AU: Hm, still no replies. I'll do this one more time, and then, if no one's bothering with it, we'll call this the end. Deal? Deal.
7
"A civil war hospital?"
"Yeah," I said. "It was converted into a dormitory about a hundred years ago, when they expanded the campus. Most of my classes are on that side."
"Hm." Alice took a pale green dress with tiny straps off the rack. "You know, Jasper's majoring in history. I bet he'd be interested in that dorm."
"Is he?"
"Didn't he tell you?" She slipped the dress, still on the hanger, over my head.
"Hey, hold on a minute!"
"Oh, come on—at least see how it looks first," said Alice. She got behind me and walked me towards a mirror, tugging the fabric snug around my waist.
"This really isn't my style," I protested.
"Don't be silly! With your skin tone, and maybe something a little different with this hair. . ." She gathered up my hair into a speedy, makeshift 'do at the back of my neck.
I'd figured out in just minutes that shopping with Alice wasn't so much a trip to the mall as a battle of wills. She picked out a few things for herself, but mostly she was intent on making me over. I couldn't remember agreeing to such a thing, but Jasper was right—it was easier not to fight it.
I sighed. "Okay," I said, "I'll try it on. But I'm not making any promises."
"Great!" She took the dress off me and draped it over her arm, then went back to the racks for more.
"To answer your question," I said, "Jasper and I don't talk much. I mean. . . He seems nice and all, but he mostly keeps to himself."
"You should tell him about your dorm," said Alice. "I bet he'd get chatty then."
"All right, I will."
She eventually did bully me into buying the green dress, despite my protests that it was silly to buy a fancy outfit without an occasion to wear it to—"The occasion will come, now that you have this," was her argument—but I drew the line there. No makeup, no accessories, no more spending of money on anything besides books and movies for me.
She drove me back to the dorm, asking a few more questions about its historical significance, but most of them I couldn't answer. Did it belong to the North or the South? Was it neutral? Did any fighting happen close by? I felt bad that I didn't know more, but I'd never been into history. All I really knew about the dorm was what I'd already told her. But she made me curious.
Once I was inside, I did a little exploring. There were more than a few strange places in this building, things that I'd seen so many times I barely noticed them anymore: a hallway that ended in a solid wooden door that didn't open, painted green, with a tarnished horseshoe at the top; a disused entryway, very grand, with a set of double doors—which also didn't open—below a terrace-like flight of five or six stairs, with a walled-off balcony directly above it; an abandoned dining room and kitchen with cheap linoleum flooring that oozed black gunk between the tiles. The kitchen looked more modern—it must have gone out of use in the 70s, when the college went coed and the women started taking their meals in the main dining hall in the commons building.
After about an hour, I went back to my room. It was fascinating, sure, but all those empty hallways gave me the creeps. I wanted to be back on the ground floor, with the paper-thin walls and loud music and other obnoxious but oddly comforting signs of life. I turned on my computer and blasted some of my non-indie AFI, just to keep the silence away. For some reason my ears perked up at a lyric—"for of sugar and ice I am made." I'd heard this album at least a hundred times, but something about those words picked at my mind, like a long buried memory, or a puzzle piece that I was sure would fit if I could only find the right puzzle.
I fell asleep on top of the bedcovers, desk light on, music playing in an endless loop through the night. Just before I drifted off, I thought I could hear voices again. Angry chatter floated back and forth through the air, and I couldn't tell where it came from, or if I was dreaming. I didn't understand the words, but the tone was angry, hushed.
Suddenly one of them was right at my ear, flat, sinister and bell-clear: "BRING HIM HERE." I sat up and gasped, only to find that my room was empty, and it was morning now. The light at my desk appeared stale and harsh, and my head felt fuzzy. The music was still playing. There was that lyric again—"for of sugar and ice I am made." I got up and shut it off. Then I turned the light off too. The room filled with a warm, comfortable quiet, and the soft glow of morning filtered in around the window blinds.
Down the hallway I heard water running—one of my hallmates was taking a shower. I breathed out and rubbed my hands over my face to wake myself up. Had I really heard that voice? No. Of course not. Probably just a bad dream.