Moving along...

“Hey Zack! Zack! Heelloooo? Anybody home?”

Reluctantly, he opened his eyes to the world, the bright light cause a brief flare through his sight, but quickly clearing. As it did, he found a familiar face looming over him, smiling. Blue eyes. Pale skin. The girl grinned as she flicked his nose. Wincing, he rolled over and pulled himself up so he was sitting upright, amidst the grass and the flowers. A short field stretched out around them, just a short ways off campus. Buildings loomed not so far into the distance.

Standing upright, the girl folded her arms over her chest, one brow rising incredulously as she regarded him. “Daydreaming?”

“Yeah, I guess,” he replied with a hearty yawn, stretching out his arms. “Or sleeping. I don’t know. What were you saying?”

“I was asking how you were liking college so far.”

“Well it’s only the beginning of welcome week.”

“The campus…your roommate. Don’t play idiot with me.”

“Play?” He teased. “Yeah…well, I like ‘em fine I suppose. The campus is nice. Huge, too. Dorm’s big, which is nice, but my hallmates are total potheads. Some of ‘em are rich as sin, but they’re all dumb as stumps. Wouldn’t be surprised if a few get kicked before the end of the year. I think it’s going to be pretty cool living with Brian, though.”

“Oh lucky you. Let me guess—he got along with your floor just fine though, didn’t he?”

“Oh yeah. Already got us an invitation to a party, too.”

The girl stared blankly for a moment, then flicked a strand of red hair over her shoulder, sighing heavily. Her head shook slowly from side to side, her pretty little lips pursing outward. In the sun, seemed to glow a bit as she stared off toward the campus. Ambulance sirens were blaring from somewhere far away.

“Well that’s not so surprising. He never changes.” He nodded, but said nothing. After a moment, she turned back, staring at him crossly. “Well are you going to tell me about it or what?”

“Who said you were going?”

“Two pretty girls wanting to go to a boozefest. Oh dear, if you are objecting to that, then my goodness, you’re even stupider than we thought all these years.” She grinned mischievously.

Flipping up a middle finger, he smiled warmly at her, trying to suppress a laugh. “Been trying to tell you that for years. If you really want to know, though—it’s kind of like a campout. This weekend, before real school starts, you know? Up north, in some woods. Brian has the directions. Lots of tents, campfires, music, booze…all that. He was talking about there being a couple hundred people—so naturally, the noise’ll be ungodly.”

“Naturally. Sounds fun. You’re going, you know. We’re all going. It’ll be a nice chance to get out and experience things before the homework starts to flow.”

“Oh come on…”

“Besides, it gives you a lot of space to try out your little tricks on some new friends, no?”

At this, he fell silent. Of course, she was right. Big crowd, lots of space, miles away from any other manner of civilization and anyone that knew him—aside from his friends, of course. There were things that could go wrong, but Barbara had been right during the summer. He needed to be more adventurous; his powers were a gift, and they could have a lot of fun with them. He just needed to be careful about it.

Nodding in acceptance, he shrugged his shoulders and glanced away. A hand shot out just a moment later and snagged his arm, dragging him up and nearly pulling him off his feet, against Barbara. The girl laughed, motioning towards the campus.

“Come on. Let’s go tell Anne. Then we can find out something to do—it’s too nice of a day to just sit around.”