Campus Chaos, Chapter One

College cheerleader Jenny was trim and brisk in a black sports dress which flipped as she walked, her fair hair and marble-white legs strikingly offset by the dark of her uniform.

She was following a corner in the campus road which wound its way to the halls of residence. From that direction a female undergraduate was hurrying for the tram, though thanks to her eight-inch chunky wedge heels her progress never made it past a wobbly totter. Nor was everything she’d thrown on for the night quite as strappy as those shoes. Her top could have done with two heavy-duty ones, for just before she and Jenny drew level she suffered a slip of some magnitude.

Next second she’d pinced the errant cups with both hands and nestled everything inside again. So honey-coloured curls and a perfect pout clunked on from Jenny’s sight.

Even so, as that one proceeded on her own path she couldn’t resist a last over-the-shoulder look.

As her good friend 4-H-N might have put it…jeez.

Undergraduate. Tram. Chunky high heels. That had been altogether too much Earth-vocabulary. Warning-signs of the very kind Jenny was supposed to be staying alert for.

She hefted her backpack the moment she was alone, and pushed her rustling red and black pom-poms out of the way.

There was nothing inside but large identical bundles wrapped in tissue paper. These filled the bag to the brim. Jenny took the topmost, unfolded it, and proceeded to eat the slice of chocolate cake thus disclosed. Once she was finished she dusted cake-crumbs neatly from her fingertips, then swung the weight of the rucksack back into place again.

Much better.

Purposefully Mini-Flash Juniper set off once more, secure in the knowledge she wasn’t really a student named Jenny at Nottingham University on Earth.

Oh, but Mini-Flash Pseudangelos was good at this sort of thing. She always had been. It was the one drawback to having her power the portal in place of Flashsatsumas. Otherwise, things were going more smoothly than they had with him. Pseudangelos of course had known right away a Special Program sister needed her, so they’d rendezvoused on a little-visited moon, Juniper shuttling the necessary spare parts to quickly build another portal there.

The road meanwhile was leading her to an archway in a long wall. She stepped through, and gazed about her in wonderment.

It was enchanting. Mini-Flash Juniper remembered when she and Mini-Flash Robin had yearned together for this old brickwork and climbing ivy, though she reminded herself it hadn’t existed then any more than it did now. Yet there before her all the same were rows of bedroom windows, many of them already glowing cozily in the advancing evening. Venerable pavements hemmed the grass quadrangle, and jokes about the campus tree would have been redundant, for a lone beech which Jenny thought lovely shaded the lawn.

Again. So soon. Seriously?

You had to strike a balance, reflected Mini-Flash Juniper. On the one hand it helped to have a little of the scenario, coming as she did from a far distant galaxy. On the other though, if she kept up with her quadrangles and beech trees she was going to need a second slice of chocolate cake, or it’d be Joe’s subconsciousness all over again.

And speaking of which. Mini-Flash Juniper smoothed her cheer-skirt.

Let the hunt begin.

That however proved easier said than done. Juniper’s quarry by his very nature wasn’t one to make himself easy to find, even though he had no way of knowing she was here.

For the first hour or so, her chances of running to ground a damp girl wearing only a towel were exponentially higher. These seemed to be in every corridor she looked, along with a great deal of vapour and every kind of chemically-induced scent. Water-based ablutions. Mini-Flash Juniper did remember those from Boston, now she thought. Really, anyone would struggle to separate what was real from what wasn’t, the way she’d been going on lately.

A gradual metamorphosis took place and presently the females resembled instead Juniper’s friend from the tram-stop, teetering as she’d done in tall tappy shoes, and struggling the same way to stay inside what they’d just put on. Juniper however didn’t have long to marvel at them, for no sooner was the transformation complete than they were under the arch and off to wherever it was that other girl had gone, swinging by their sides those tiny square carrying-cases which seemed so important to them.

As for the clothes in which Mini-Flash Juniper had herself been set down, these were the biggest puzzlement of all.

Nobody else was dressed as she was, but nor did anybody behave as though she was out of place. Not quite. Yet every time Juniper drew close to concluding her garb must be appropriate, something would happen to start her off feeling self-conscious once more.

She first noticed this while doing absolutely nothing at all, besides taking a short break from sleuthing. There she’d been, standing smellily by an outer door, when some exiting males bound for the student union bar had expressed a sentiment Mini-Flash Juniper could only take for approval. Then there’d been the gaggle of girls in scuffed sneakers and clingy jeans, lounging on cushiony sofas tucked underneath the nook of the stairs. When Mini-Flash Juniper had gone to check the little library above the common-room, the girls had all looked mirthfully up and made many of the same sounds the boys had.

Such a funny bunch, Earthlings. Sonica always said so, and Juniper knew she was going to love hearing about this.

It was getting on for midnight, and Mini-Flash Juniper was three more slices of chocolate cake down as she trudged yet another low oak staircase in yet another vaulted and panelled dormitory. Why was it always staircases with this vision-quest?

Between the carven uprights of the banister overhead, Juniper saw and otherwise detected two little pairs of white ankle-socks. Sure enough, when she gained the first-floor corridor there were a couple of girls, one in skimpy sleeping-shorts and vest, the other in knickers and tee. Their room-doors were standing open, and a five-pack of doughnuts sat atop the rail.

“Are you looking for someone?” smiled the T-shirt girl.

“I’ve been at it all night,” replied Mini-Flash Juniper truthfully.

“Blimey, you cheers,” the other girl commented. “We’ve not even been out.”

“Just having an intellectual conversation,” added the first with a grin.

Juniper smiled back. It was nice to finally meet people here she felt at home with, which was to say, who reminded her of the Special Program. You’d have thought there’d have been more, given what sort of place it was. Joe’s subconscious had boasted a whole school of them, and Mini-Flash Juniper had always enjoyed an intellectual conversation with her classmates there. She told her new friends the very last part of this.

“So different to school,” the girl in sleepy-shorts agreed gloomily. “When we were there, we couldn’t wait to get here. Now we all wish we could go back.”

“Have a doughnut,” added her neighbour, pushing the packet to Juniper. Gratefully she took one and thanked her.

“Don’t thank us,” the girl twinkled back.

“Thank the night-porter,” embellished sleep-shorts. “Bloke’s a living legend. Always good for sweet treats. These days we just wait until he’s doing his rounds.”

Mini-Flash Juniper did not eat the doughnut.

Very slowly, she put the bloated fatty thing back into the pack. Then she stared long on her fingertips, where sly specks of sugar remained embedded like tiny glinting shards.

The night-porter.

How could it have not occurred to her before? How could she have wasted so much time and cake?

Juniper slung her weighty rucksack down upon the carpet.

“Please will you keep an eye on my things?” she asked the astonished duo, then whirled redly before them and was off, down the stairs again, out onto the nighttime quad and over the grass to the lights of the main building. She didn’t knock on the night-porter’s door, but seized the handle right away and threw it open with a bang.

Besides an immaculately-ordered rack of room-keys on the wall, the office was all cluttered junk. No kettle, no filing-cabinet, no pictures. It seemed to be a general sink-hole sought by rubbish which had no place elsewhere, and for the second time in as many minutes Mini-Flash Juniper kicked herself in her tight-fitting vermillion ones for not making this dingy closet her first port of call.

The man who’d been sitting inside stood up sharpish. Juniper folded her arms.

“You’re a long way from the seashore,” said she. “Lasser.”

TO BE CONTINUED