Chatoyant College Book 5: Parents' Weekend

Chapter 44: We Just Want to Help

Edie's face took on the blackest expression that Dawn had ever seen. She might not have been the most cheerful person (that was Corrie, of course), but she never seemed to get angry, either. At least not like this. Edie's eyebrows had drawn together until there was no space between them. Her eyes narrowed. Her lips tightened and formed into a sneer.

For a moment she didn't do anything else. Then she got up, gripping her sandwich in one hand, and slammed her jar of peanut butter down on her desk. The loud noise made all three of the others jump.

"How dare you?" Edie cried, glaring at Corrie, Annie, and then Dawn in turn. Her voice had gone shrill with anger. "Why would you want to take away the best thing to happen to me in—in my lifetime?"

"We don't want to take it away," said Corrie quickly.

"Yes we do," Dawn corrected her. "If you mean Leila, that is. Because she's not good for you, Edie. She's hidden what she really is from you and from us. How can you trust her after that?"

"I'd hide it from you, too, if I had something that I thought you would react like this to!"

"No, that's not an excuse," said Corrie. "If she wanted us to trust her, she should have shown us the truth from the start. Or told you, at least. But she deliberately hid it."

"I think she must have known that I have the Sight," said Dawn. "The only thing I could see that marked her as a faerie was her ears, and when she knew she would see me, she wore her hair down to hide them."

Edie folded her arms. Her sandwich was getting crushed. "If she was hiding her ears, how did you get a chance to see them at all?"

"She didn't know we were coming! We figured it out, and we came looking for you, but she didn't know that. As soon as she saw me there, she took her hair down again."

Edie shook her head. "Why would she do something so... so ridiculous?"

Dawn sighed. She was starting to get a headache. "She knew I couldn't say anything with you there. If her ears had been visible, we could have forced you to see—touched you with a clover or something—but without that, you would have had to just believe us. She could have reacted before any of the rest of us could. I was afraid of what she might do."

"And it's okay to tell me now?"

"Now you're away from her," Dawn said, nodding, hoping desperately that Edie would understand. "Now you can stay away from her and she can't hurt you."

Edie glared at her. "Leila would never hurt me."

"She might have told you that, but how do you know it's true?" said Annie. Dawn looked at her; Annie had been so quiet, Dawn thought she was letting her and Corrie do all the talking. Annie was clearly not entirely happy about the fact that she was participating. She was standing at the foot of Corrie's bed, almost as far away from Edie as she could get and still be in the room, and her arms were crossed tightly across her chest. But her voice was strong and forceful, not soft and shy like it usually was. Annie took a deep breath. "If she's hiding the truth from you, she could be hiding a lot of other things too. I was holding my four-leaf clover when she came out of the building with her hair up. I saw her ears, too. They're green and pointy! Human beings don't have ears like that!"

"They especially don't have ears like that that other people can't see," added Corrie. "You don't have to believe us right away, Edie. I understand. I wouldn't want to believe that Byron was a faerie if someone told me he was. But it's so easy to check! Next time you see her, just touch your clover."

Edie was shaking her head, hard, before Corrie had even finished speaking. "No. I'm not letting you get to me. And I won't listen to you say nasty things about Leila, either." She turned to her desk and threw the drawers open. She rummaged through her things and threw a notebook, some paper, and two textbooks into her backpack.

Dawn stepped in front of the door. "Don't leave, Edie. Please. We're your friends, we just want to help you!"

Edie pushed her out of the way. Dawn staggered to the side, surprised by the violence. Edie rushed out of the door and slammed it behind her. The noise reverberated throughout the room.