Alice almost couldn’t believe the summer was over. Just a few months ago, she’d been dreading the summer. But that was when she was on her way to a job she really didn’t want to do with people she didn’t like. That was when her world, albeit unhappy, was much simpler. That was when she was still trying to convince herself that she was straight. What a difference a summer makes.
They were in the process of loading up Heather’s new car, a fully restored VW Thing with (it’s actual name apparently). Laurie had been confused by the choice, but Heather convinced her that it was a good buy. They were stubbornly reliable and easy to fix, and the previous owner had obviously cared about it a great deal. But Heather could probably convince her blonde lover of anything. Somewhere, out in the middle of nowhere, the two girls’ relationship had transformed from one of distrust and fear to absolute affection and, dare say it, love. They may not have actually used that word yet, but the rest of their companions saw it every day. Heather had gone back to being cynical, though her comments seemed to be more full of cynical-amusement rather than cynical-anger, which delighted all of them. Laurie had taken to thinking things through a little more carefully when she spoke, and it turned out she had quite a bit to say. And once Alice had stopped preaching at everyone all the time, her two comrades had quickly accepted her. Which was good, because they were going back to the world where Jane, Freddie and Michelle (especially Michelle) weren’t going to be able to coddle her through the changes she was enduring, so she would need someone she knew she could depend on.
“Well, I think that’s everything.” Heather had taken to arranging their small amount of luggage. None of them had brought much to begin with, but they had picked up a few items. Jane had ordered a nice guitar for Laurie so Heather could teach her to play. Alice smiled. Just another excuse for those two to be touching each other. Michelle had helped Alice pick out some new clothes to make her look a little more “country,” which caused the young woman to blush. Heather, of course, was mostly pleased about the car, but even she had a few items to take home. Laurie had finally got her girlfriend wearing thongs after ordering a bunch of them on line.
“I guess we should get going,” Heather said. She hated looking sappy, but she found herself hugging each of their three new friends warmly. Laurie and Alice did the same. Alice was reluctant to let Michelle loose.
“C’mon little girl. Don’t make a scene,” Michelle said fondly as she hugged the young woman. The two of them may not have been destined to be each other’s “true love,” but Michelle had been Alice’s first in a number of ways, and that would always make what the two girls had special.
Jane was smiling. “Let us know when you plan on coming this way again. We’ll always have your rooms waiting for you.”
“I should be down for Thanksgiving,” said Heather. “Maybe for winter break also.” Heather had little reason to visit her own home for the holidays, and this ghost town in the middle of nowhere already held much better memories for her than anywhere else she had ever been.
“I’ll be able to make one of those, but probably not both,” said Laurie. “I promised my folks I’d visit them at least once more this year.”
Alice didn’t know what to say. She still had to deal with letting her fairly devout family know about her new sexual identity, and she wasn’t sure how welcome she would be at home once she did.
“It’s okay,” Michelle whispered to her, sensing her nervousness. “You’ll survive it.” She gave Alice a kiss on the cheek. Then the three young women promised to call every week, which they were happy to do, and they were on their way home.
While the ride out had been torture, the ride back to the university was anything but. It was the sort of road trip that people remembered fondly and told their children about when they were old and gray. Heather drove the entire way. Laurie often practiced her guitar playing, but did stop long enough to paint Alice’s toenails. They invented games as they went along, such as “name that cloud.” Heather smiled every time it was Laurie’s turn, because the buxom blonde had a tendency to think everything looked like a mushroom or a bunny. Soon the game turned into, “Does that item look more like a bunny or a mushroom?” and anything they saw along the road was fair game.
Alice was a little bashful, but she was opening up more and more to these girls. She had never really had friends before, at least not like these. But she still felt a little awkward sometimes, particularly when Heather and Laurie stole glances at each other or exchanged a brief kiss. They had fallen hard for one another, and Alice could only imagine what that felt like.
————– ——————————–
Once school had started again . . .
————– ——————————–
The first few weeks after getting back to school went by in a blur. Heather and Alice had housing arrangements to make. Laurie was going to live in the sorority house, assuming they didn’t freak out about her new relationship. Strangely, they didn’t for the most part. A couple of girls were rude about it, a number of other expressed some concern, but mostly they were appreciative of her honesty. And they were also impressed by the sudden clarity of thought she had come to possess. Her naive wit and general enthusiasm managed to win her back into almost everyone’s graces.
Heather’s friends, even more strangely, were less enthusiastic. They weren’t particularly upset that she liked women, mind you. They already knew about that. But Heather told them who it was she was seeing, and many felt that she had “sold out” to the economic and social elite, and that all her previous attitude had merely been posturing. Unfortunately, this caused some of Heather’s anger, which she had tried to rid herself of, to return. She spent a lot of time venting to her new roommate. Since she and Alice were both living in the dorms, they managed to arrange to room together. There was a time that Heather wanted to strangle Alice, and suddenly they were working out grocery lists together. And Laurie was over at their dorm almost constantly, often staying the night.
Alice remembered that first week of classes with a smile. Alice was the first of the trio to arrive at their song writing class. All the people in there sat far away from her, waiting for her to say something “fanatical,” but it never came. Then when Laurie showed up, they expected the two girls to start bickering. Instead, Laurie sat down next to her friend and asked how she liked her new toenail glitter. Their classmates were left speechless. When Heather arrived, they almost breathed a sigh of relief, expecting that the dark-haired cynic would start chewing people out, returning their little world to a state of normalcy. Instead, she leaned over, gave Laurie a quick but unmistakable kiss on the lips before sitting down next to her. No one else in the room knew what to think, but none of the trio felt any obligation to explain it to them.
—————- ——————-
Several weeks later . . .
—————- ——————-
The first three weeks or so of school went smoothly. But as the saying goes, it is always calmest before the storm. Things took a slightly downward turn for the group. It all started when Laurie and Heather had their first big fight. Alice was just getting back to the room on a Thursday night when Laurie came storming out with tears in her eyes.
“What . . .”
“I’m sorry,” Laurie said. “I can’t talk right now.” And with that, the normally cheerful girl was gone. Alice went into the room, and Heather was just sitting on her bed, glaring into space. Alice recognized that glare. It meant that Heather had slipped back into her angry place. Her roommate could only hope it was a temporary slip.
“Um . . . what happened?” she asked.
Heather just fumed for a minute. “She’s being unreasonable,” she said before storming into the bathroom. Alice heard the shower come on. Then she heard the unmistakable sound of someone hitting their head against the wall. Alice rushed to the door, which Heather had forgotten to lock, and went inside. Heather had climbed into the shower, fully dressed, and was indeed smashing her forehead against the linoleum. She was already bleeding a bit from a small cut, but Alice was worried it would get bigger. The dark-haired beauty didn’t even seem to recognize that her friend had turned the water off.
“I think we should get you out of those wet clothes,” Alice said gently. Heather seemed to regain her senses and shot the girl a withering glance. Alice steeled herself against it. If she really wanted to be friends with this girl, she was going to have to learn not to back down. “Go change your clothes. I’ll see if I can find the peroxide and a band-aid.” Heather sighed and headed back into bedroom, while Alice rummaged through the cabinets. She found what she was looking for and returned to the bedroom herself, finding Heather sitting on her bed wearing a flannel sleeping shirt. As Alice started to clean up the wound, Heather found her voice again.
“So, when did you become the official ‘Mom’ of our little drama?”
“I don’t know. It just seemed necessary. Now are you going to tell me what that was about, or would you rather try to break more things with your head?”
“She’s been bugging the crap out of me about the singing thing . . . keeps trying to get me to go to this coffee place that has an open-microphone night on Fridays. How fucking beatnik is that? Anyway, I keep telling her that my women’s lit group meets on Fridays and that I can’t go. She threw a fit and said I was backing out on a promise.”
Alice hadn’t believed it when Laurie and Jane and the others had told her about Heather’s singing voice. But Jane had managed to coax the raven-haired girl into a repeat performance of Don McLean’s “Babylon,” and Alice had been let as speechless as the rest of them. She couldn’t imagine such beautiful sounds coming from a girl who had never had a nice thing to say before. She found herself sharing Laurie’s hope that Heather would give public singing another chance, particularly after learning the particulars of her first (and only) attempt.
“Wait,” she said. “I thought you weren’t going to that group anymore. Something about them being a bunch of she-goddess man-haters that did nothing but spew rhetoric and condemn any type of sex that didn’t occur between bull-dykes with really hairy armpits.”