Chatoyant College Book 7: Upon What Soil

Chapter 14: Theories

They hurried past a metal rack that was empty of merchandise, only sporting a few scattered feathers, bits of glitter, and abandoned plastic bags along the bottom. The store looked really pathetic like this. Edie was standing by a tall box of posters. There were only a few things left in it. "Sorry," she said as they approached. "I thought you guys were behind me. You must not have heard me when I said I saw posters."

Corrie shrugged. "Sorry. This place is a little mazelike. Did you find something?"

"Yeah, isn't it cool?" Edie unrolled her poster and held it out to display a lushly painted fantasy landscape featuring a woman in a diaphanous dress putting her arms around a unicorn's neck. "I figure if it's going to show up in my dreams, this is the kind of thing I want there."

Dawn grinned. "It looks great to me. So you guys really think that posters above beds get affected by magic somehow?" She poked at the posters inside the box. She could see even from here that all but one of them were badly torn. She picked up the intact one, glanced at the picture, and quickly put it down again. Muscle-bound guys wearing wrestling uniforms might be nice in theory, but she was pretty sure that if they showed up in her dreams, she wouldn't be happy about it come morning.

"That must have something to do with it," Edie said, rolling up her folder. "From what Annie told us and the way Corrie's has been acting..."

"What about Link?" Naomi asked. "You said that was someone else you asked about posters."

Corrie nodded. "Troy said he has a poster of a rock band, but he's never noticed anything weird about it. I don't know if it's over his bed, though. Oh look, there's some candy." She pointed to the other end of the store, and they started making their way there, past the sad-looking empty racks.

"I don't think this is going to work for me, though," said Edie.

"Why not?" Dawn asked.

"I think it's just Corrie and Annie. They probably have some kind of latent magic. Roe said that people around her would be affected by it if they did."

Dawn nodded slowly. She did remember Roe saying that. "And you don't think you have any latent magic?"

Edie shrugged. "I think if I did I would have noticed already, like they did. But I'm willing to try it anyway."

"My theory is that posters are somehow weirdly affected by the magic on the campus," said Corrie. They had reached the candy. This was pretty picked over as well, but the selection wasn't as minimal as it had been at their regular grocery store. "You know, the magic that makes people forget about faeries. Now that I think about it, fantasy posters are probably even more affected. Annie's poster is of faeries." Corrie grinned. "And of course, David Bowie is a goblin..."

"So if your theory is correct, it should work with Edie's poster, too, with the elf and the unicorn," said Naomi.

Edie unrolled her poster again. "Is it an elf?"

"Yeah." Naomi pointed at the woman. Dawn couldn't see it, so she focused on picking out some candy. There were two bags of miniature Snickers, and she grabbed both of them. No need to buy candy only for the party, after all.

Corrie and Naomi picked out some candy too, then Corrie held out a couple of bags to Edie. She took them, frowning, and put one back. "You can bring that to the party as your offering," Corrie said hopefully.

Edie smiled and shook her head. "I don't think so. I'm sure you guys will have fun, but like I said, Leila and I already have plans."

"She can come too," said Naomi. "It'll be fun. I'm sure she would like it..."

"I'll ask her," Edie said, "but I really doubt she'll be interested."

"Oh well, it was worth a shot." Naomi hefted a few bags of different kinds of candy. "Are we done, then?"

"Yeah," said Corrie. "I was tempted to get a costume to wear anyway, but nothing that's left here is worth the money, unless I wanted to dress up as a sexy witch. And I could do that without a costume."

"Oh jeez, don't let those guys hear you say that," Naomi muttered as they headed for the counter. The boys had stopped spraying fake blood and were now laughing uproariously at something they had hidden behind the counter. Dawn was quite sure she didn't want to see whatever it was.

The sun was already setting by the time they got out of there with their purchases. Of course, it was getting close to the end of autumn. But Dawn still wanted to invite Tom to the party, and she didn't like the idea of going into the woods after dark.