Mac

[A few days after this.]

The note she gets is three words long.

I'm sorry.
--Sam

Mac spends a solid minute reading and re-reading it before she folds it back up, the edges crumpling a little, and presses it flat against Bar. It melts into the wood; she keeps her hand against the bartop for a few more seconds, blinking furiously, before she lifts it away and turns around.

Their decorations are still up; the Mackenzie family, as a rule, keeps a death grip on the holiday season until their Christmas tree starts shedding needles like a family dog.

This includes a long, jaunty string of fake evergreen-like material that winds down the hall at waist level. It's clearly visible when Mac opens her bedroom door, peeks out, and announces, "Coast is clear," before holding it open for Sam. "God bless the public school system."

Sam and Natalie Mackenzie insist on getting an early start for Mac's first day on campus, and she's so jittery that she agrees to it without protest. It's not like it's that big a deal; Hearst is barely any farther from her house than Neptune High. But...it's college. New teachers -- professors, she has to keep correcting herself. New classes.

New roommate.

So they're there by nine-thirty AM on the first day of sign-in and orientation, the parking lots and curbsides already packed with cars, freshmen streaming in and out of the buildings with boxes and their parents in tow. Mac passes a red-haired girl clinging to her mom, both of them crying like they'll never see each other again. She looks away, glances to her own mom, and says as she checks her Xeroxed map of the campus and points, "I think it's that one over there."

Her dorm room's empty when they make it inside. Her parents help her unpack most of her stuff; they keep hovering anxiously as she starts to hang her posters, and only leave after another twenty minutes, three hugs, and repeated insistings that she call if she needs anything.

"You're freaking out over this more than I am," quips Mac with a wan smile, even if it's not exactly true. She hugs them again. "It's cool. I'll be fine."

Forty minutes after that, she's tacking a badly-cut paper chain to the corkboard when the door opens. She turns.

All she hears is, "Ohmigod, are you Mac?" before something very pink and very blonde is rushing over to fling its arms around her in an enthusiastic hug. Mac nearly overbalances, staggering a little.

"Uh," she answers eloquently, flexing one arm to try and get free. It clicks. "You're...Parker?"

The girl squeezes her like they're long-lost siblings before she lets go, beaming. "That's me! Wow, I can't believe you beat me here, I thought there was no way anybody was going to get here before noon. I love what you've done so far," she adds, looking around their room. "Is that Monet?"

Mac glances at the print hanging near her bed and slants a resigned look back at Parker. "Renoir, actually. Monet was more, you know. Plant life."

"Wow," she repeats, pleased. "That is so classy. Hey," and she's spinning back toward Mac, "we should totally do some roommate bonding tonight! I know there's some kind of big Welcome to Hearst speech going on, but we can sneak out early, it's not like anyone's gonna care. I have Love Actually and tons of nail polish -- let me go grab my stuff, and we can get the TV set up. This is going to be great!"

And she dashes back into the hall.

Mac just stares, then, wearily, shuts her eyes.

Yep, she thinks as she rubs her forehead. Great.

Aw, Mac's journal is feeling so left out of the memespam love.

So! Ask any of mine a question -- Wash (flybywash), Mac (q_in_training), Mercer (mercurialist), or Sam the Shoulder Angel (its_a_robe) -- and they'll answer honestly. Or, alternately, tell me something about them that I don't know.

There are a couple benefits to having so many 09ers in the class of '06. If nothing else, it means you get a kickass graduation party at the Neptune Grand. There are elaborate decorations and a professional DJ, a dance floor and a loud bass beat thumping in the background.

Where and how did they get the keg? Like anyone cares.

"Chug! Chug! Chug! Chug!"

That'd be Dick Casablancas and his little brother in one corner of the room, the latter downing an entire beer in one go while the former cheers him on. Mac stands nearby, watching with good-natured bewilderment as Beaver comes up for air, gagging only slightly, one hand pressed to the back of his mouth.

"All right, yeah, that's what I'm talkin' about." Dick grins and thumps his arm against Beaver's. "Feels good to be a man from time to time, does it not?"

Beav grins, already a little goofy with tipsiness. "Yes," he says. Dick pounds him on the shoulder one more time before shoving past, yelling out to his friends.

Mac sighs. "All I ask is that you don't follow that performance with a belch," she says, unable to hide all of her amusement.

He laughs, glances down at his feet, composes himself. "D'you wanna go check out the room?" he asks her as he looks back up.

Her grin broadens. As if she's narrating a commercial -- all it lacks are the jazz hands -- "It's liquid, it's courage: it's liquid courage!"

"Yeah, well, there's, uh...." He shakes his head, still giddy, but with an oddly serious edge to it now. "Nothing up there that I'm afraid of."

Mac's smile fades to match the gravitas of his. She nods, takes his hand, and together, they push their way through the crowds out to the main lobby.