"It's really fucked up," Matt said quietly. "Like I can barely believe it."

I nodded slowly, "Yeah. It hasn't been a good week."

Amber and Melissa stayed quiet as they ate their lunch.

It was Friday and Matt joined the three of us in the cafeteria today. He was reeling from the latest news and needed someone to talk to.

"He looked really messed up at the funeral on Wednesday," Matt said after a few moments of quiet. "But I just chalked that up to the shock of losing a friend, you know? I never thought he'd..."

Amber finally spoke up, "I thought the announcement they sent out said it was an accident?"

She was referring to an email the college sent to all students, to talk about alcohol abuse and danger signs and stuff. There were links to online resources and an invitation to talk to counsellors and stuff like that. The email didn't mention anyone by name but it was pretty obvious why someone on the administration or whatever thought they needed to send it. Alcohol played a factor in both deaths. Or at least, that's what the humans believed.

I had a bite of my pizza and listened quietly to what Matt had to say.

"From what I heard there was no note, that's why they're saying it was an accident?" Matt shook his head then shrugged, "The rumours are already going around though. He looked like hell at the funeral, then that night he drank half a bottle of vodka and overdosed on his pain meds. Guys are starting to say maybe him and Rahul were more than friends, you know? Maybe they were a lot closer than they let on?"

Melissa pointed out, "They were both pretty outspokenly homomisic as well as transmisic. I doubt either of them was gay."

Amber suggested, "Sometimes the people who make the biggest fuss out loud about that stuff are doing it because of self-shame or self-loathing. Or they think it'll divert attention away from themselves. Like how every time some politician makes a big fuss about 'the gays' then next thing you know they're caught in some illicit gay relationship or something."

I shrugged, "Maybe. Still seems unlikely to me."

With Matt around I couldn't come out and say it, but I never got any vibes from either of those guys that they were gay. So I just quietly had another bite of my pizza slice as I thought it over to myself. My guess was Lily went after Jim and took care of him Wednesday night. Except I didn't lose my appetite yesterday or today, so if she did get him she didn't consume him right away. I could ask her, but she'd been kind of quiet lately. And I didn't really want to know anyways.

I finally looked at Matt again and asked, "So I know you haven't been friends with them lately but you were for a year or so. Are you handling stuff ok? Are you going to be ok?"

As I looked at him I focused on my intuition thing. I was worried Matt might be wondering if we were somehow involved. Like he was one of the only guys in the school who knew about the bad blood between Jim and Rahul and Amber and me. He didn't know Rahul tried to attack Amber the night he died, but he knew those guys tried to attack me and I kicked their asses. And of course he knew they went after Amber and me in February.

Fortunately I didn't pick up any suspicions at all from Matt. He was torn between the 'official' line that Jim got himself drunk and accidentally overdosed, and the rumours that Jim and Rahul were secretly lovers and Jim did it on purpose after his boyfriend's funeral. Apparently there was even a side-rumour that the two of them had a fight and broke up Friday night, which was why Rahul was out drinking and driving around alone. That maybe Jim felt guilt over his boyfriend's death.

The bottom line was all the weird and messed-up awkward stuff that was going on at the start of the week was even more messed-up and awkward at the end of the week. Two students died within five days of each other, there was one funeral on Wednesday and another one was coming on Sunday. And I knew Lily was responsible for the first one, but only suspected she was also involved in the second one.

And most of all, it convinced me that having my demon mom hunting fellow students was a bad idea. Even if they were violent transmisic assholes.

Matt finally shook his head, "It's a shock, and I guess I don't know what to believe. But I'll get over it. I mean, yeah I was friends with them for a while but not the last couple months. It's not like I'm going to miss them or anything. Though it's a bit weird I guess, like knowing they won't be there at games and practices."

After a brief pause he added, "Thanks for asking, Mara. I know you're probably glad both those guys won't be around here any more..."

"I never wanted this," I replied quietly. "I just wanted them to leave us alone."

That was the end of our quiet depressing lunch conversation. The four of us finished up, then we all headed off to afternoon classes.

As usual me and Melissa had drama to end the week, and our prof decided we'd be working on comedy for the afternoon.

A few students questioned that since it felt kind of inappropriate, but the prof said it was a thing we'd have to deal with if we were doing acting and stuff for real. Like you had to learn to separate your real-life feelings and stuff from the part you were playing.

I actually found it helped, too. Like focusing on smiling and laughing and making jokes for acting made it easy to forget the depressing moodiness from lunch.

Some of the other students had more trouble than me getting into it, but Melissa seemed to do ok. It was weird and funny in a way, but I'd sort of turned completely around in the teacher's eyes. At first I goofed around and didn't take the class seriously, but since the winter break I'd been putting a lot of focus into it and doing my best. And it showed. I'd gone from someone the prof didn't want in his class to one of his favourite students.

I still wasn't thinking of changing my major, but now and then it crossed my mind that after I finished my photography course in another year, maybe I'd just sign up for more college and focus on drama instead.

At the end of the day when it was all over, me and Melissa met up with Amber and the three of us drove home together. She didn't have to work tonight so instead of rushing home to get changed she just hung out with us.

We all got some drinks out of the fridge and Melissa got a fire going. We didn't actually need it for warmth, the weather was getting better and it was definitely spring, but it was still kind of nice having that pop and crackle and dancing orange glow. I had a feeling we'd be enjoying fires until it was actually too hot to bother.

About a half hour later Susan arrived home from uni, she grabbed herself a drink as well and joined the rest of us. And instead of ordering something in I made us all a nice home-cooked meal for dinner. We still ate in the living-room sitting on the sofa though, rather than make it a fancy sit-down thing.

When we were all finished eating I announced, "So I got the confirmation email about the cottage this morning? It's a done deal, we're booked and the place is ours for four days. Now we need to figure out all the other details."

"Ok," Susan nodded, "So let's hear all about it?"

I'd already told them all a few of the details, but we hadn't really had a 'group meeting' or anything to discuss it. Not yet at least, but we were going to handle that right now. I pulled my phone out and opened up the email I got from the guy, then took a deep breath then started with the descriptions.

"So the place has two bedrooms, each one has a bed that will sleep two people comfortably. And a pull-out sofa which could fit two more," I explained as I looked at my phone. "There's also a proper washroom, the guy said it's on septic which I don't really know what that means."

I continued, "Anyways the bathroom's small but that's fine I think? There's a shower stall but no tub. Apart from the two bedrooms and the bathroom, the rest of the cottage is basically one large open room. There's a fireplace but the guy said he doesn't want us to use it. There's a sofa, a couple easy-chairs, and a little table with four chairs for meals. The kitchen area is on one side of the room, he said there's a small oven and a small stove and a coffee machine. And a fridge of course."

Melissa asked, "If we're not supposed to use the fireplace, what do we do for heat? It's probably going to be cold, especially at night."

"Um," I scrolled through the email on my phone then responded, "Ok he says the place has electric heating and the thermostat is set and locked off so we can't mess with it, but it sounds like it'll be ok?"

"That's too bad about the fireplace," Amber said with a frown. It would have been nice having a fire."

I grinned, "Oh, we can still have like a campfire! There's a fire pit. We have to bring our own firewood though? But that's no big deal, we can just buy a few more bags."

Susan asked, "What about cooking gear, plates, pans, cups? Is that stuff there or do we need to bring our own? And bedding? Are there laundry facilities so we can clean stuff?"

I frowned and started scrolling up and down through the email, then finally said "Actually I'm just going to forward this to all three of you. Susan, you and Melissa can be our designated grown-ups since you're asking all the important adult questions."

Sue smiled and rolled her eyes while Melissa stifled a giggle.

Meanwhile Amber protested, "Hey! I'll be twenty-one next week."

"I know," I grinned as I forwarded the email. "But you're small and cute like me and you aren't asking about how we'll stay warm or fed or clean. So the tall responsible ones are the designated grown-ups. You and me can be the irresponsible cuties who tag along and have fun."

That resulted in one of her trademark blushy grins.

Sue was already scrolling through the email on her phone and said "Ok. We need to bring our own bedding and the only laundry facility is the sink in the kitchenette. All the way down at the bottom of the email there's a list of what he suggests we might want to bring. We need to bring our own towels and toiletries for the bathroom, our own dish-soap for the kitchen, and he says we should bring our own bedding or sleeping bags. And our own food obviously. He even says what kind of filter to use for the coffee machine. It's pretty thorough and self-explanatory."

"So we should make a list or something and do some shopping before the twenty-first," Melissa added. "Figure out if we want to bring sheets and blankets or just get some sleeping bags? And make a grocery-list, food that we can make fairly easily and without needing a massive clean-up afterwards."

I looked around at all three of them and asked, "So you're all still on-board for being there?"

Amber nodded, "For sure. I'll let my manager know I can't work that week, and talk to my profs at college about getting any assignments for that week ahead of time. But yeah, I'm excited. I'm looking forward to it actually."

"Me too," Susan said. "I haven't had a vacation in, well, ever. It'll be neat to get away for a few days."

Melissa smiled, "Same. I've never really gone camping or done cottage stuff, but I've always wanted to try it."

"Sounds like we've got a plan!" I grinned.

The four of us spent another hour or so coming up with some lists and figuring out how we'd manage it all.

We decided to do our shopping for the camp-gear stuff this weekend since next weekend would be busy, then on the twentieth we'd get the groceries and drinks and all that stuff. And on the twenty-first we'd pick up any last minute stuff on our way north, including firewood and all that.

Me and Melissa also decided to bring our cameras since we figured there might be some cool stuff to take pictures of that we could use for our photography course.

By the time Amber was ready to head home for the night, we had all our plans pretty much sorted out and all four of us were looking forward to our first little vacation together.

PurpleCatGirl

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