Chatoyant College, Book 12: Reemergence

Chapter 44: Dorms

Friday, April 28

Dawn stretched as she left her Friday afternoon sociology class, enjoying both the pleasant weather and the fact that she was done with classes for the week. Actually, she was done with responsibilities entirely until Sunday afternoon, when she had a shift at the library. Of course, she had to fit her homework and magic practice in during the less than forty-eight hour span (though it was more, if you counted the time she had after her shift at the library) she had, but that was the way she liked to live. She didn't want to give herself too much space to become idle and bored.

Of course, the way things had been going this school year, she might be better off giving herself more downtime. Running into the woods every weekend to deal with the faeries had not been sustainable, and now she had to worry about what the heck Elrath was going to do. Maybe next semester she would sign up for fewer shifts at the library.

Then again, if she tried to do less work in order to make room for supernatural drama, she would probably end up with less supernatural drama. And she had made it work all year so far.

Anyway, she didn't have to sign up for work in the library for the fall semester until the fall semester was actually starting. And for now, she could just enjoy the afternoon she had ahead of her.

She walked back to Gilkey, wondering what she would do. Rico was still in class, and sooner or later, someone would come ask her to come eat dinner. She didn't want to start anything that would be hard to interrupt.

She decided to check the webcomics she kept up with, then read for a bit if she still had time. When she reached her empty room and woke up her computer, she automatically went to check her email first. There was a notice from Chatoyant College—she didn't get those very often. They'd already signed up for the next semester's classes. What could this be?

Dawn opened the email to find that it was a notice about dorm assignments for the next school year. On Monday, the school website would open up a section for students to make their dorm selections. They'd be able to list up to three top choices, with a roommate or roommates selected for each of those choices. Upperclassmen would get first priority, of course, but everyone got to choose.

Dawn looked around her dorm room. She hadn't really thought about it before, but she would be happy to leave Gilkey, even though they had two great RAs. It was a dreary, industrial building, and she was sure its situation next to the bathrooms had given her room a funny smell.

Anyway, there would be different RAs next year—she didn't think Lorelei was graduating, but Charlie was, and Dawn had no guarantee that Lorelei would be at the same dorm next year. She might as well try to get a better room in a better building—with her friends.

She looked around guiltily. Naomi seemed to like having her as a roommate, and Dawn certainly didn't dislike her, but she'd much prefer to live with someone she actually enjoyed hanging out with. The school probably wouldn't let her live with Rico (and that would probably guarantee them an angry breakup anyway, hard as such a thing was to imagine right now), but she could live with Corrie, Edie, Roe, or maybe Annie.

But would Corrie and Edie want to split up? They were so close, and having a built-in roommate you wanted to spend time with would make choices easy. Roe seemed to get along well with her roommate, Talia, but Annie and Salome hardly spoke. She would be easy to get a room with.

A single would be nice, but she didn't think she had much chance of getting one, since the upperclassmen would probably be more interested, and the school didn't have that many singles. Or did they? She'd only seen a few, but she hadn't been in all the dorms. She clicked on a link in the email that listed all the dorms and the types of rooms they had available.

Mary Thomas was actually all singles. Maybe the school had more singles than Dawn had thought. Hickory, of course, had those large suites—it would probably be filled quickly by upperclassmen. Darnel was all men; Richmond was its twin all-women dorm, and it was all doubles. Gilkey she could ignore, but it had doubles available—and triples.

Sayer also had triples available. Maybe that was the solution. She, Corrie, and Edie could put in for a triple in Sayer together. They could even put in a triple in Gilkey as their second choice. That would be easy; then she would be with her closest friends, all in one place.

Though Roe and Annie would be left out. She thought wistfully of the time before she'd come to college, when all she'd known was that she was being assigned a roommate and what her name was. Assignments would be easier, but probably no one would stand for it once they'd gotten to know friends at college.

Before she got her hopes up, anyway, Dawn would have to go see what Corrie and Edie thought. She got up and headed next door.