Page 8 of Monster's Delight

“Want to get settled in our room?” Hazel asked, tugging me by my hand to the stairs.

“Oh yes, I’msoeager to climb five flights of stairs the instant we arrive,” I said, only slightly sarcastically.

“Awesome!” she squeaked.

CHAPTER3

“I amsoout of shape,”I panted, leaning on the railing on the fourth floor.

“Just one more, right?” Hazel was gasping, bent over her knees beside me.

“Yes, thankfully. I think I know why Grandfather changed all the stairs to rubber. We should—”

A familiar voice echoed up the stairs and made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. “—going to be the best year—”

I grabbed Hazel’s arm and pulled her toward the next flight. “We have to go now!” I hissed.

“Is that—” Hazel smirked.

“Don’t say it. Don’t eventhinkit. Scrub his name from your memory.” We climbed the last flight of stairs, our thighs and calves protesting.

“If I remove his name from my mind, how will I know to avoid him?” Hazel asked innocently.

I thought for a moment, although my silence was more to catch my breath than to figure out what to say. “At the very least, separate his name from mine.”

“Oh, don’t worry, they are not together likethatin my mind,” Hazel comforted me.

We finished the climb, gasping, on the fifth floor.

“We can’t stay here,” I managed to say. “He’s right behind us.”

We weaved through the other second year students to the two wings on the right and the student advisor sitting behind a table in between them. There wasn’t much of a line yet, most of the students still greeting each other in the middle foyer. We lined up behind three other girls and I took the time to both catch my breath and look around the foyer.

There wasn’t much of a difference between it and the one for the first year students on the floor above us, other than blue couches instead of white, and white chairs instead of blue. The view of the stained glass windows on either side of the professor’s wing was slightly different than what was visible higher up.

I tuned back into what Hazel was saying when she introduced us to the student advisor, “—and this is Siobhan Doyle. We should be in the same room. That’s what we requested last year.”

The young woman scanned her list and made two checkmarks. “Yes, you’re sharing again, and there will be two other girls in with you at some point, I believe. Here are your keys, ladies.”

“Nice,” I said happily, taking my key. It tugged me into the right-hand wing, furthest from that of the teachers. We followed the slight pull down the hallway, past several open doors and two communal bathrooms until we reached a simple door on the left with the number 538 in brass under the peephole. I put the key in the lock and the door opened easily.

The room itself was in the basic configuration; a water closet on the immediate left of the door and a sink on the right. An arch separated the entry from the main part of the room, which contained four wooden bed frames, each with a flat mattress atop, and four simple desks under the windows on each side of the room. There was nothing else in the room, but that was to be expected.

Hazel put my plant on the window sill between the beds to the left side of the room, effectively claiming that side for the two of us, and cracked her fingers. “Shall we decorate?”

“I have so many ideas,” I said, grinning.

The first thing I did was improve my bed until the mattress was twice as thick as before, and topped it with several fat down alternative pillows. I added a short shelf for my books above the headboard of the bed, making sure it was higher than my head and then crafted a narrow, three-rung ladder beside the headboard, using sticks I had picked up at home and modifying them until I was satisfied with their new look. I left my desk in front of the window, as I liked to stare out when I was stuck on a difficult question. I pulled everything out of my purse and laid it all out on my desk in miniature form, trying to decide where to put it all.

“Oh, I love the color of that sofa!” Hazel exclaimed, pointing at the forest green furnishing. “I brought a pair of bean bags for my side.”

“That’s perfect.” The bean bags were barely the size of my thumbnail before Hazel enlarged them. They were navy blue and looked cozy enough to sleep on. I put down the soft white rug under my bed before I worked my magic on it, and once I was happy with the size, placed the sofa in the middle and repeated the process. “What next?”

“I’ve got the blackout curtains,” Hazel said, waving her finger fluidly as she threaded the material onto the rail. “Why don’t you take care of the door?”

“Got it.”

We had discovered the previous year that the light from the hallway shone through the gap under the door and kept us awake. Our solution was to hang a thick curtain at the archway. It also helped to keep the noises from the toilet and sink from filtering through to the bedroom, so we had agreed to do it again this year.

---