Chatoyant College Book 2: Initiates

Chapter 38: Control of One's Faculties

They started to walk again. Then a voice came from behind them. "Two girls, Byron? I knew you had that name for a reason."

Byron laughed and turned to beckon to the person who had spoken. "One girl and one friend, Mike. This is Corrie and her friend Edie."

Corrie hastily grabbed onto her keys as Mike came into view; he, thankfully, appeared to be human too. He shook her free hand. "Welcome to the theater parties, Corrie and Edie."

They all walked together towards the woods. Corrie had thought it would be even darker in there, but instead it was light. After a moment, she realized that there were several strings of Christmas lights hung around the trees. At least a dozen people were already gathered there. Byron and Mike were greeted enthusiastically. Mike immediately turned to the left to join several people grouped around a hookah. Byron walked over to a guy with long, straggly brown hair and a short girl with pink hair, Corrie and Edie following him with caution. Corrie still had hold of her keys, but as she looked around, nothing seemed out of place--though it seemed to her that a few yards past where they were, just beyond where the light from the party failed, there was a line that they should not cross. She relaxed, letting go of the keys and settling her purse into a more natural position. Now she'd lost her sense of where the line was, but nothing else had changed.

"Corrie and Edie, meet Gareth and Wendy," Byron was saying. They were standing by an old concrete wall on which was balanced a large bowl of punch, bottles of various kinds, and a bowl of chips. Corrie could see more concrete walls, some of them broken down, beyond them.

"Cute," said the girl, Wendy. "Which one's the lesbian?"

"Um, that's me," Edie said nervously.

Wendy looked her up and down, then grinned. "Yeah, Leila's going to like you."

"She--she will?" Edie stammered, looking surprised and hopeful. Corrie was hopeful too; she wondered what this Leila was like.

"Sure!" Wendy said, grinning even wider. "Just keep up that shy act--she'll gobble it right up. You guys want something to drink? Gareth made the punch."

"Whoa," said Byron, laughing. "If Gareth made it, don't drink it unless you want to get really stoned really fast."

"That's right," said Gareth, a slow grin spreading across his face. He picked up a plastic cup and ladled a hefty serving of punch into it, then offered the cup to Byron.

"Not today," said Byron, holding his hands up to reject the cup. "I want to be aware of my actions, at least for a while."

"Okay," said Gareth, seeming a little disappointed.

He offered it to Edie and Corrie, but they both declined. Then a tall girl, her dark hair in a very long braid, rushed up on Corrie's side. "Did I hear something about Gareth punch?"

"Yeah," said Gareth, grinning again. "Here you go."

She accepted the cup and took a careful sip. She closed her eyes as she swallowed, then opened them, a dreamy smile on her face. "Yeah, that's good. I'm'a go sit down for a while." She wandered off.

"Wow," said Corrie, shaking her head. "I don't think I'll be trying that..."

"You seem like a hard lemonade kind of girl," said Byron, handing her one.

She couldn't help but grin; of the few kinds of alcohol she'd tried in high school, hard lemonade had definitely been her favorite. "Thanks!"

"Do you have anything... non-alcoholic?" Edie asked.

"Sure." Wendy tapped a cooler that Corrie hadn't noticed before with her foot. "Sodas of all kinds."

When they all had drinks--Byron had a beer--he led them around to another partially collapsed part of the concrete structure, where two walls had fallen with a little space between them, like a pair of benches. He sat down on one and Corrie and Edie sat down across from him. "What did this used to be, do you know?" Corrie said, patting the rough concrete with her free hand.

"Old incinerator," he said. "It hasn't been used in decades, obviously. It's ugly, but functional."

"Is this usually where you have your parties?"

He nodded. "I think theater majors have been using it ever since it closed down. You can't see too well in this light, but there's graffiti and paintings all over it."

Corrie could see that on the wall Byron was sitting on there was some unreadable graffiti and a painting of two trees on either side of a sparkling lake.

"So you haven't seen that ex recently, have you?"

"No, thankfully he's been leaving me alone. But he had left me alone for a few days before, so I don't know how long it'll last." She shrugged. "I hope it's more permanent this time. It's still hard to believe that he actually gave up the really good schools he got into just to follow me here."

They talked for a while longer about classes and other inconsequential topics, Edie occasionally commenting or answering questions but being much quieter than both Byron and Corrie; they could hear more and more people coming to the party area, the buzz of conversation grew louder, though none came over to them except to say a brief hello to Byron.