Kel, Esmond, and I walked out of the room.

"So, what day is it?" I asked.

"Saturday," Esmond said.

"Cool."

"Laurie, do you want to come with me and Esmond to study group tonight?" Kel asked.

"Sure. Whatever."

We went back to Kel's room, and had just sat down when Numair knocked on the door and said, "Laurie, if you would get your things, I could show you your room."

"K," I said, grabbing my backpack.

"That's it?" he asked.

"Yup."

"We need to get you some normal clothes," he muttered. I was slightly put-off by the "normal clothes" remark, but I didn't say anything.

He lead me up to what must have been his and Daine's room, then took me one door over. "This is your room. It's always open in case I get a new apprentice or something, so this works well," he said.

"Sure, whatever."

"You say that a lot."

"I know," I told him, opening the door.

The room was really, REALLY nice. I was standing in a sort of living room thing, with two chairs and a table, plus large amounts of bookshelves and a desk. There were two doors coming off of that room. One, I found upon inspection, lead to a bedroom with a bed (duh), a trunk, another bookshelf, a nightstand, and a dresser. The other lead to a bathroom.

"Is this all right?" he asked.

"It's great," I said.

"Good. Come on, I want you to meet Daine."

"Daine? As in, Daine-Daine? THE Daine?"

"Yes, THE Daine. Now come on!"

He took me into his and Daine's room. I was pretty nervous. She was one of my favorite characters. What if she didn't like me and thought I was a ditz or something?

When we got into the room, I saw a woman sitting on a chair. She stood up, smiled, and said, "Hello. You must be Laurie. The one who got Master Jehnen so fussy."

"Yup. That'd be me."

We talked for a while. I really liked Daine. One thing I noticed though, was that Daine wasn't pretty. She was GORGEOUS! If I looked half as pretty as her, then I would've had all the guys at school begging me to dance with them. Then again, they would've been the shallow guys that thought beauty was the only thing that mattered. So I was kind of glad I didn't look like her.

Numair dragged me off to get some clothes later. After I put the clothes away, I walked down to Kel's room, since it was getting late. Kel smiled when she saw me, and we went to the study group.
I talked with some of the pages and squires for a while, or the ones that didn't have homework. Then Warric said he didn't understand the poem he was supposed to write about, so I helped him with that. After a while, Neal asked, out of the blue, "Laurie, what sort of girls were Jess and Juls?" I had told him about them when I was at the tavern.

I looked at him blankly. "Who?"

He looked at me, very surprised. "Your best friends, Jess and Juls. The crazy ones that you were telling us about."

"From where?"

"Iowa!"

I shook my head crazily. "Oh my God, I can't be forgetting about home already!" I said, close to tears. What was wrong with me? Was I losing my mind? Was it possible for me to forget about my home already? Could I be forgetting my heritage?

The scariest thing was that I didn't know the answer.


Author's Note: Sorry, I know I said Laurie would be torturing the pages in this chapter, but, well, I just can't write humor right now. See, last night at school we had a dance, and I spent the entire time getting up my courage to ask this guy I liked to dance. Then at the last dance, I said that I was going to ask him, and was looking for him when I saw this girl pulling him off, saying that he was going to dance with her friend since he hadn't danced with a single girl all night. So, I'm pretty depressed right now. Good news is, here spring break just started, so I'll have more time to write. Later.