Edie

Edie watched as Troy held his left hand over his cupped right hand, which held some of the water from the pond (or lake, or whatever it was). He muttered something under his breath--she couldn't hear what it was, but it didn't sound like English, and part of it sounded a little bit like radio static. For a moment nothing happened, then the water glowed very faintly whitish. Troy dropped his hands, shook the water off, and smiled. "Well, it's not quite Lake Michigan," he said, "but it will do. In fact, it's a little more perfect than I was expecting.

Saturday, September 27

The day dawned bright and clear. Or Edie assumed it must have, since it was bright, clear, and relatively warm when she woke up, several hours past dawn. But she'd slept well, and she woke up alert, and they had an interesting day ahead of them. Today Dawn had promised to show them where the park was that had the pond or lake she'd seen.

She showered, dressed, and went to breakfast with Corrie and Dawn. As they were heading back to Gilkey, someone called, "Corrie! Edie!"

Tuesday, September 23

Class seemed like it would be awkward. Edie tried to be normal and act friendly towards Troy, but she kept thinking about what the illusion might be and how they could find out. At least Jasmine had them all get into groups immediately, so they didn't have to talk to or listen to her. (Edie really wished they had ended up in a different Academic Writing class.)

"So what's with your friend Dawn?" Troy asked as they moved their desks to face each other.

Thursday, September 18

Dawn opened the door after just a moment. "Hi! Back from your study session?"

"All done for today," said Corrie. "And it's almost time for the Rainbow Alliance meeting."

"Can we talk in our room?" Edie interjected. "I hope you don't mind but I need to change my pants. These are soaked."

By the time Edie had gotten through the first chapter, Troy was already up again, looking for more books. "This one doesn't really have that much information," he explained. "If I can find better ones we may as well not use it." Edie couldn't argue with that. The book she was going through, though, had a lot of information that she thought they could use for the paper.

A moment later she looked up again as someone approached their table. It was Dawn. "Hi girls, how's it going?" she asked, leaning her elbows on the back of the empty chair.

"This is really boring," Corrie complained.

Wednesday, September 17

Edie hesitated, walking slowly up the stairs, letting the others go ahead of her. "Oh, I'd like to..."

"But?" Leila prompted gently.

Edie sighed. "I already went out once today, and I do have homework to finish, since I didn't do any at all yesterday. I don't think staying up all night would really be helpful at this point. I'm sorry."

When the appetizers arrived, including Edie's salad and Naomi's roasted garlic, Naomi wrinkled her nose at her food. "It still smells like garlic," she complained.

"Yeah, there's no escaping that," said Dawn. Edie thought it smelled good. She took a forkful of salad to distract herself. It wasn't a very interesting salad--just lettuce, tomatoes, and cucumbers with a vinaigrette dressing--but at least it was green lettuce, probably romaine, instead of iceberg.