Dance Of Desire by Sweet and Special Books Page A

Diagonal in the corner, works the room better than squarin’ it.”
    “Huh. Let’s see.” They dragged Cassie’s new bed frame over, then lifted it over the rug. “Yeah. I think you’re right.”
    Minutes later, they had the foam mattress on and Karen had to leave after her phone buzzed and she read the message.
    “Gotta go. Jimmy’s got a ‘drain straight into hell,’ he says.” Chuckling and rolling her eyes, she left.
    Alone, Cassie dressed her bed then lay down on it for a little nap, glad to be out of that creepy motel with the neighbor who stood in his doorway and watched her every time she stepped outside. Or in a dorm, where kids—well, young adults—out on their own for the first time, acted like crazed hedonists all day, every day. She didn’t mind a drink, sex, or getting a bit smashed on one or the other, but being smashed on both, perpetually….
    Okay, her cousin’s antics and horror stories about college life were turning out to be true. The stories of guys and girls who’d didn’t know from where they’d gotten some icky STD. But, oh my god, it was worse here.
    Not know how you got pregnant and by whom?! That is too drunk or too stoned. And it is crazy, too crazy even for a movie.
    That’s why she had wanted her own place. She needed the distance from the constant pressure of daily impromptu dorm parties and tomfoolery as she stretched her own limits and explored adulthood in the big city, without a roommate to distract her or drag her into some long, extended crying jag about her last broken relationship.
    Anyway, she presently needed a little rest from moving in and dealing with the unclean— at least it felt that way —like a mark of Cain hidden beneath her bed and a clean but ugly rug—before she’d go across town to meet her new friends from school.
    Her new bed was especially comfortable so Cassie burrowed in and drifted off into Dreamland on a gentle, warm cloud.
    And, in the way of dreams, when your life was in flux, she dreamed of leaving home and entering her new apartment, of moving to a big city that was completely new to her and far from all she’d previously known, in order to attend school as a new freshman at a college the size of a city itself.
    Young Cassie dreamed deeply of being an adult with adult responsibilities now, and of a world that was new, wide, and at her feet.
    She grinned while she dreamed, pleased to see that what she had envisioned from online pictures and paper brochures hadn’t done justice to the actual places inside the college—the quad, the library (the extensive physical one and the extensive online one, both interconnected with county, state, and fed libraries, too!), the president’s old mansion residence, and the oil baron millionaire heritage mansions that were now part of her school’s real estate. Plus the new corporate-sponsored tech labs.
    “But you don’t know anyone there,” Mom said.
    “I’ll make new friends; good friends.”
    And she had, as she now dreamed of her new friends in and out of class.
    She smiled happily, still in her sleep, exploring with excitement the busy streets and the shopping near to her apartment—laundry shops, coffee shops, internet cafes, a little mall, a burger joint with fattening to-die-for sandwiches and fries and brownies, and a small family-run grocery store. This was her home and place for now—these were her people. And there would be more people more places all fascinating and wonderful!
    And, again, in the way of dreams, she walked from one step to another, stepping from college to being surrounded with her friends, taking no notice of the change in the quick dream transition but immediately loving how her possible new apartment was located at the far end of the corridor, on the second floor, at the corner.
    It was a completely new building, too, only a few months old.
    But Cassie didn’t know that it replaced an older building that had been over a hundred years old, and that it had