Lunatic Fringe Read Free Page B

serenaded with harps. As quickly as the
vision entered her head, Lexie shooed it out, rolling her eyes at
her ridiculous naiveté. Were women so foreign to her that she
couldn’t even imagine what a group of them spent time doing
together? Lexie felt as though she had stumbled upon a lost tribe
and didn’t realize it until she was sharing their
campfire.
    “ What?” Blythe
asked.
    “ Nothing,” Lexie hurried,
waving her hand in front of her face to dispel her ridiculous
imaginings. “I just thought you were going to warn me about the
rare wolves.”
    “ Oh please. You don’t have
to worry about the rares anymore,” said Blythe, wiping her hands on
her jeans as she stood. “You’ve got the Pack on your side now.”
Blythe moved to the hallway, and Mitch followed.
    “ Anyway, you should come,”
said Blythe. “I think we’d have a lot to offer each other.” She
squeezed Lexie’s shoulder with a wink, and in a moment, she and
Mitch were gone.
    Lexie shut the door behind her with a
hollow thud. She stooped to rifle through a box, pulling out a
candle and lighter. Her laptop sat on her desk, ready to play a
song to help remind her where she was and where she came from. The
air, so similar to the air she breathed at home, tasted unfamiliar
and rare. She knew she was not home. Whether this could be a home
to her, she had yet to find out.
     
     
     

Chapter 2
     
    The crescent moon lay on its back,
striking a menacing gash in the otherwise unblemished sky. Its
creamy grin mocked Lexie, whose red, raw eyes passed between the
sky and the clock. Four-fifteen. It was the point of no return, one
that Lexie knew all too well.
    She wasn’t surprised that her insomnia
resurfaced the night before classes started. She had hoped for a
respite, but the gods decreed otherwise, yanking her strings just
as the warm blanket of slumber wrapped itself around her body. Each
time she drifted off, they jolted her from the downy sanctuary of
rest and back into the lonesome reality of the deepest part of the
night.
    She imagined each brain cell fizzling
like a water droplet on a hot skillet. Tomorrow would tell the same
story of burst blood vessels, flaccid skin, bad breath, and sunken
eyes. She’d move through the world at a fumble.
    That was what she had to look forward
to in three hours, a self-perpetuating cycle of foolishness and
alienation. Lexie had a hard enough time fitting in without the
motor skills of a drunkard to seal the deal.
    Yet it was also in these thick,
invisible hours where Lexie felt the most at home. She could wade
through time like walking on the floor of a warm, dark sea. The
night wasn’t the menacing part; it was the threat of dawn that
caused her grief, when the still and fecund air receded to give way
to the glaring and the loud. When the fear of day didn’t trouble
her, Lexie felt perfectly comfortable crossing the night like a
raft down a wide, lazy river. But tomorrow held plenty to undo her.
New people to meet, to impress, to befriend. Schedules, buildings
and texts to commit to memory, and the same befuddling questions
that followed her every day, now upgraded to include majors,
minors, relationship status, and political identity. The mere
thought of it made her stomach roll over itself.
    She crumpled in her chair, elbows
planted atop her desk next to a stack of books. Her laptop cast a
cold, impassive glow into the darkness of the room. She leaned to
the window, struggling to open it with clumsy hands. As the window
slid in its casing, tiny branches from the great oak tree outside
screeched against the glass. A flood of cool, moist air swirled
into her stale room, as clear and blue as Van Gogh’s night sky. Her
laptop threw its blue light out the window, making the great tree’s
bark look as craggy as a relief map. Leaves mottled green and red
clung to the branches, steeling themselves for slow death. They
rustled in a faint breeze. Otherwise, everything was
silent.
    Lexie folded her computer