Chatoyant College, Book 1: New Student Orientation

Chapter 31: Party Animals

Edie sat herself down on the floor with the jar of peanut butter and a slice of the wheat bread, but upon opening the jar and looking around, realized that she had to get up again to find a knife. Naomi had a plastic one. By the time she'd gotten the peanut butter spread to her satisfaction, Corrie was back with the popcorn.

"Wow, that smells good," said Dawn. "Gimme."

Corrie laughed and passed it to her. "It's your popcorn."

"It's actually Naomi's," Dawn said. Or at least, that's what Edie thought she said--her mouth was full of popcorn.

"Don't worry," said Naomi with a wink, "we're all sharing today!"

Corrie grinned at Edie, taking the last empty space on the floor. "Peanut butter fan?"

Edie nodded, then suddenly realized how much peanut butter she'd slathered on her bread. "I hope I didn't take too much of your peanut butter!"

"Don't worry about it!" Corrie said, waving her hand dismissively. "I'll just eat your food when you have some."

"Sounds fair," Edie agreed, then bit into the bread. The peanut butter was very sticky, preventing her from opening her mouth for a while, but when it was clear, she had to say, "Wow, that's really good peanut butter."

"It's organic," Corrie said. She'd taken the popcorn back and popped a kernel in her mouth.

"I think I'm a convert. I hope you can get it in the stores here." She was pretty sure she'd never seen organic peanut butter in her hometown grocery store. Then again, she rarely went grocery shopping; she just ate whatever her mom brought home.

They all munched quietly for a few minutes. Edie felt very content, and judging by the expressions on her friends' faces, they were too.

"Boy, we're real party animals, aren't we?" said Naomi after a while. Everyone laughed.

"Well, it's what, not even noon on a Saturday?" Dawn pointed out.

"Yeah, but we did say we were having a fog party."

Edie shrugged. "I've never really gone to parties, except for sleepovers and stuff when I was a kid." Those had dwindled away faster than they probably should have, which she blamed on classmates and their parents becoming uncomfortable with having a lesbian sleep over at their house. "Got any ideas for how to make this more party-like?"

They were all quiet for a while. Edie took another piece of bread and began slathering on the peanut butter--a little less liberally this time. "I don't know," Naomi finally admitted. "The only thing I can think of doing is to invite more people, but I don't know who we would invite, or if we could even fit more people in the room."

"I think there are rules about how many people are allowed to be in a room at one time," Corrie said. "I don't actually remember what the rules are, though."

"I don't think we need more people," Dawn said around a chocolate. "We'd have to share the food!" They giggled.

Having eaten her fill--that organic peanut butter was not only delicious but also filling--Edie wandered over to the window and looked out. The fog was thinner: it looked almost like clouds between them and the ground now, thicker in some places than others and gently moving in the wind. She could see where the paths were now, though the thicker places of fog obscured them. She wondered what they looked like from inside. At least the red emergency lights shone through.

"How's it look, Edie?" Dawn asked.

"Better," she said, turning and walking back to them. "It looks actually possible to walk around now."

"I'll be the judge of that," Corrie said, scrambling to her feet and looking out the window. "Yeah, you're right. Much better than when I was running through it. I see people walking around, even--looks like people are starting to move in."

"Well, I'm done eating," declared Naomi. "Want to go on that shopping trip?"

Edie looked down at her bare feet. "Let me go put some shoes on and I'll be ready."

"Sounds good," said Dawn. "We'll meet in the hall in two minutes."

Corrie picked up her peanut butter and crackers, and she and Edie went down the hall to their room. Edie slipped on a pair of sandals and grabbed her purse, which she'd knitted herself from recycled silk yarn, and they went out to the hall to find Dawn and Naomi there and ready. They all walked down the hall and down the steps. The stairwell was clear for the first couple of flights, but once they got down to the third floor they had to squeeze past upperclassmen and their families with boxes and suitcases. There were a lot of complaints about the lack of an elevator, but surprisingly few about the fog, even when they got outside.

Edie noticed that while the students themselves seemed to mostly stick to the paths (at least, she assumed they were the students, based on their apparent ages--a little older than her), their families weren't as careful. Still, they had to excuse themselves and squeeze around groups several times before they reached the wide-open front gates and the crowd spread out. The fog seemed to be much thinner once they'd gotten outside the gates, too, though that impression could have been just because it was less crowded.

"I don't suppose you have a map of the town, Corrie," Dawn said as they made their way carefully across the street (it was full of people double-parking anyway) toward the town.

Corrie shook her head. "Would be nice, wouldn't it? But it's supposed to be a pretty small place, so we can probably just wander around until we find something."