Queen of the Leaves by Harkins Kay;

Author:Harkins, Kay;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
Published: 2020-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seven

High Fidelity

My sample semester in Lubbock had been a powerful appetizer for me, a kind of glimpse of a promised land. Although I had to juggle a part-time job on campus and a full schedule of music rehearsals and study sessions, I felt amazingly free. There were thousands of students on campus, thousands of books in the library, hundreds of courses to choose from: a feast for my sheltered brain.

My parents had rarely allowed me to go to a slumber party, now it seemed dorm life provided endless such parties. So much laughing, so many silly shenanigans. I missed my brother and sisters, but apart from that, felt not one bit homesick. There was a great deal of tell-all about dates and drinking and a few allusions to sex in our late-night sessions in curlers and bunny slippers, but no one ever mentioned a stepfather who couldn’t keep his hands to himself. I was sure that mine was some kind of fluke, some unmentionable mutation, and a tortured soul, who’d been tricked into some kind of Mephistopheles deal.

Cynthia and I, wing-mates in Knapp Hall, discovered one another as graduates of rival suburban high schools and fellow members of the marching band. She was instantly interested in me because I had gone to Irving High with her boyfriend, Jack. It turned out that in a high school of two thousand students, I had barely known the names of Jack Harkins and his younger sister, Gail, but I found Cynthia’s personality compelling, and she found my instant adoration flattering.

Cynthia’s interest in me gratified my need to find smart, well-read friends, once I had left home. She fascinated me with her confidence, her quick sardonic humor, her interest in politics, which had been another forbidden subject at our house. Sleek, thin, high-strung, she would lose five pounds during exams while the rest of us gained five. With shining black hair, green eyes, and thin, manicured fingers she looked, dressed, and moved a little like Audrey Hepburn on guarana.

Wanting her glamour and confidence to rub off on me, I found it easy to become her devotee. A big argument with her major professor, a significant misunderstanding with her mother, and I’d be there as the sympathetic ear, the right person to keep her ego buoyant.

Equally compelling was her relationship with this Jack who sent her flowers, wrote her frequently, and sang to her during the hours she talked to him on the downstairs payphone. She kept us updated on every twist and turn of their romance.

He had been extravagant as Chuck had been cheap. Jack took her to the Summer Musicals, to the finest restaurants in Dallas. Chuck invited me to swim in his backyard pool, to go Dutch treat at the Waffle House after the football games. He took me on double dates to dollar-a-carload drive-in movies, when his mother would make brown bags of popcorn and a thermos of lemonade in the summer or hot chocolate in the winter to send with us.

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