Chapter 3: Best Times

Falling in love was difficult for Lynn. She’d always considered herself very rational and other rational people, of course, agreed. She had her own particular ways she liked things to be, just right. Mostly she got her way too. Her parents weren’t rich but she was an only child and they were a half decade older than most of her friends parents. They could afford to spoil her a bit. She’d sailed through school, coming top of almost all her classes at AnderHouse, the top school in all of Packerton. You did have to take some arts and languages though and there were always special people who were better at those, less rational, subjects than her.

Coming to college, on the big campus shared with the Alm Institute, was always going to make her a smaller fish in a much bigger pond. Lynn was rational enough to expect it. What she didn’t expect was that her first friend at college, Kiki, would introduce her to someone, in only their second week, who was painfully, terrifyingly, smarter than she was. She would have got over it and maybe been able to put away jealousy eventually but she never got as far as jealousy.

There was a certain type of girl she was drawn to, when she looked back through her young life. One who had a wild heart, who was brave, almost like a man. The kind of girl who would use the boys room to avoid the queue and didn’t care a jot. Who would jump in that dangerous, icky looking, pond right alongside those boys, earn their respect for doing it, and somehow still be magnetically attractive, even though she was the filthiest and last to wade out. Those girls cut right through Lynn’s rational defences. They didn’t use reason at all. They went for the heart, via her throbbing clit, and seldom missed.

Fiona had been the first and had taught her the joy of raw, disorganised, mutual masturbation.

Diane had been the second and nearly got them caught so many times, in so many inappropriate places doing irrational things that Lynn’s body insisted were absolutely necessary and urgent.

Rose would be the third and Lynn knew it within five minutes of meeting her. Fierce, brave, braless and terrifyingly uninhibited. Rose might do anything or say anything at any moment. Being around her was a rollercoaster ride with no safeties, no guarantees and no controls. Lynn was instantly addicted without a hope of recovery and reason wasn’t going to help. She never got a chance to be jealous because, long before she understood how smart Rose was, she was already in love.

By the third week of term they were all three fast friends. By the fourth week Rose had persuaded Lynn to bleach her hair. It was actually Kiki’s idea but when Rose said she thought it would be cool, that decided it. People started calling them BWR, Black, White and Red. The triumvirate of hot nerd girls. Every guys fantasy or every guys worst nightmare. Then in the fifth week when mid term was careening into view and everyone was really settling in, Lynn found out that Rose and Kiki had been making love and her world fell apart.