Lets Not Study, Together [open]

[Stacee Young]

The sixteen year old eleventh year sat in her dorm room and stared out the window. The sun was shining brightly with only a few wispy clouds passing by. She was so transfixed by the slow movements of the clouds that she didn't even notice all the activity on the playing field below. Apparently, in a game of soccer, one of the players got hit in the face. Now his nose was broken and blood was just running down his face. The other players rushed up to him, then two started leading him into the building and off to the infirmary. Stacee Young did not notice any of this.

She finally glanced away from the sky and down to the field. She wondered for a moment why all the players were just standing around, but shrugged it off. Maybe they were just tired of playing. She turned around and grabbed one of her school books and her bag and left the room. It was such a nice day. Being inside seemed like a crime.

Stacee walked outside and down towards the playing fields. Now the fields were clearing. Apparently the games were over. She spotted a couple of trees providing shade to a few other students, each sitting by themselves reading a book or studying. She walked towards them and found her own tree to sit under. She set her book down in the grass then dug into her bag for a highlighter. Once found, she opened up her book and started reading. The chapter was supposed to be read by the next day, however since it was over twenty pages long she highly doubted her attention span would last long enough to finish it. She might as well read a bit of it though. She looked up for a second to watch a moment of another game of soccer which was starting, then began reading once more.

[Corentin Quimper]

Corentin had been laughing inwardly at the boy who had gotten hit with the soccer ball, then rushed off to the infirmary within moments. She could have sworn that she saw the good looking boy crying as he limped away, his friend holding a towel against his nose as blood spurted out. For a moment, she wished it had been the boy with the fancy hat she had met on her first day at school, thinking that the injury might have knocked him down a notch. Then again, a boy with that much self absorption probably even bled prettily. The thin blonde girl had positioned herself comfortably under an oak tree, spreading out a flannel, pink and white plaid blanket and littering it with her study supplies. Notebook paper, pink erasers, and a textbook were spread out on the ground while Corentin herself had laid down on her stomach. The only thing she regretted about this school in England was that she had left her entire posse of friends back in the United States. Though she wasn’t exactly keen on the bubbling squeals of girls her age and didn’t really understand the issues they seemed to have with their lives, a part of her missed the companionship school friends provided.

“And so... That means...” Corentin spoke aloud before tapping her pencil against her algebra homework. She had never understood this concept, failing to grasp the purpose of math in its entirety. She stared at the page. The pencil tapped. A girl sitting against the trunk of another tree gave her a dirty look as the referee blew a whistle while Corentin shot an apologetic smile at the other girl. Inwardly, she muttered a coarse word but continued to look at her homework. Just as she was about to consider it impossible and pack her things up in order to pay a visit to her professor, the tenth year noticed another blonde girl that settled in near her. Stealing a glance toward her, she assessed her quickly. The new arrival in the study patch looked similar to a friend of hers back home and brought back a slight feeling of nostalgia. She looked down at the page in her book again and made a decision. Gracefully, with the lilt of a dancer, Corey rose to her feet. Grabbing a pencil with a pink gummy cap eraser, she strode over to the girl she had never seen. The girl looked a bit older than her, but not by much, so Corentin figured she had already been through the math class Somnium Academy.

Standing over the girl who seemed absorbed in her own book, Corentin cast a much bigger shadow than the mass she actually took up. Her voice was sweetly southern as she spoke, kneeling down at the same time, her book clutched to her chest. “You wouldn’t happen to understand this junk, would you?” Corentin didn’t wait for an invitation, but settled herself down confidently next to the other student. “I’m Corey, by the way. Am I bothering you terribly?” The slim girl smiled brightly, her dark hazel eyes sparkling ever-so-slightly as she introduced herself and set her book full of linear equations.

[Stacee Young]

Stacee sat in silence as she read her book. She noted an important sentence and ended up highlighting the entire paragraph just for good measure. Her teacher was not the brightest one at Somnium Academy, and she had once received a B on a paper which she spent a mere ten minutes on. She had not even looked at the assigned reading to go with the paper, nor did she request a summary from one of her classmates. But it was history, which was easy to make up if you knew general facts. Stacee hated history though. It was her worst subject. She was much better in English and did well in her math classes. Even science was alright most of the time, but history was agonizing. She could not focus for more then a few minutes. She had only been sitting under the tree reading for a few minutes and already she was distracted. First a butterfly flew directly in front of her face, causing her to look up. Then one of the soccer players, a thirteenth year she did believe, became to warm and pulled off his shirt. Apparently he worked out. A lot.

"Must read," Stacee murmured to herself as she drew her eyes away from the boy and back down to her book. She had only read half a page when she was interrupted once again, this time by a girl, possibly a tenth year, with short blond hair with hazel eyes. Well, she was not getting anywhere with this reading anyway. So she looked away from her book and over to the book the other girl was holding. Algebra. She understood algebra, so much better than history.

"Yea, actually I kinda do. What are you working on?" Stacee asked as she snapped her history book shut. She tossed it to the side, not caring if it landed on a rock or in a puddle. Heck, if there was a lake near she would just chuck it in there. The poor thing already looked as if it got dropped in a wood chipper. The entire binding was held together with duck tape. Miracle tape would be a better name for it. That stuff fixes everything.

Then Stacee remembered the girl's second question. "Oh, and of course you are not bothering me. I wasn't doing anything important. And I am Stacee," she said with a smile. Her British accent made it clear that she was born and raised here in England, her gray eyes now looking at the girl making herself comfortable on the grass beside her. Hopefully she hadn't forgotten the algebra skills needed for whatever section the girl is on now.

[Corentin Quimper]

The girl’s accent was lovely, and though Corentin didn’t like many things, British accents were something she had found herself leaning toward liking since arriving in England. The accent somehow had the tendency to make anyone who spoke with it seem more intelligent, as compared to southern accents. Southern accents, on the other hand, could go either way and most often made those with thick accents sound entirely uneducated. Corentin was all about the display of obvious intelligence without cockiness. Overall though, she was simply entranced by British accents and the novelty hadn't worn off yet, though she'd only be overseas for a little while.

“They’re.. Linear equations.” She gazed longingly at the next level history book the girl held, knowing that she had already finished all of her history homework for the week. The girl wistfully thought of everything she already knew about French and British history, lingering on the military strategies used during war, a topic she was completely obsessed with. She loved history, adored it, and excelled at memorization because she often remembered exactly what she read. It wasn’t like math, the maze of numbers that seemed to have no rhyme or reason. People had told her again and again that after one learned simple sets of rules in math, rules could be applied in any situation and problems could be solved one after another. Corentin thought it was all poppycock, to use a polite term, and was convinced that math classes could possibly be a conspiracy to secretly drive only her crazy. Her eyes traveled to the jumble of numbers on the page, the even ones circled because those were the only ones whose answers weren’t in the back of the book. It would always appear highly suspicious that she seemed to get all of the odd numbers perfectly correct and none of the even answers even near being right, but she understood enough to pass the class, most often.

Corentin accepted the fact that she would sometimes fall short in some areas, but usually preferred to make it appear as if she didn’t. It was easier dealing with friends as compared to family because her parents were very focused on grades. Friends always understood failures as a characteristic that made someone less than perfect, someone who was human enough to be around. She was fully convince that people only hung out with others that they could see the faults in, if only to make themselves feel a little better on the inside. She would never say that statement out loud because it would sooner scare people off than bring them closer. Corentin, though empty and vain inside, knew the importance of popularity and the advantages it brought. Life was simply a measure of getting a feeling of what people wanted and giving that to them, then complaining about it inwardly later for Corentin.

She was satisfied with living life inside her head and forcing her body to do what needed to be done in the real world. No one would know the difference because she had trained herself to mimic the outer actions of any normal girl. She didn’t understand why she was like this, knew somewhere inside that it wasn’t normal, but couldn’t find the desire to care or change herself. Perhaps even if she tried, there was a key element inside her soul that was missing and would never be able to be built back in. Corentin didn’t think too hard on the subject because in her heart of hearts, she was satisfied with life.

Smoothing down the loose cotton tank top she had put on with her denim bermuda shorts, she passed her algebra book to the other girl without shoving the work upon her. The first problem she had tried to work was -x - 8 = 7 and it had begun with a small success, she had added the 8 to the 7, but had gotten stuck on the fact that x was negative. Negative? The math teacher had definitely stated that when they solved these problems, x was to never end up being negative. So, how was it that she was supposed to make x positive. Glaring at the page, she had simply added a small smiley face below the x, deciding that that would be all that he got. There, she had stated inside her mind, ”now the x is positive. He’s smiling isn’t he?”

“I don’t understand why we even need math in the real world. I can just carry a calculator with me for the rest of my life and be happy, I’ve decided.” Corentin sighed dramatically and pulled at the ends of her hair as if she was a bit exasperated. She smiled, then shook her head before speaking again, “Do you have one of those subjects that seems completely pointless?”

[Stacee Young]

Stacee took the girl's math book into her hands and looked down at the problems. She rolled over onto her stomach and set the book down in front of her so both Corey and she could see it. She then reached over and grabbed her bright blue bag to grab a pencil and her calculator, a TI-89. She felt like a nerd. Nothing of Stacee's was ever dull or boring. All of her clothes were bright and colorful, her bags were bright and colorful, even her math supplies were colorful. Her calculator was pink and her mechanical pencil was green. She just had a thing for color. Her chosen shirt today was a tye-dye yellow and orange one. She did it herself in eight grade. She was also wearing a pair of denim shorts and orange flip-flops. Her toenails and fingernails were all painted a pale shade of pink. She chuckled to herself as she dragged her calculator and pencil over to the algebra book.

She looked down at the first problem, which was -x-8=7, and smiled. Linear equations... how long ago had she done those? She had taken algebra in eigth grade back at her old school, which allowed her to move on to geometry as a tenth year. Now she was in trig. Sine's and Cosine's were stumping her currently. And the dumb unit circle. But she remembered going into algebra and asking the teacher to repeat the steps about a million times. It took forever for the different rules to finally click. She finds this stuff easy now, but she certainly did not then, which is what this girl must be going through right now.

"As you can see, I already do carry a calculator with me," Stacee said with a smile. She always forgot to take it to class with her, so now she doesn't have to remember. She will just always have it. "And yes. That would be history for me. I just do not understand why we must learn who did this and what happened then. It is just all nonsence to me." Stacee smiled as she nodded towards her history book lying in the dust. Again, she had a sudden urge to throw it into a lake. Which is probably why it is a good thing she was not near a lake at the moment. Stacee tended to act on impulse quite a bit. She never thought things through as much as they should have been, which usually puts her in akward or bad situations. She just hates planning things out. She would always be the first one to jump out of a boat or go bungee jumping or even throw a book into a lake. She just did not think about things enough. It was a problem, she knew, but she could not help it.

"I see you started this correctly," Stacee said, pointing to where Corey added the eight to both sides. She then laughed when she saw the smily face. She took the tip of her pencil and pointed it at the negative x. "I'm guessing that you already know, that what you do to one side you must do to the other, like you added the eight to both sides. So, just looking at the x, what would you have to do to make it positive?" These types of things always made sense in Stacee's head, but she was never sure they would make sense to other people. Her friends used to complain that she would just do the work for them instead of showing them how to do it, so when they took the tests they would fail. She had tried to explain, however she apparently was not doing a very good job. So she attempted to improve at that, however she had not really been given the chance to test her new skills until now. Hopefully she was doing better.

[Corentin Quimper]

“Could I divide it by something?” The concept almost clicked on, something the teacher had been saying about a negative one then echoed in her head. “Can I divide it by a negative one?” The suggestion seemed simple and looked as if it would work in theory, but somehow it simply hadn’t occurred to her earlier. She hadn’t realized all of the “what is done to one side must be done to the other crap” had extended past finding an answer to the equation and could be used to change the end result even if it didn’t involve any obvious numbers. Corentin put the eraser to paper and reformatted the end result, forming the correct answer. She understood it for the moment, but she was almost certain by the time midterm testing came, she would have pushed the solutions from her mind in order to make more room for things she wanted to focus on.

The girl felt a slight elevation in her mood, a bit of elation, but it faded soon as she turned back to the girl, Stacee, she had called herself. “Thank you! I’m not quite sure what keeps happening in that math class, but I’m pretty sure it has something to do with me not paying attention.” Just as quickly as the feeling had floated through her, it dissipated, making her wonder for a second exactly why she couldn’t retain feelings as long as others seemed to be able to. Was it truly she that was putting on an act, or was it the rest of the world? Corentin would surely ask the people who read her blog to see if they felt any certain way about the topic. “Do you tutor people often?”

“History... I guess it has a funny way of repeating itself. Even if the exact same circumstances never happen again, society goes through the same motions, it all starts with a takeover, then comes a separation from a ruling organization, then freedom, then eventual failure. The civilization either dies out or is taken over again, then the cycle starts over. It’s beautiful and heartbreaking.” As Corentin spoke, the color of her eyes faded away into something muddled and darker than hazel. As her words stopped flowing, she looked up again at Stacee, then laughed suddenly, bringing her persona back into the real world, leaving the real Corentin locked away in her mind. “That must have sounded completely silly, it was just something my old history teacher used to say to our class.” She lied through her teeth while smiling broadly, innocently, looking just like a guileless little girl. “Have you been here since you started high school or are you a transfer student? I just started my first year here and the system is a little different. It’s like I got to skip ninth grade entirely even though it’s the equivalent to the American system. But I tell all my friends back home that I’m a 10th year here anyway.” Corentin winked, “It makes them jealous!”

[Stacee Young]

Stacee nodded and smiled. "That is exactly right," she said encouragingly. Perhaps she was getting better at explaining things. It was nice to think, but personally she doubted it was true. Algebra could be difficult to understand in the beginning, but once clarified it was rather simple. She highly doubted she could successfully teach trig to someone. She understood it herself, but one thing she knew for sure is that she would never be a teacher. Of course, she had never wanted to be a teacher. She actually had no idea what she wanted to be, and she was not going to decide that soon. She was only an eleventh year, which provided her with plenty of time to choose her future career. Truth be told, she would rather select a job out of a bowl and start the next day. Plans sucked.

Stacee smiled when the girl sitting in front of her spoke again. "Yes, that would do it. Sounds like me in history class," she replied with a chuckle. She often times found herself fast asleep in her third period history class, which probably fell under the category of not paying attention. She also enjoyed talking to those who chose to sit around her, doodling on her desk, or texting. Now that she thought about it, she really hated history. And no, I do not tutor people often. Truthfully, I used to really suck at it. I highly doubt I am any better now," Stacee replied to Corey's second question. She didn't mind tutoring people. She just was not good at it.

Stacee listened to the girl talk about history and it sounded exactly like her history professor who was currently attempting to teach her history. "Wow, you really like history," she said with a laugh. She could never be that interested with history. She somehow doubted that was just something one of the girl's teacher used to say. After failing many tests, she knew that if you were not interested in something you just could not remember things without really working at it. "No, I didn't transfer. I have been here since I was a tenth year. Thankfully," Stacee told Corey. She was desperate to leave her old life behind. And she used her father's money to do it, which made the entire experience so much better. And the whole dream thing was also pretty awesome. Apparently she chose the right school to attend.

[Corentin Quimper]

Corentin smiled, dimples edging their way into her cheeks. She leaned toward Stacee a little more, nodding when she stated that she had started attending this school at the same point Corey was in now. “So you’ve been here a whole year? You must miss your parents.” Corentin knew very well that she didn’t miss her own parents, her over-comforting mother, her overly-macho father, and that little glob of a mess they called her sibling. That, however, was something people here often said. ‘You must miss your parents,’ was something people said because children this far away from home and their natural environment should be homesick, unless they were horribly abused or broken in some other way. So far, Corentin had found herself enjoying her time at this school and saw herself needing to beat the system or build herself up less and less. The newness would wear off eventually, but for now she was actually acting like a normal girl. She enjoyed this life, but she would enjoy scheming her way into the ranks of British society just as well, she supposed. Ah, but big dreams were for later and algebra was for now.

“The only thing I don’t understand about this place is soccer, or, football I suppose ya’ll call it here. I’ve never really watched it so I don’t even pretend to understand the game. I have a feeling the rules are nothing like American football.” Her eyes gazed back to the field where boys and a few girls were playing, her math homework entirely too easily forgotten on the grass. There seemed to be as much energy in these soccer games as there had been in Steelers’ football games but much less bone crunching contact. That was a shame, because Corentin liked bone crunching contact and apparently something called red cards prevented them from doing that, except for in another thing called slide tackles or something along those lines. “Thank you for helping me with my homework, by the way.” Her voice was sincere, mainly because in Corentin’s warped little mind, she had already found a use for Stacee, whether the older girl knew it already or not. It wasn’t that the girl was naturally mean, just completely different from most people on earth. Not that many people would know from simply talking to her. Corey was simply more emotionally efficient than most humans, especially teenage girls.

[Stacee Young]

Stacee looked at the girl sitting beside her when asked about her parents. She smiled for a moment, then let it fade off her lips as she thought about her home, quite a distance away from here. But of course a lot less then the distance Corey has traveled. Her mother and sister she did miss. Her mother had always been there for her, no matter what. She could hardly make ends meet as a single mother, however they always had food on the table. Sometimes, when Mary (Stacee's sister) and she would get home, their mother would have gone out and bought them something. Nothing big, maybe a scarf or earrings, but it always meant a lot to them. And Mary was pretty much Stacee's best friend. She had to be. Both girls had major trust issues and even though they both seemed quite happy on the outside, they rarely let people truly into their lives. They would tell each other everything and always had the other's back. At school, Stacee actually got into fights with people because they were making fun of Mary. They would fight for each other. The first summer back from school Stacee got a job. She would often times take Mary out to shop and they would both buy things they never had as kids. And, of course, they would both end up getting their mother quite a few things as well.

Then there was her father. Stacee hated her father. The man had abandoned their mother when Stacee was just a child, and a few years later he had abandoned his children as well. He needed to start his own family. That was where the trust issues began. Stacee and Mary had loved their father so much, which caused them to hurt even more. They would never know which was worse, being abandoned by their father or their father dying, however Stacee guessed at the former. If their father had died, at least he would not have chose to abandon them. So Stacee and her sister both had trouble making true friends as they got older. Sure, they both had there little set of friends who they would hang out with, party with, and do whatever else teenage girls did, however that was the extent of it.

Stacee noticed she was quite for a bit to long, and broke into a bit of laughter. Laughing helped the most. She liked to laugh. "Of course I miss my parents," she said as she sat up and once again leaned against the tree behind her. "You must as well."

Stacee looked over to the soccer field and watched the players kicking the ball around. "I do not really understand it either. I like to play just for fun, however the rules are so complicated that we hardly ever follow them," she told the girl. She loved to play games and have fun, however she never competed or was on a team. She just didn't think she should get that into it. It was called a game for a reason, and she truly believed that one should just play to have fun. So many people got to excited about it, and she could not see the reason for it. She liked the game, and watched it often, however she really did not care who won or lost. It was just a game. "Oh, and that was nothing. Ask me any time," Stacee said when the girl thanked her for helping with her homework. She might also ask this girl to help her with history. She was a year ahead, however she thought it was quite possible that she knew most of what Stacee was struggling to learn. She was just scrapping by with a C at the moment, which was fine, however she did not want it to go any lower.

[Corentin Quimper]

At times Corentin wondered if everything she did, the way she felt in her head was due to evolution or to the fact that something inside her biology was missing. She saw things too clearly and wasn’t deterred by her emotions from doing many things at all. Somehow, though, gathering things simply wasn’t enough. She had shredded the letters of reference for several people who wanted to come to Somnium Academy thinking that it was nothing but a prestigious place for shoo-in students to Ivy League colleges. It hadn’t occurred to her that one might have wanted to come to school in England because of monetary problems or issues at home, it had only made sense that she had to do something to get what she wanted. The Dream World, though, that was something she hadn’t counted on having to deal with, especially not the strange creature she became there.

Being a porcelain doll was strange enough to begin with. Being a double sided porcelain doll who called herself Sara was even stranger. Having two faces, one cracked in half and held together with something black and swirly, well, that was something even Corentin couldn’t understand. She did find it strange that her Dream Form’s name matched her online screen name, whereas she superficially became the angel-of-death Saraphim on the internet, she became the actuality of Sara in the Dream World. It was the one thing that gave Corentin the creeps the most, not even nursing homes or dental clinics had the same feeling of malice behind them. She hadn’t figured it out yet, the reason why she couldn’t be human in the Dream World like so many others could. Corey was something beautiful, in a way, but she was also something very alien. It wasn’t how she had thought it would be. She choose not to sleep unless altogether necessary, often drinking more coffee than humanly possible and keeping her roommate up with the glow of her computer screen.

“Stacee… What do you make of this whole Dream World thing? Was Somnium what you were expecting? I.. wish they would have told us before we came here and invested all of our time in this school. It almost makes me feel trapped.”

It was an unusual statement for Corentin, something spoken truthful and from the heart. This girl that she was speaking to seemed quite pure, despite all of the younger girl’s outlandish opinions on the human race. Leaning forward to wrap her arms around her knees, she placed her chin between them and her hazel eyes seemed a bit muddled for a moment as she thought. Was the dream world some form of alternate reality the school injected into their thoughts as they slept? A very Matrix-esque day-dream sequence floated through the girl’s head before she rolled her eyes and shook the thought away. Far too improbable. Why wasn’t there more information on the Dream World and what happened there? How could they all be having collective dreams, just like the men on Coast-to-Coast, her nighttime radio show talked about? Coast-to-Coast detailed all of the government conspiracies one could think of, from presidential assassinations to the myth of lizard people who lived at the center of the earth and combated chupacabras. The topics were highly outrageous most nights, but from time to time, Corentin grew interested, especially when they spoke about political and governmental matters. She hoped one day to get to the core of such things, which is why she constantly felt the need to gnaw her way up the social ladder at any social organization she invested time in. Curiosity plagued Corentin and there was only one way to cure the sickness - to get to the source of the disease.

[Stacee Young]

Stacee shifted her position on the ground as her butt began to go numb. She leaned her head back against the tree behind her a momentarily closed her eyes. The girl had asked her about the Dream World, and she really did not know how to reply. She was not expecting the Dream World at all when she applied, and eventually came, to Somnium Academy. She had thought it a normal boarding school in which she could get away. She needed to get out of her house and away from her family situation. So when she got the chance to apply to this academy she took it. She could have done more research and spent hours agonizing over which school was right for her, however she had not really cared that much. She figured they would all basically be the same, and she doubted she would have found anything about the Dream World on line, no matter how long she looked.

So when she got to Somnium Academy and learned about the Dream World it was a great shock. However she was curious. Stacee loved trying new things and figured this was an adventure which would last her for quite a while. In the Dream World, Stacee is a white pegasus. She has no idea why that is her form, however she has learned to accept it. She had on several occasions wished for a humanoid dream form, however when she takes flight and soars over the heads of so many creatures, she could care less that she is not in a human form. She loves the free feeling of flying, and it allows her to just get away. There are some very strange creatures in the Dream World though, and she has never fully comprehended it. However she has never really tried. Why should she waste her time thinking about things when instead she could just be enjoying them?

"No, Somnium Academy is not what I was expecting at all, however now that I am here I have learned to love it. The Dream World just makes me feel free actually, as strange as that sounds," Stacee replied to the girl's question. She did not doubt that people had different feelings about Somnium. There were consequences for not informing students about what they were in for. Stacee has always just gone with the flow though, and not really cared about what happens in the meantime. She absolutely loves surprises as well, and the Dream World sure was one big surprise. "I understand how you could feel that way, though. Trapped, I mean. I guess I just look at it more as an adventure than something to be scared of. If you die in the Dream World, you can just wake up and then go back, I do believe. I, personally, have never died. But it just seems to me like a place to be whoever you want without worrying about the consequences."

[Corentin Quimper]

Corey nodded softly, considering what the girl had said carefully. She wasn’t afraid of the Dream World, just cautious when approaching it. Corentin didn’t have much experience with the other world, only having gone there a few times in her stay here. She thought heavily about everything she did there, which was the reason she kept her identity a secret. The doll she became was morbid, a characteristic many people didn’t appreciate. In fact, some would even think she was a terrifying little creation, a porcelain doll that could walk and talk. Something strange happened every time she went into the other world, stranger than becoming another type of being. It was as if a voice whispered to her things she didn’t want to here, therefore she couldn’t. As closely as she listened, she could never make out the words entirely, only bits and pieces of them. It frustrated her beyond all belief and surprisingly made her feel stupid, an insulting feeling she didn’t appreciate. It seemed as if the voices were telling her something she had known all along, that a piece of her was missing. Then again, she seemed to be all there in both worlds, so she wasn’t missing anything substantial, she supposed.

The girl’s attention span was running thin even as she spoke, her voice a little clouded. “I don’t know. I think there are consequences for everything we do.. Even if no one sees them.” For a moment, she sounded as if she was speaking about an admonishing God figure, but she was the type of person who had to see something in order to believe in it. For Corentin, God was like the UFOs that god awful Ian Punnett spoke about on Coast-to-Coast. The man couldn’t speak to save his life and held up even simple conversations about unidentified aircraft, often pointing out useless facts that were obvious to the listeners. She stood, stretched, and sighed. Exhausted from keeping up human contact and a pretty face to the public, the amount of time Corey could spend talking properly and pretending to be a normal member of society was growing short. Soon, her replies would become short and cynical, a side of her she would prefer the pretty blonde girl didn’t have to see. So, she made up an excuse.

“Stacee, it’s been a pleasure talking to you, but I really have to finish this math before the end of the night.. The teacher’s patience is about to run out with me.” Corey grinned and picked up her things slowly, in case the other girl had anything more that she would like to mention. The transition was a bit choppy, something she would have to work on in the future, a basic necessity that she simply hadn’t mastered. She began to trot back to her dorm room to begin on another nasty blog, but she turned around suddenly, brushing back a few strands of hair as she did so. “Stacee—Would you like to have lunch together later this week? I have a feeling we have the same lunch period?” After she had heard the girl’s answer, she bounced off, not particularly having her feelings changed because of it.

[/blockquote]

[Stacee Young]

Stacee considered what the girl said. Perhaps there were consequences for the events that happened in the Dream World. She knew there were emotional consequences. Of that she was sure. But physical? She never thought there were. But maybe this girl was right. Maybe there were consequences. But Stacee hoped not. She liked the feeling of being able to do anything and be perfectly fine. It gives her the feeling of being free, and she likes that feeling. Maybe Corentin was right, however Stacee thought she would stick to her belief that she could do anything there. That is the only place she is able to do that. Here, in the real world, there are such restrictions.

Stacee was startled by Corentine's sudden change of subject. She watched as the girl began to collect her stuff. "Well all right, but remember, if you need any help just ask. I am in room 224," Stacee told the girl. She could not quite figure this girl out, and really did not know yet if she liked her or not. But she decided to give her the benefit of the doubt. Maybe they could become friends. Stacee also stood up, collecting her own stuff. She picked up her history book, brushed off the dirt, and stuffed it into her bag. She took a sweeping glance around the area in which they had been sitting until she spotted her pencil. She bent down and grabbed it, slipping it into her bag also.

Stacee looked up when Corentine spoke again. "Yea, sure. That sounds good," the blonde said, her gray eyes looking curiously at the other girl as she bounded away. She really was quite mysterious. Stacee looked up at the sky and realized they had been out here for a while. Quite a few of the students were already heading inside as the day was coming to a close. She realized her stomach was growling, and decided that after she dumped her stuff off in her dorm she would go down and have a quick dinner before taking her shower and heading off to bed.