Jesus Bonin’ Mary, cottonwoods! I mean, so what if we’re a hundred years out of date. I can take the freshman beanies and the pep rallies. Dorm curfews didn’t stop anybody a hundred years ago either. And face it, pleated skirts and cardigans make for easy access. But those godspit trees!
At first they tried the nature-dupe stuff. Freeze your vaj in winter, suffocate in summer, just like good old Iowa. The trees were at least bearable then. Everybody choked in cotton for a month, they baled the stuff up like Mississippi slaves and shipped it down to Earth and that was it. But finally something was too expensive even for Daddy Moulton and we went on even-clime like all the other Hell-Fives. Nobody bothered to tell the trees, of course, so now they just spit and drop leaves whenever they feel like it, which is all the time. You can hardly make it to class without choking to death.
The trees do their dirty work down under, too, rooting happily away through the plumbing and the buried cables so that nothing works. Ever. I think the whole outer shell could blow away and nobody would ever know. The fucked root system would hold us together. And the admin wonders why we call it Hell. I’d like to upset this delicate balance once and for all.
I ran the sheets through on disinfect and put them in the spin. While I was sitting there, thinking evil thoughts about freshmen and figuring how to get off restricks, Arabel came wandering in.
“Tavvy, hi! When did you get back?” She is always too sweet for words. We played lezzies as freshmen, and sometimes I think she’s sorry it’s over. “There’s a great party,” she said.
“I’m on restricks,” I said. Arabel’s not the world’s greatest authority on parties. I mean, herself and a plastic bone would be a great party. “Where is it?”
“My room. Brown’s there,” she said languidly. This was calculated to make me rush out of my pants and up the stairs, no doubt. I watched my sheets spin.
“So what are you doing down here?” I said.
“I came down for some float. Our machine’s out. Why don’t you come on over? Restricks never stopped you before.”
“I’ve been to your parties, Arabel. Washing my sheets might be more exciting.”
“You’re right,” she said, “it might.” She fiddled with the machine. This was not like her at all.
“What’s up?”
“Nothing’s up.” She sounded puzzled. “It’s samurai-party time without the samurai. Not a bone in sight and no hope of any. That’s why I came down here.”
“Brown, too?” I asked. He was into a lot of edge stuff, but I couldn’t quite imagine celibacy.
“Brown, too. They all just sit there.”
“They’re on something, then. Something new they brought back from vacation.” I couldn’t see what she was so upset about.
“No,” she said. “They’re not on anything. This is different. Come see. Please.”
Well, maybe this was all a trick to get me to one of Arabel’s scutty parties and maybe not. But I didn’t want Mumsy to think she’d hurt my feelings by putting me on restricks. I threw the lock on the spin so nobody’d steal the sheets and went with her.
For once Arabel hadn’t exaggerated. It was a godspit party, even by her low standards. You could tell that the minute you walked in. The girls looked unhappy, the boys looked uninterested. It couldn’t be all bad, though. At least Brown was back. I walked over to where he was standing.
“Tavvy,” he said, smiling, “how was your summer? Learn anything new from the natives?”
“More than my fucked father intended.” I smiled back at him.
“I’m sure he had your best interests at heart,” he said. I started to say something clever to that, then realized he wasn’t kidding. Brown was trust just like I was. He had to be kidding. Only he wasn’t. He wasn’t smiling anymore either.
“He just wanted to protect you, for your own good.”
Jiggin’ Jesus, he had to be on something. “I don’t need any protecting,” I said. “As you well know.”
“Yeah,” he said, sounding disappointed. “Yeah.” He moved away.
What in the scut was going on? Brown leaned against the wall, watching Sept and Arabel. She had her sweater off and was shimmying out of her skirt, which I have seen before, sometimes even helped with. What I had never seen before was the look of absolute desperation on her face. Something was very wrong. Sept stripped, and his bone was as big as Arabel could have wanted, but the look on her face didn’t change. Sept shook his head almost disapprovingly at Brown and went down on Arabel.
“I haven’t had any straight-up all summer,” Brown said from behind me, his hand on my vaj. “Let’s get out of here.”
Gladly. “We can’t go to my room,” I said. “I’ve got a virgie for a roommate. How about yours?”
“No!” he said, and then more quietly, “I’ve got the same problem. New guy. Just off the shuttle. I want to break him in gently.”
You’re lying, Brown, I thought. And you’re about to back out of this, too. “I know a place,” I said, and practically raced him to the laundry room so he wouldn’t have time to change his mind.
