When Vic woke the next morning, he found that both the regular occupants of the room that he’d slept in were already gone. Outside the door of Marcia’s room were the sounds of a Saturday morning dormitory that was almost awake and so Vic collected his bedding and cautiously stepped out, hoping to avoid getting seen and the wrong impression being made. He had no such luck. On his way out of the dormitory he bumped into no less than a dozen Dampgate girls at least half of whom gave him a wink and two gave an a faux-scandalized “oooooo”. Adding further to his troubles, the two noisy girls just happened to be Kit and Laine, who slept in something that could only really be described as lingerie and with Laine also adding “Aww, look who’s finally come out to play.”

“It’s not –” Vic started, but then realizing that whatever he said would probably be used against him, chose to just silently and quickly go back to his own room. Here he also found the room empty, with no evidence of the fun that Marek and Devi had there the previous night. The quiet and loneness of his room was actually a welcome change of pace after the eventful week he had. Vic thought it would be a good time to catch up on his homework, not just for the grades themselves but to hopefully prove to Liz that he could do well even without the “extra credit assignments” that he was offered by Mrs. Laramie.

He had only been at it for about an hour when the door of his room burst open with a bang and Marek stepped in. As far as Vic could see, there was no reason for the urgency, it was just Marek being Marek.

“Oh hey, I was wondering where you were,” Marek said with that toothy wide smile of his. “Saw you snuck out last night. Who’s the lucky lady?”

“There’s no lucky lady,” Vic said, wanting to get back to his Geography textbook.

There was a brief look of confusion on Marek’s face and then he made an “oooh” face and said, “Sorry, yeah I guess it was hard to sleep here last night.”

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“Little bit, Yeah.” Vic chewed on his own cheek and nodded.

“Yeah but did you see Devi’s knockers?” Marek said, miming a huge pair of breasts on his chest.

“No, I didn’t get that good a look.” Apparently, nothing about Vic’s deliberately disinterested voice had any affect on Marek. Vic actually had not noticed. The shirt Devi wore the night before, though baring her stomach, hid her other assets well. He did notice her eyes though, dark and wide and with a kind of distant sadness.

“Well hey, if you want I can invite her over again. I got another girl coming in like half an hour so maybe after?” There was something disturbing about how earnestly Marek said all this.

“No, no, I’m good. Maybe I’ll head over to study at the library though.”

“Yeah yeah, you do that, catch you later,” Marek said and Vic gathered up all his books and headed to Dampgate’s spacious library space.

One look at this library could tell someone that that academics were not the highest priority at Dampgate Senior Academy. Though it was a Saturday and raining outside, there were hardly any people there, and two of them were at a table making out. Vic thought he ought to give them some space and found a table in the other corner of the library laying out his books all over the tabletop and then sitting sideways in his chair, stretching his legs out.

He never thought that subduction zone rock formations could be so fascinating that he could absolutely lose track of his surroundings.

“Aww, look how hard he’s working.” Vic had only been at Dampgate for a week, but he already recognized the voice as Kit’s, one half of the duo of Kit and Laine. He looked up from his textbook and found that indeed it were both of them and they were quickly approaching his table.

“It’s cute, Kit, it looks like he’s actually here to study,” Laine said, coming up behind him and peering over his shoulder at the book. “Are you going to be the smartest in your little friend group now?”

“No,” he said, “I think that title still belongs to Liz.”

“So modest,” Laine said.

“It’s cute how you guys are so protective of each other,” Kit said, pursing her lips in a mocking way. “Speaking of which, I don’t see any of them around. Surprised they left their little fledgling unprotected.”