Chatoyant College Book 5: Parents' Weekend

Chapter 36: Two Faces

Naomi and Dawn barely looked up when Corrie returned. She dropped herself down on the beanbag chair with a sigh from both her and the chair. "Find anything?" she asked, though she was sure she knew the answer.

Dawn shook her head, then reached the end of a page and looked up. "Where have you been all this time?"

"I wanted to stretch my legs, and I ran into a couple of friends of Byron's. They didn't really tell me anything I didn't already know, but they don't seem to like Leila much either." Corrie bent down for one of the yearbooks that was on the floor and flipped it open to a random page. Then she jumped. The beanbag rustled and let out more air.

Naomi and Dawn both looked at her immediately. "Did we miss anything?" Naomi asked eagerly.

Corrie shook her head, still staring at the picture in front of her. "No, I don't think so, unless one of you is taking a history class." She had opened the book to one of the pages that had pictures of professors, and showed them the one that had startled her. It was an old man, his face wreathed with wrinkles, his expression grim. "Professor Drehmer. I have him for my intro to history class. He still looks exactly the same."

"He looks cranky," observed Naomi.

"He kind of is." Corrie turned the picture back toward herself and shook her head. "I checked him. With a clover, I mean. And I didn't se anything, obviously, or I would have told you. But... I guess this is proof that someone can be a faerie, or at least immortal, without necessarily using a glamour."

"Why can't they ever make things easy for us?" Naomi complained.

Corrie and Dawn both laughed. Dawn said, "You're really taking this well, Naomi. I was afraid you wouldn't believe me at first, but I never thought you would get comfortable with the idea of being surrounded by faeries so easily."

Naomi shrugged one shoulder and frowned. "Well, they're not really surrounding us, are they?"

"No," said Dawn quickly. "I guess that wasn't quite the right choice of words. They're around, but I'm pretty sure there's a lot more humans than faeries."

Naomi nodded, looking relieved. "Well, I think the reason I've been able to accept it so quickly is that I have something to do about it. If we were just sitting around doing homework or something, then the next time the idea of faeries came up, I would probably be surprised. But we're working on finding one, so I'm able to keep what you told me in my head." She turned back to her yearbook.

Corrie turned back to her book as well, though she was starting to despair of finding anything. That would have been a good thing, except that she was so sure there was something going on with Leila. They needed proof if they were going to say anything to Edie.

"Oh!" said Dawn suddenly. "I think this is her!"

Corrie and Naomi both scrambled to their feet and went around behind the chair Dawn was sitting in so they could see what she was looking at. Her finger was on a page of graduating seniors, right below a picture. It was black-and-white, but the face looked just like Leila's, and she was dressed like Leila usually was, too, with a dark turtleneck and her hair up in a severe bun. The name listed was Ariana Comstock.

"You're right," said Corrie, her voice coming out sounding strangled. "That looks just like her, at least."

"Her name is different, though," said Naomi in a hushed voice.

Dawn nodded. "This could be a relative of Leila's—her mom or aunt or something."

"But it could also be her," Corrie said grimly. "Well, we can go downstairs to the computers and see if we can get any more information on this Ariana Comstock. Unless there's more about her in the book."

They paged through the yearbook together, looking for any other picture or reference to Ariana Comstock, but none was forthcoming. Finally they closed the book, put all of them back on the shelf in order, and trooped downstairs.

It had gotten dark while they were in that little room, and outside the wind was starting to whine. The library was even emptier than before. The three of them huddled together in front of one of the computers and searched first the school website, then Google for Ariana Comstock. There were evidently plenty of people with that name (giving twenty-three results), but none of them seemed to have attended Chatoyant College.

"No record is pretty convincing to my mind," said Dawn. "There's no record of Ever, either. And I doubt there's any of Marlin."

"There has to be some record of Professor Lal," Corrie said.

"Yeah, but if she decided to disappear, I bet most people would forget about her pretty quickly."