Chatoyant College Book 5: Parents' Weekend

Chapter 47: Don't Lie to Professor Lal

Monday, October 6

Corrie was sure she'd only laid her head down on her desk for a moment. The fake wood was nice and cool, and it felt soothing against her skin. But somehow Professor Lal managed to get from behind her desk, where she was drawing symbols of the four elements on the blackboard, to directly in front of Corrie's desk without Corrie noticing.

She sat up immediately, as soon as she'd realized who was standing over her desk. Unfortunately, that meant pulling her face away from the desk a little too fast for comfort. It pulled. She tried not to wince.

"Didn't get much sleep last night, hmm?" asked Professor Lal.

No matter the context, Corrie never thought it was a good idea to lie to Professor Lal. She always seemed to know. Not that Corrie had ever personally lied to her, but there was something in the way she either nodded or pursed her lips when someone offered an excuse for not having been at the last class or not having done the reading. And in this particular case, anyway, it was probably a good idea to tell Professor Lal everything that had been going on, if they could. "Sorry, Professor Lal, I didn't," Corrie said. "I was unexpectedly busy this weekend and stayed up most of the night doing my homework."

There had been a short break from the homework when Edie came home, but that hadn't lasted as long as Corrie had hoped it might. It was after midnight and Edie had gone straight to bed without speaking to her or Dawn. Edie had tossed and turned for quite a while after that, but never gotten up to do anything, let alone speak to her friends. Worrying about her roommate hadn't helped Corrie get her homework done any faster.

Professor Lal arched her perfectly manicured eyebrows. "Then you have, I take it, read the handout." Corrie nodded. It hadn't been easy to concentrate on, but she'd read it. Professor Lal asked, "In that case, what does Waite say is the reason the High Priestess's robe covers part of her scroll?"

That was a surprisingly easy question. Corrie knew she hadn't absorbed all of the information about the Tarot Trumps in her reading, since she'd been both worried and tired, but she could at least picture the different cards and try to remember what words had corresponded with the picture. "It's to show that some things are spoken and some things are implied," she said.

Professor Lal nodded and turned, walking back to the board. "See me after class," she said, almost as an afterthought. Corrie nodded, even though the professor couldn't see her, and, now that all of the elemental symbols were on the board, she set herself to copying them into her notebook.

There were only a few minutes left in class. Corrie put her things away and waited while the rest of the class filed out. Dawn and Roe stayed behind with her.

Professor Lal, leaning on her desk as she often did, folded her arms and smiled at them, a smile that was mostly amused but a little sardonic. "I should have known that anything involving Corrie would involve you two as well. What have you three been up to all weekend?"

"It wasn't just us," said Corrie. "Dawn's roommate was there too, and our friend Annie. The problem is with Edie."

"Edie?" The professor's smile faded. "She's the friend of yours who Marlin went after, isn't she?"

Corrie nodded. "Unfortunately."

"She's not having any continued effects of what he did to her, I hope. There shouldn't be anything."

"No," said Dawn, "though I do think she's more on edge than she used to be because of it."

Professor Lal nodded. "Well, that's understandable. What is the problem, then?"

Corrie glanced away from her, looking at Dawn and Roe, trying to figure out how to bring up the subject of Leila. What if it upset Professor Lal? Did she know Leila? Well, that was probably a place to start. She turned back to the professor. "Do you know someone named... or calling herself... Leila? She's a theater major and she has long red hair."

"Yes." A tiny wrinkle had appeared between the professor's brows. Corrie wondered what Dawn, with her Sight, was seeing of that expression. She decided she was already nervous enough that she didn't want to touch her clover to find out. "I suppose you three wouldn't be asking me about her if you didn't already know she was a faerie, so I won't bother hiding that from you."

Roe gulped. "I... wasn't sure..."

"I was," said Dawn firmly. "I saw her ears. Professor Lal, I'm pretty sure she knew I had the Sight. The first time she met me, when she knew she was going to, she had her hair down, covering her ears. The second time, I only got a glimpse of her before she took her hair down. I know she was hiding from me."