Terrorscape by Nenia Campbell Page A

merely fed into her hysteria, mimicking
the voices in her own head.
Nobody here knows who you are.
    Rather than comforting her, this thought made
her feel lost, adrift in a frightening sea of malicious
strangers. She glanced down at her watch. Five
minutes. Five tortuously long minutes.
    Mary had arrived home as Val was getting ready
and had talked her into dressing up. Now Val felt
prissy and overdressed. How embarrassing if he
stood her up. Everyone would know.
Pathetic.
    Tears pricked at her eyes. As if everything else
wasn't enough, she had to deal with rejection, too. She
blinked
them
back.
What
little
pride
she
still
possessed commanded that she not cry. Not until she
was alone, where no one would see her bleed.
    “Hey—you made it.”
She lifted her head.
    Jade was holding two ready-made espressos in
one hand, a textbook in the other. His outfit was more
formal than it had been at the dormal. He wore a blue
shirt the same color as his eyes with a jean jacket.
Peeking out from beneath his shirt collar was a cowrie
shell necklace.
It's good that he's dressed up, right?
    Assuming it was for her. Mary would know. Mary
was adept at picking apart these situations. She wasn't.
“Do you need help with those?” she asked, in
apropos of other conversational gambits.
    “Nah, I got it. Used to wait tables at Denny's.” He
set the drinks and the book down on the table
without spilling a drop. “Speaking of waiting, were
you here long?”
“Me? No. I just got here. You said six, right?”
    “Yeah, I'm early. My watch runs fast.” He sat
down, dropping his backpack on the seat between
them. Because it's convenient, or because it's a barrier?
    “Oh,” said Val, who did not wear a watch.
“You feeling all right?”
    “Allergies.” That was the excuse she had given
him wasn't it? She smiled ruefully. “I'm a little better
now, though.”
    “That's good.” He smiled back. “I was beginning
to worry that I was going to end up drinking both of
these myself—until I saw that clock.” Jade nodded at
the one on the wall. “Then I felt like a total geek.”
“No.”
    “Oh, yes. I hate to break it to you but I'm pretty
geeky, Val.”
“Even so, that'd still be a lot of coffee.”
“I had a calc test. It burns up a lot of energy.”
    She doubted that. Jade didn't have the dark circles
under his eyes that most college students had. She'd
have
noticed—his
fair
complexion
hid
no
imperfections.
Jade seemed like the kind of person
who could run on fumes for miles. Just like Mary.
    God, the two of them had probably been terrors
in high school. Val could only imagine. But thinking
of high school made her think of—other things.
    She took a sip of coffee. It was too hot but good.
Completely unlike the swill Mary kept letting mold in
mugs on her window sill. Her lips twitched into a
reflexive smile. She had taken to calling them Mary's
“Petri dishes,” and rather than taking offense Mary
had let out a hearty guffaw.
    Her roommate was a bit of a slob—they both
were, really—but she was a kind slob. Too kind to
have such a dysfunctional roommate.
“You have that look on your face again.”
    She put her cup of coffee down too quickly. A bit
of milky brown liquid sloshed over the side. “What
look?”
“Like you're a million miles away, and wouldn't
mind being even farther if you could.”
    Val swallowed. He was rather dead on the mark
there. She smiled the way she always did and said,
“Not a million. Try eight hundred.”
    “Homesick?”
No, sick of home . “Something like that.”
“Missing anyone in particular?”
“No.” Too defensively.
“No one?”
    His eyes lingered on hers until she looked down
at her own cup and wondered if she had said too
much. The bitter taste of the coffee clung to her
tongue with the acridness of bile and she found
herself swallowing excessively in order to keep it
down.
    What the hell was she thinking, saying a foolish
thing like that? Was this some kind of Freudian