Chatoyant College Book 7: Upon What Soil

Chapter 9: Pizza

At dinner, the topic of the craft fair came up again, when Corrie, Dawn, and Roe told the rest of the group about how Roe's vision had turned out to refer to it, and that something would explode in glitter at some point. "It's too bad we didn't know about this craft fair earlier," Corrie said to Edie. "You could have sold some knitted stuff or something."

Edie shook her head quickly. She'd been afraid Corrie would ask her about that. "I don't knit fast enough for it to be worth it. Anyway, I would hate to have to sit there all day and try to sell stuff. I'll be happy going for a couple of hours with you guys."

"I wish I'd known about it earlier," said Naomi, stabbing a string bean with her fork. "I could totally sell stuff. Patchwork skirts or hair wraps or something. And if we'd had time to prepare, we could have made a whole bunch of those steel bracelets—maybe some copper ones too—and sold those for a lot more money than we paid for the wire."

"That would have been good," Dawn said, frowning. "I mean, we might not be able to tell people about the faeries, but if we could get them to protect themselves while pretending it was just jewelry, that would make the whole school safer."

"I thought of that too," said Corrie. "But Tricia says there might be another craft fair in the spring, so hopefully you guys can sign up for that one."

"I'd be okay with that, I think," Edie said. "As long as Naomi does most of the selling."

Naomi grinned. "You can count on me. I just hope there's some cool stuff on Saturday. I wouldn't mind some glitter."

"I'll tell you where to stand, if I can figure it out ahead of time," said Roe. "Then you can get covered in glitter from the exploding craft."

"Awesome!"

"Are you okay, Edie?" Annie asked quietly from Edie's left side.

Edie looked over at her, surprised. Annie had been so quiet for the whole conversation that Edie had almost forgotten she was there. "Sure, I'm fine. Why do you ask?"

Annie pointed at her plate. "You've eaten the peppers and olives off your pizza but nothing else."

Edie looked down, mildly surprised. She did sometimes pick the vegetables off her pizza and eat them first, but usually the pizza smelled so good that she gave up quickly—even if it was the slightly rubbery Chatoyant College dining hall pizza. "Huh. I guess I'm not that hungry." She wasn't sure if that was true, since her stomach still felt a little hollow, but it would explain why the greasy smell wasn't affecting her much.

"That's why I asked. You might be coming down with a cold or something."

"Maybe I am. That would suck." Edie picked up the pizza. "Better get my strength up just in case." She took a huge bite of the pizza, shoving half the slice into her mouth, and Annie laughed.

After they'd all eaten (Edie still felt a little hungry, but even perusing the desserts she didn't see anything that seemed worth the effort to eat—if she was coming down with a cold and her nose was stuffed up, that would explain part of it), they headed back to their dorm rooms to try to get some homework done. Before Edie sat down, though, she noticed Corrie going directly to her bed and looking at the poster on her wall. "Still on 'curious,'" she said, and laughed.

Edie felt a mild foreboding at that. "What do you mean?"

Corrie was moving the sticker from one smiley face to another. From here, Edie couldn't see which they were. "Oh, I moved it to 'curious' this morning to see if it would move on its own. I kept checking it and it hasn't, so I'm just going to put it back on 'happy.'"

"Why 'curious'?" Edie asked, walking over to see what Corrie was doing. Sure enough, the sticker was now over the face with the wide smile.

Corrie shrugged. "I guess because I was curious to see what would happen."

"You should still keep an eye on it," Edie pointed out. "Maybe it moves off 'happy' because you're always sticking it there and it doesn't stick as well anymore." She didn't really think that was the case, though. It couldn't really be a coincidence that both Annie and Corrie had posters that were acting weird, could it? She should have asked Zip about the poster sale in French class today.

"That could be it," Corrie agreed. "For now, though, it's time to read some Great Gatsby. Buckets of fun!"

Edie laughed and agreed. She'd already read The Great Gatsby twice, though, so she didn't need to read the chapter assigned for the next day's class. Instead, she got on her computer to work on an essay.