Chapter 12: Seeking

After a few minutes, Edie shut her book and stood up. "He's not in this one." She went back to the shelves, replaced her 1959 yearbook next to 1958's, and picked up 1960's. "I wonder if he's in this?"

Corrie shrugged, looking up from the 1965 yearbook she was still looking through. "He might be. It occurred to me that he might look different, too."

Edie looked down at the cover of the yearbook. "You're right. Actually, now that I think about it, it's weird that Professor Lal and Ever looked the same in other yearbooks. You'd think they'd be more likely to get caught."

"That's true." Corrie thought for a moment. "Maybe it's that spell again, the one that makes everyone forget about faeries. Most people wouldn't realize that they recognized a face."

"Yeah... that makes sense." Edie sat down again. "Seen Jasmine in any of them?"

Corrie grinned and shook her head. "Not yet. We'll test her on Tuesday, though."

They continued to look through the books. In 1972, Corrie found Professor Lal again, this time as Esperanza Lal. She wondered why she kept the same surname. For that matter, didn't the administration realize they were hiring the same person over and over again? Maybe she pretended to be her own daughter. It was true that she didn't look exactly the same each time. As Esperanza she was thinner than as Marie. But it was also possible that the administration didn't care because they were faeries, too. Corrie remembered meeting some of them--the president and the dean of admissions, at least--when she was applying to schools, but she wouldn't have recognized them for faeries at that point. And she never seemed to see them even when she was in the administration building. Maybe it was time for an expedition.

She stopped appearing after 1979, which surprised Corrie. She recalled that Professor Lal had stuck around for a lot more years in the earlier part of the century. Why had she vanished? And why was she back now? Corrie realized she knew almost nothing about Professor Lal or what she did with her abundant years when she wasn't teaching at Chatoyant College. She had a feeling the faerie professor wouldn't tell her, either.

She continue to look through the yearbooks, but found no one else familiar. After a while, the door opened. "Hi!" said a familiar voice. "Emi told me you'd be in here."

Corrie looked up and grinned to see Dawn. "Hey! Are you done working?"

Dawn shook her head. "I'm on the clock, but I can talk for a few minutes. So you've been looking through the yearbooks again?" She shut the door behind her and leaned against the wall. "Find anything interesting?"

Edie, who had also looked up at Dawn's entrance, shook her head. "I haven't. I thought I might see Marlin somewhere, but no such luck."

Dawn grimaced. "I wouldn't think you'd want to find him."

Edie smiled. "I guess I just kind of wanted proof of his existence. Or maybe it's a morbid curiosity. I don't know."

"What about you, Corrie?" asked Dawn.

"I found Professor Lal again," she said, explaining what she'd seen this time.

"I do wonder what she does when she's not teaching," said Dawn thoughtfully. "Does she go back into the forest with the others?"

Edie looked back down at her yearbook, flipping a few pages back until she reached one of the pages with pictures of professors. "I wonder how many of the people who teach here are faeries."

"I guess we should just bring our clovers everywhere, including to class," Corrie said.

Edie nodded and patted her pocket. "I'm already doing that. Aren't you?"

Corrie laughed. "I guess you're better prepared than I am. I left mine in our room. I'll try to remember it in the future. Neither of you saw anything at the club sign-up thing, did you?"

They both shook their heads. "I almost thought one of those Goddess people was a faerie, but then I realized she just had weird hair," said Dawn.

"Emi said Payton gave her that new haircut," Corrie pointed out. She didn't know which one of them Dawn thought had weird hair (they both had mildly weird but not terribly weird hair, in her opinion), but the association was there.

"Oh yeah?" Dawn gave one of Edie's curls a tug. "Maybe she can give you an interesting new haircut too."

"Do I need a new haircut?" Edie asked, smoothing down her hair self-consciously.

"Only if you want to," said Corrie. "It could be fun." She thought about her own hair, which was, as usual, pulled back in a tight, neat ponytail. She couldn't remember the last time she'd had a different cut. "I might ask for one, actually. If she can give me something practical. I've wanted to change my hair in the past, but I can never find anything that won't fall in my face or something."

"A really short cut wouldn't fall in your face," Dawn pointed out.

"True, but I don't know if I could handle that!"