Chapter 2

Deena’s turn:

I love my life.

I walk across a college campus. I’m fourteen. I’m supposed to be in middle school with five hundred ‘peers’ on a middle school campus. There, I was one of the herd. Here, I’m a standout. Just before Christmas break, and word has gotten out about the little blonde girl who pops around campus.

It’s giggle worthy, though, in a lot of ways.

First, I get hit on. College guys, according to Dad, will screw anything, and they’ll lie and prevaricate and promise in order to do it.

My defense? First, I am in love. I have THE man in my life that I will have until one of us is gone. Okay, truth ... I also have the GIRL in my life. Same timeframe. Truth? Not looking and am NOT going to buy into a line from some guy.

I try to be nice and personable, but I have had to just turn my back and walk away, and I’ve had to invoke state law. “Randy, I appreciate your attention, but do you KNOW what it means if you laid a hand on my fourteen-year-old self? Can you SPELL ‘statutory rape’? So in addition to me protecting MY self, I’m protecting YOURself. You’re cute. You’d be very popular in lockup.”

“Damn, girl...” he said. “But you are cute...”

“Thank you. I’m fourteen and I’m here on special academic scholarship. I’ll gladly talk to you about engineering and mathematics and even history and social science, but I will NOT ever consider so much as a kiss from you.”

“You know, Miss Deena Simon ... I don’t think I’ve ever been shut down with as much backing.”

I laughed. “And don’t try my step-mom, either. She lacks my delightful sense of tact.”

“Step-mom?”

“Yeah.” I’d seen Haley walking across the campus. We were planning on ganging up on one of the professors in a little bit, hence my sitting there beside the pathway, available for a try...

“Yes, her step-mom,” Haley said, walking up. “I’m Haley Simon, wife of Bill Simon, Deena’s dad. And you’re...” and she fixed him with something less than a glare, but more active than a simple look.

“Uhh, Randy. Randall Crater.”

“Oh, Haley said. “Has it always been Crater? Or was it spelled C-R-E-D-E-U-R at one time? Cajun or not?”

“Uh, I dunno...”

She smiled. “You need to up your game, boy. You don’t even know who YOU are, much less who Deena is. Or me.”

“Damn...” he said. “Shot down twice...”

“Oh,” I giggled, “We’re not shooting you down, and you’re not in pain. We’re serious students in engineering...”

“You just told me you were fourteen.”

“I am. Haley?”

Giggle. “Sixteen. What’re you studying, Randy?”

“Pre-law.”

“Hmmmm,” I said. “Not bad. IF you go through with it.”

“I’m a junior and I’m doing a three point nine.”

“And you’re not BAD looking,” Haley said with a smirk. “I’m sure there are plenty of girls on campus that will be happy to spend time with you.”

“Yes, I guess,” he said. “Guess I’ll go find one of them.” And he left.

Haley smiled at me. “What card did you play? ‘I’m fourteen?’”

“Yeah, that’s my best one.”

“Yeah ... You said that one guy didn’t buy the ‘lesbian’ thing.”

“Maybe I don’t look serious.”

“You’re a pretty poor lesbian, you know...”

I giggled. “That’s what Brindy said. ‘I wasn’t a very good lesbian.’”

“You like the dick too much.”

“Oh, that’s true ... but I do like my Haley, too.”

“I still think that part’s strange.”

“You wanna stop? I mean, you and me, we could stop the ‘us’ stuff. Kinda puts a load on Dad.”

“I don’t wanna stop. Bill makes me come one way. Yours are different.”

“Just ONE way?”

“No, not exactly, but his tongue is different than YOUR tongue. Fingers, you know...”

I smiled. “And he’s got that six inches of happiness we both crave.”

“Oh yes,” she said as we walked. “Makes a big difference. Coming, you and me are wonderful. Coming with Bill inside me, pulsing, squirting. I feel every bit...”

Giggle. “Orgasm on steroids,” I said. Yes, it’s like that. Haley’s fun, and I do, in fact, love her. I love Dad, or Bill, or whatever, too.

We walked up the steps and into the building. Connived ourselves into a sociology credit for the price of twenty pages and a test.

“Now, where?” I asked Haley.

“Let’s go see Bill at the office. Talk with Maddie about that Econ 101 course.”

“Sounds good,” I said.

We pulled into a slot in front of the office. There’s ALWAYS a vacant one. Engineering houses do not do much walk-in business. We walked in. Maddie heard the door open.

“Hey, y’all,” she chirped. “What happened on campus today? Go ahead. Make me feel inadequate.”

“We love you like a sister, Maddie,” Haley said.

“Yeah, your mentally challenged sister...”

“Oh, try harder,” I laughed. “You have a degree from Auburn.”

“Yeah, and in the time I got my bachelor’s, Nikki and Cindy got PhDs. And you two...”

“Want to talk with you about Econ 101.”

“Okay. Let me get this invoice entered.”

Maddie does a good job of explaining this stuff. We learned. Knew which way to push through the textbook, what kinds of things would be likely to show up on an exam. Dad swears it’s all potions and incantations to summon imps from Hell.

We set up in the technicians’ office, each grabbing an unused desk. Dad’s out there with them, getting a great project kicked off. I wish I could go see it. Cindy said she was ‘The Engineer’s Apprentice’. I need to make my desires known. I don’t think anybody’s thought about it, and after all, we’re engineering students and I KNOW that some places have internships that give engineering students a place to work in a real-world environment.

Lab stuff, too.

Two days ago we walked in and one of the techs was gearing up to prepare a new magic box. The guy’s thirty and married. Bentley Chambers. We’d had dinner with him and his wife when Jason came down and hired him. Bentley’s got a two year old son named Benson.

“Makes perfect sense,” I said when I met them. “Bentley. People call you Ben, right?”

“Yeah.”

“So you have a baby boy. Of course he’s Ben’s son.”

“See?!?” his wife Jocelyn laughed. “You’re so clever that a fourteen year old girl has your number.”

Bill soothed him. “Ben, if they haven’t told you, these two are NOT your standard teen girls. Both of ‘em are in college.”

“Yeah, Jason said something about getting drawings with ‘CSR’ and that meant they came from Cindy Richards...”

“PhD,” Haley inserted.

“Yeah. And she’s been doing this stuff since SHE was fourteen.”

“My role model,” I smiled.

Two days ago. Ben’s in there with the magic box. It is properly called a ‘protective relay’ and it measures voltages and currents in parts of an electrical system and causes circuit breakers to trip when things go astray.

Ben’s an apt teacher. Dad walked in, saw what was going on. “I’ll go, Dad. I’m botherin’ Ben.”

“She botherin’ you, Ben?”

“No, but I keep stopping to explain things...”

“I’ll be in my corner, Dad...”

“You have the time?” Dad asked Ben.

“Sure.”

“And you don’t mind?”

“She asks good questions. I hope I’m teaching her something. Way she’s going, she’ll be my boss...”

“I doubt that,” Dad told him. “You won’t stay where you are. I’m watching you.” He turned to me. “Okay, punkin,” he says. “You can watch and ask questions until Ben runs you off. Ben, if she gets on your nerves...”

I smiled at Dad. He’s still a good dad, even though there’s more to it now.

I rolled a chair back up beside Ben so I could see the software running on his laptop – one window, and on a separate monitor, another window. One was the software driving his test set, the other the data coming from the relay.

“Okay, young Padawan...”

I giggled. “You’re NOT Obi-wan Kenobi and I’m not Luke Skywalker...”

“Yet you are a padawan. Learn much, you will.”

I laughed.

“Okay. So on this device, we’re looking at both voltages AND currents – three voltages...”

“One from each phase,” I said.

“Very good. You remember. Okay. How many currents?”

“On this one, just three ... One source.”

“Great. Now we talked about impedance...”

And I got a lesson and later I overheard him telling Dad that teaching ME makes him a better tech.

Wow! I’m a positive influence to outsiders.

At the end of the day, Dad and I drove home. Well, HE drove. I’m fourteen. I can’t even get a learner’s permit until my next birthday. Haley’s got an intermediate license. It’s got restrictions, but none that bother us.

“Dad ... Good day with Ben. Either he’s a smooth liar or he’s pretty darned adept at what he was doing.”

“Jason Ellerbee interviewed him. Checked his references. The guy’s legit.”

“I arrived at the same conclusion. I read some stuff and it’s a way off in my engineering curriculum, but the little bit I read, I took it and I listened to Ben and asked questions. He’s telling me things that I can identify.”

“Good.”

“Now do a detour on the way home. That big substation...”

“Huh?”

“Pull up there and let me ask you some things...”

“Okay.”

“Dad, I’m serious about being an engineer. Not just trying to get on your good side...”

“I never doubted.”

“And I didn’t move in because of the sex,” I giggled.

“If I’d’ve known about the sex, you wouldn’t’ve moved in...”

“Oh, you’d rather me be molested by Mister Harvey?”

“Noooo...”

“Well, Dad, you’re the alternative.”

“I never meant to be that kind of alternative.”

“I know. But what would you have me do? I love you.”

“You’re my daughter...”

“Daa-aadddd,” I whined. “We’ve had the conversation already. Once young people start having sex, they don’t stop. I started having sex...”