“Why are you telling me this?” Hailey murmured.
“Not because I want to be your friend. I’m telling you this so you’ll stop talking to me. I don’t want to know you, Hailey.”
“I had no idea,” she said quietly, her insides gone cold, and she didn’t bother Giselle again.
Lying on her bed in utter silence, much like Giselle, Hailey read her student handbook from cover to cover, struggling to focus on the strangest and most fascinating subject matter she’d ever seen. Her guilt kept distracting her, gnawing at her insides like a White Forest Yeti or Man-Eating Tree, neither of which she ever wanted to happen upon. Both of which had their own section in the Bear Towne Handbook’s glossary of lethal beasts.
The handbook divided White Forest hazards into two types—summer and winter.
Summer hazards included familiar things, like mosquitos and black bears, but the list ended with tips on avoiding carnivorous trees. Apparently, they only ate during waking hours and had a taste for non-Alaskan humans. The handbook advised anyone from Outside to travel through the White Forest only when escorted by a non-human.
Yetis were another hazard. According to the handbook, most of them hibernated until winter, though some seemed to enjoy warm weather, and all Yetis preferred human meat. The book recommended students carry Yeti spray and cross their fingers when venturing into the White Forest.
An asterisk next to the chapter on Bear Towne’s three active in-between zones noted a warning: small, unmarked in-betweens tend to appear and disappear here and there around campus during the spring months especially, but not exclusively.
Bewildered, Hailey closed her book and sulked. It was like reading another language.
Grabbing her shampoo, she hoped a hot shower would steam away her guilt and make things make sense. But when she walked into the shower room,the three students inside, who were in mid-shower and still soapy, all finished suddenly and scattered like cockroaches. The same thing happened in the hallway when she emerged from the showers, with the added happiness of slamming doors to punctuate her misery.
Hailey sighed and shuffled into the laundry room, wearing her other jeans—the clean ones—and a fresh t-shirt (she didn’t have pajamas). In she tossed her Luftzeug clothes and shoes for a spin, using a community bottle of detergent and a healthy dose of hope that Alaskan muskeg mud would wash out.
As she closed the laundry room door behind her, she turned her attention to the giggling coming up the stairwell. Walking up the stairs with his arm around the waist of a stunning brunette and his tongue in her ear was Fin.
Hailey stumbled backward inside the laundry room and peeked through a sliver in the door. Her heart plummeted into her stomach.
Fin fumbled with his room key as he passionately kissed this girl. She had her shirt nearly off by the time they swayed inside his room.
Hailey’s throat tightened.
Slowly, dejectedly, she slid down the door and sat on the floor of the laundry room, staring at her hands until the washer clicked, unsure why she should even care that Fin had a girlfriend. Of course he had a girlfriend—why wouldn’t he?
But he kissed my cheek...
Disgusted by her own jealousy, Hailey shook her head and collected her wet clothes. She’d just hang them in her closet to dry and not think about Fin. Nothing else was in her closet, and Fin didn’t matter to her anyway. Her shoes might even be dry before morning, and Fin was…was…
Hailey threw open her room door and barged in, forcing Fin out of her mind by wondering if Giselle would ever speak to her again. More than that, she wondered if Giselle was even human—sharp teeth…probably not.
In stocking feet, she stepped in front of her closet, when something sloshed.
“What the…?”
Hopping on one foot, she followed a trail of little puddles leading all the way from the door to Giselle’s bed, which lay curiously empty. Someone inside the room was snoring softly. Somewhere…
Crouching down, Hailey peeked under Giselle’s bed then lifted her gaze higher. Pressed against the ceiling above her bed and sound asleep, Giselle snored and moaned, her long, kinked gray hair hanging down like a gossamer web.
Definitely not human, Hailey thought, and she stepped in another small puddle of water with her other socked foot. Giselle must’ve skipped the whole drying-off part of her shower. Now she knew how Holly had felt. This was annoying.
Unable to take her eyes off her roommate from Hell, Hailey fell asleep worrying about Giselle and whether she would get in trouble for telling her Asher was a murderer. She hoped not. Giselle might hail from Hell, but she was Hailey’s only friend, and that was a slice of heaven.
That night, Hailey sat on a mossy boulder in the Aether and wept. Asher approached her cautiously.
“Hailey,” he called softly, “why are you crying?”
She looked up at him through slow-motion raindrops, iridescent flecks of light that shimmered when they graced her face, mixing with her tears before tumbling away.
“I’m afraid for my roommate,” she said with pleading eyes. “Is she in trouble?”
Asher tilted his head. “Why do you ask me this?”
