"Zander... Zander," the guys down the path began chanting, their voices getting faster and louder as they repeated it. "Zander... Zander... Zander." Zander winced, his attention slipping back toward his friends. "I'm sorry, Bonnie, I've got to run," he said. "We've got sort of a..." He paused. "... club thing going on. But, like I said, I'm real y sorry we almost knocked you over. I hope I'l see you again soon, okay?"
He squeezed her hand once more, gave her a lingering smile, and walked away, picking up speed as he got closer to his friends. Bonnie watched him rejoin the group of guys.
Just before they turned past a dorm, Zander looked back at her, flashed that gorgeous smile, and waved.
Bonnie raised her hand to wave back, accidental y clunking the heavy bag against her side as he turned away.
Amazing, she thought, remembering the color of his eyes. I might be falling in love.
Matt leaned against the wobbly pile of suitcases he'd stacked by the entrance to his dorm room. "Darn it," he said as he jiggled the key in the door's lock. Had they even given him the right key?
"Hey," a voice said behind him, and Matt jerked, tumbling a suitcase down onto the floor. "Whoops, sorry about that. Are you Matt?"
"Yeah," Matt said, giving the key one last twist and, just like that, the door final y opened. He turned, smiling. "Are you Christopher?" The school had told him his roommate's name and that he was on the footbal team, too, but the two of them hadn't gotten in touch. Christopher looked okay. He was a big guy with a linebacker build, friendly smile, and short sandy hair that he scrubbed at with one hand as he stepped back to make way for the cheerful middle-aged couple fol owing him.
"Hi there, you must be Matt," said the woman, who was carrying a rol ed-up rug and a Dalcrest pennant. "I'm Jennifer, Christopher's mom, and this is Mark, his dad. It's so nice to meet you. Are your folks here?"
"Uh, no, I just drove up by myself," Matt said. "My hometown, Fel 's Church, isn't too far from here." He grabbed his suitcases and lugged them into the room, hurrying to get out of Christopher's family's way.
Their room was pretty smal . There was a bunk bed along one wal , a narrow space in the middle of the room, and two desks and dressers crammed side by side on the other wal .
The girls and Stefan were no doubt living in luxury, but it hadn't seemed quite right to let Stefan use his Power to get Matt a good housing assignment. It was bad enough that Matt took someone else's slot as a student and someone else's space on the footbal team.
Stefan had talked him into doing just that. "Look, Matt," he'd said, his green eyes serious. "I understand how you feel. I don't like influencing people to get what I want either.
But the fact is, we need to stay together. With the lines of Power that run through this whole part of the country, we have to be on our guard. We're the only ones who know." Matt had to agree, when Stefan put it like that. He'd turned down the plush dorm room Stefan had offered to arrange for him, though, and taken what the housing office assigned him. He had to hang on to at least a shred of his honor. Plus if he was in the same dorm as the others, it would have been hard to say no to rooming with Stefan. He liked Stefan fine, but the idea of living with him, of watching him with Elena, the girl Matt had lost and stil loved despite al that had happened, was too much. And it would be fun to meet new people, to expand his horizons a bit after spending his whole life in Fel 's Church.
But the room was awful y smal .
And Christopher seemed to have a ton of stuff. He and his parents went up and down the stairs, hauling in a sound system, a little refrigerator, a TV, a Wii. Matt shoved his own three suitcases into the corner and helped them bring it al in.
"We'l share the fridge and the entertainment stuff, of course," Christopher told him, glancing at Matt's bags, which clearly contained nothing but clothes and maybe some sheets and towels. "If we can figure out where to put it al ." Christopher's mom was prowling around the room, directing his dad on where to move things.
"Great, thanks - " Matt started to say, but Christopher's dad, having final y managed to wedge the TV on top of one of the dressers, turned to look at Matt.
"Hey," he said. "It just hit me - if you're from Fel 's Church, you guys were the state champions last year. You must be some player. What position do you play?"
"Uh, thanks," Matt said. "I play quarterback."
"First string?" Christopher's dad asked him.
Matt blushed. "Yeah."
Now they were al staring at him.
"Wow," Christopher said. "No offense, man, but why are you going to Dalcrest? I mean, I'm excited just to play col ege bal , but you could have gone, like, Division One." Matt shrugged uncomfortably. "Um, I had to stay close to home."
Christopher opened his mouth to say something else, but his mother gave a tiny shake of her head and he closed it again. Great, Matt thought. They probably thought he had family problems.
He had to admit it warmed him a little, though, to be with people who acknowledged what he'd given up. The girls and Stefan didn't real y understand footbal . Even though Stefan had played on their high school team with him, his mind-set was stil very much that of the Renaissance European aristocrat: sports were enjoyable pastimes that kept the body fit. Stefan didn't real y care.
But Christopher and his family - they got what it meant for Matt to pass up the chance of playing for a top-ranked col ege footbal team.
"So," Christopher said, a little too suddenly, as if he'd been trying to think of a way to change the subject, "which bed do you want? I don't care whether I take top or bottom." They al looked over at the bunk beds, and that's when Matt saw it for the first time. It must have arrived while he was downstairs helping with Christopher's luggage. A cream-colored envelope sat on the bottom bunk, made of a fancy thick paper stock like a wedding invitation. On the front was written in cal igraphy "Matthew Honeycutt."