked the door and let them all in.

Dawn sighed, plopping herself down on Edie's bed and still smiling. "Well, yeah. It's silly to claim I don't like somebody when I really do. I don't even know why I said I didn't--just an automatic reaction, I guess."

Corrie nodded. "It was pretty juvenile of me to tease you like that, too. Sorry."

"Wow, you two sound like grownups," said Edie. She shook her head in disbelief. "We're really not in high school anymore, are we?"

"Nope," said Corrie, seating herself cross-legged on her own bed. "Time to grow up."

"Hardly!" protested Naomi. She had situated herself on the floor, laying on her stomach with her chin in her hands. "College is time to figure out who we are and what we want, away from our families and our high school friends."

"Well... our families, anyway," muttered Corrie. "But you're right, Naomi. This is the time we have with the least responsibilities and the fewest people with expectations of us beyond passing our classes. We should take advantage of it."

"But how do we do that?" Edie sighed. The only identity she'd ever had outside of the context of her family and friends was her sexual orientation. That was why she was so glad to have made friends already--she had less work, less to think about. She could just go with their flow. But then again, she had already started with a new identity, hadn't she? Corrie had taken away the old, frumpy name of Edith that had gotten her mocked all the way into junior year of high school, and replaced it with Edie, which was cuter, cheerier, and maybe more her own. If nothing else, it was different.

"I guess we just have to figure that out," Dawn said, stretching. "I mean, that's part of the fun, isn't it? Just... experiment. Try things and find out if you like them."

It was an interesting idea, Edie thought, but she didn't know what to try. Even if she did think of something, how would she overcome her natural inclination to avoid it? She was trying the new nickname, and that seemed to be working out pretty well, but she would never have thought of it on her own, and if Corrie hadn't already introduced her with it to a few people, she would probably either forget about it or get flustered when it was time to introduce herself to someone and err on the side of comfort. Yes, that was exactly it; she was afraid to do things that weren't comfortable. She wanted to change if she could, to discover herself--but was even that impulse only there because her new friends had suggested it? How did she escape this cycle?