Chatoyant College Book 7: Upon What Soil

Chapter 5: It's Real Food

A couple of hours later, when someone knocked on their door, Corrie had gotten two pages done and was feeling much better about her paper. It only needed to be ten pages; if she could get three more pages tonight, which she was pretty sure she could do, then she would be done her rough draft. It might not be a great rough draft, but that's what they were for. She hoped Professor Lal would tell her what to do to make it a good enough paper.

While Edie went to answer the door, Corrie grabbed a scratch-paper notebook by her desk and jotted down the ideas she had for the rest of the paper so she wouldn't forget them while doing other things. Hopefully, it was some of their other friends wanting to get dinner. Her stomach grumbled, though it was still early.

"Working on that paper for Professor Lal?" came Dawn's voice.

Corrie turned sideways in her seat and saw that Dawn and Rico had both come in, holding hands. She grinned at them. "Yeah. You're probably done it already, aren't you?"

"Yeah..." Dawn said sheepishly. "But, you know, I have to get these things done. I had to work today and I still have this stupid physics homework to finish."

"Why are you taking physics?" Edie asked.

Dawn shrugged. "I thought it would be fun. You know, I like figuring out how things work. But it's too much math."

"Physics is math," said Rico.

"See, if you'd told me that before I signed up for classes, I might have taken something else. Like, I don't know, something easy. Anyway, I wanted to know if you guys were ready for dinner. I'm starving."

"Me too." Corrie quickly got up and grabbed her jacket from the foot of her bed, where she'd hung it in hopes it would get a little dry before she wanted to go out again. It wasn't dripping water anymore, but it was too damp in the room for anything to dry out properly. "Is it still pouring?"

"I don't think it's quite as bad as it was this afternoon," Rico said, brandishing his umbrella. "But yeah, it's still coming down."

"Well, I can share Edie's umbrella, right, Edie?"

"Right," said Edie, smiling but sitting on her bed.

"Come on," said Corrie. "I know you had that great picnic but the rest of us still have to live with dining hall food."

Edie shook her head and reluctantly stood up. "I'm just still kind of full," she said, picking up her umbrella and folding it up. Some water splattered off it. "But it's true, no dining hall food is going to compare with that."

"You had a picnic, in this weather?" Dawn asked.

Edie started to explain Leila's magic as they went out into the hallway. Corrie interrupted her to point back down the hall. "Where's Naomi?"

"Don't know. Art building, probably. She was in bed when I left this morning and wasn't there when I got back from the library. We should get Annie and Roe, though."

Once they'd collected their other friends, Edie had to start her story about the picnic over again, prompting exclamations of jealousy from both Roe and Annie. Corrie and Dawn exchanged a significant look behind their backs. They were pretty sure Annie wasn't just jealous about the food.

"Ugh, hang on..." said Roe when they reached the outside door. She fumbled with her umbrella and got it open. "Stupid rain. So Edie, where did the food actually come from?"

"I'm not sure," Edie said, raising her voice to be heard over the rain. They all got their umbrellas up and started walking as quickly as they could down the pavement, avoiding the puddles and being even more careful than usual not to step on the waterlogged grass. "She said it was a market and it's too far away for me to go to. It sounds like it might be dangerous for humans to go there."

Corrie felt a tight pinch of worry in her stomach. "Are you sure it was safe for you to eat the food?" she asked Edie quietly.

"I made sure to ask her about that," Edie said, not lowering her voice. "She said it was fine. It's real food, they just use magic when they grow it, I guess. Besides, I'm not stuck in the woods, am I?"

"No, I guess you're not." Corrie let the subject drop as they hurried into the lobby of the building that held the dining hall and shook out their umbrellas and shoes. The whole floor was covered in mud. Apparently not everyone was as careful as they were about walking on the path.

Inside, the dining hall was crowded, despite the relatively early hour, and too noisy to have a conversation and walk at the same time. They snatched up a table that another group was just leaving and dispersed to get some food.