LCU, landslide, part 1

October 2083 - LCU, fall semester (part 1 of 4) - Beau Jackson and April Hutchins are 20, Summer Phoenix and Vicky Garth are 19. (Lucy Harris is 17.)

* soundtrack for all parts, "Landslide," by Fleetwood Mac *

Summer doesn't know much about college yet, but she does know that Lucy is going to love it! They've somehow convinced her mom to let her stay for the weekend. Lucy's mom teaches computer science at LCU, so she knows the campus is largely safe, but she's still worried about the co-ed dorms.

"Don't worry Mrs. Harris," Summer says. "I'll bring her back safe and sound." Then she adds, with a wink, "And not pregnant."

"What?" Lucy's mom says.

"Kidding," Summer says. "I mean, my floor is all girls. We've got an RA - she's a girl. Keypad access and everything."

Lucy's mother is paralyzed.

"Rape alarms?"

"Bye mom," Lucy says, tugging Summer by the arm, pulling them out of the house before Summer can convince her mother to change her mind.

"Oh, it's raining," Summer says.

"Good thing you're not driving then," Lucy says.

Being a Friday night, the first thing Lucy sees of campus is the pub. Lucy has never been in a pub before tonight, but Summer has been in pubs, and she knows this one doesn't really count. It's nothing like the kind of pub where April works, with its slimy-looking men whispering secret business at the poker tables. This is just an ordinary campus pub, and these are all college kids, doing silly college things. If pubs were ranked by sliminess, this pub would be like kindergarten.

It's early still, and in the quiet before the late classes get out, Summer and Lucy entertain a few of the guys with their sketchy karaoke skills.

Summer is so bad, in fact, that even Lucy makes fun of her.

"Yeah, alright," Summer says. "I know I'm tone-deaf. You wanna play pool? Let's go show those boys how it's done."

Summer hands Lucy a pool cue and leans down to take a shot.

Lucy says, "But I don't know how it's done."

But it isn't long before Beau's evening class lets out and he meets them there. Lucy is eager not to embarrass herself any further. She hasn't seen him since the graduation party a few months ago. "Beau!" she screeches at him, fanning her fingers wide and expressive, her engagement ring glinting in the bar lights.

"Congrats on that rock," he says. "So you guys are really doing it?"

"Yeah," she says. "I guess so."

He looks over to Summer and the guy she's talking to. "Who's that guy?"

"Oh, I don't know, we just met him."

They sit down at the bar. "You want a drink?" he asks her.

"Oh, I don't think I'm allowed," she says.

"I meant a Coke, or something," he says.

So Beau buys Lucy a Coke and he spends a good forty-five minutes whining about how Evie broke up with him, again. It sucks. It sucks more this time than it did the first time - the first time, he figured he deserved it. But this time? He wasn't such a bad boyfriend. He's a hard worker - he always remembered her birthday and holidays. He can't help it that April is his best friend, and that she is the way she is.

It's none of his business. She's a grown woman and she can do as she pleases. The nerve of Evie, to claim he was in love with her. He's never disliked April more in his life than he does right now!

"Speak of the devil," Beau says.

Lucy gasps. "It's Vicky."

That wasn't the devil Beau was talking about, but yes, there is Vicky standing there in the doorway right beside April. Lucy tucks herself behind Summer for protection.

Summer sneers at them both. "Oh, you didn't!"

"She said she'd be good," April says.

Vicky slinks past them to the bar.

"I went looking for you at the dorm," April says. "And there she was, all alone. She was doing her homework, on a Friday night! I couldn't help it, she was like a sad little puppy!"

Summer just rolls her eyes. She's starting to see what Beau sees in her sometimes, the flightiness, the lack of consistency. She tries so hard to accommodate everyone, and she casts this proud love of hers so wide that in the end, there's hardly any left for her friends.

They aren't even five minutes into their pool game before April cozies up to the very same guy Summer was just talking to. Beau just stares, wide-eyed. "There goes another one," he says.

Summer says, "I was talking to him!"

"He looks like a douchebag anyway," Beau says. "You don't need to talk to him."

He doesn't actually know anything about the guy. He just knows the kind of guys April tends to go for, quick and easy.

"You should say something," Summer says.

"Say what?" he says.

"I don't know," she says. "How about, 'Stop being such a skank.'"

He sighs. "What business is it of mine?"

He doesn't know why he feels such a responsibility over them. It isn't any of his business. With Summer, at least he can say he's looking after his brother's girl in his absence. He'll look after Lucy because she's just a kid, and she truly needs looking out for. But April is her own carefree woman, and always has been, ever since they met, when she was just a wild little child. He wouldn't know where to begin.

"Oh crap," Summer says. "Where is Lucy?"

Lucy is fine. Vicky didn't beat her up after all.

It's two in the morning, and they've just made it back to the dorm. Summer isn't phased by picking up a pizza, at two in the morning on the way home from the pub. She's been more or less free to do as she pleases since her mom died. But Lucy is blitzed.

Lucy is going to be eighteen herself in less than a year, but still she can't fathom it. "My mom never lets me eat pizza after midnight," she says.

"Your mom never lets you do anything."

"I think my mom will still have a curfew for me when I'm twenty-five," Lucy says.

"She'll still be doing your laundry and setting up your doctors appointments when you're twenty-five," Summer says.

It's funny, maybe, for a minute, that sometimes Summer wishes she had a mom to check up on her. "She's gonna find out," Summer says. "It's not like you're keeping it a secret or anything. Everybody knows."

"Well, it's not like we're getting married any time soon," Lucy says. "What's the rush?"

***

Summer's work might be all about fun and games, but when she's there, it just feels like plain old work. They're the only toy store in Bluewater Township, and above that, one of the top toy stores in the county. Her father wasn't too excited about her buying a new truck, but she had to get out there somehow. It's a sturdier one this time, and she doesn't plan on calling anyone in a fit of tears while she's driving it, in the rain, ever again.

She opens up the shop each morning, and Elijah drives out after to take over in the evenings. They've even had to hire an extra stock girl to keep the shelves filled. And every evening, she has to be back on campus by 3:00 for her night classes. Every morning and every evening, blending one into the next, into the next.

Sure, it's not exactly the worst job, selling toys. But there are more glamorous jobs out there.

So you could say she's free, but who's really free anyway? Free to work? Free to cram study time into the spaces between commitments? Free to be obligated to all these things? The only thing she's truly free from right now is a boyfriend.

She feels free of him now, finally, and what's left of him now is more simple a love than she's ever felt before. She just loves him, that's all. It's what she wanted, which turned out to be not what she wanted, which yet turned out to be what she needed, which ended up being what drove him to war, which only makes her feel kind of dead inside.

At least she knows she's a mess. She doesn't need anyone to pity her. Everybody crashes and burns in their first year of college, but Summer is no ordinary girl. Summer excels in crashing and burning.

And this is her life now, finally, for real. But at the same time, it's not.

She's here at the arts college for an elective course. Modern performance. She's bold, so she figured she'd be okay at it, all the public speaking, and reciting skits from memory. April has a pottery class that starts ten minutes before hers, so she ends up sitting here, waiting, watching the previous performance groups disassemble their equipment.

Today though, the instruments are unattended.

Today, she's bored. And she's curious.

She picks up a drum stick and taps a cymbal. What did she think would happen? Of course it makes a sound, ringing and dissonant. She hit it wrong. She tries again.

She's tone deaf, but this is different. She taps a beat with her head, which follows to her hands, which flows to her feet. Her whole body feels the sound, the bass drum echoes in her chest, while the cymbals ring in her ears.

It's more physical than musical. It speaks to the athlete in her. It's like timing the cadence of her runners' stride, rhythmic footstep strikes on pavement.

She gets it.

But then she stops, because there's someone watching her. "Sorry, is this yours?"

"No," the guy says, a bright smile on his face. "But dude, that's hot! You should be in a band or something."

She laughs. "Yeah, right."

She doesn't have time for a band. And it doesn't even matter anyway. Her whole life is planned out and solidified in that store. She'll make and sell toys, as fate has decreed it.

But she's starting to wonder what it really was, that summer, that made her feel so suffocated? Because to be honest, he's gone now, and sometimes she still feels like she can't breathe.

*******

(so many footnotes: Beau and April // Beau got dumped, again // Dallas and Lucy got engaged // Vicky vs. Summer // Tyler went to war // who doesn't want to be a rock star? // that summer, part 1, and part 2)

notes: with all those footnotes, you don't need any notes! ;)