Chapter 1: Freshman Year

It was six a.m. on Sunday, August 20, 1989. We were fifty miles from home and I was in the back seat of Ned's car, wide-awake.

Penelope turned and grinned at me. "He's awake. Can't you sleep, Sammy? What time did you get in last night?"

"I don't know," I responded. Actually I knew exactly what time I had gotten to my room. It was two-fifteen a.m. and it would have been thirty minutes later if I had taken the girls home. But Sean had generously agreed to take them home and bring my car back. Ned had found my car parked in front of the garage and assumed that I had left it there, with the keys in the ignition, rather than waking him and Penelope by opening the garage door.

"Did you have a good time last night? You look like you had a good time."

"Yes," I said. God, had I ever had a good time. It was my last night with the girls and they both wanted a piece of me. We broke tradition of the one-on-one rule we had adhered to all summer. Both girls monopolized my cock, telling Sean they would give him the same treatment before he had to leave for school the following week. I wondered what they would do for entertainment after Sean left.

I knew Penelope didn't really want to hear about my evening with the groundskeepers. I also knew that the reasons she had given for coming along with us, not wanting to be alone in Ned's apartment, wanting to share the driving, wanting to eat in a nice restaurant, wanting to see the school I would be attending, were all bogus. Penelope wanted to talk about the dominoes.

"Anything happen with the snake-eyes domino?" she opened the discussion.

"No, I haven't seen or heard anything about Wanda Rowell. I don't know what she decided to do about school."

Penelope looked apprehensive, like she wanted to ask another question but didn't know how to phrase it. I decided to appease her.

"Everything I predicted about the two and one domino is coming true. Alice took my advice and came home and Trisha has had two of the three relationships that I predicted."

"Wasn't there another prediction connected with that domino?"

"I told Ann the three dots represented her breasts and her pussy and they would belong to me. At first she scoffed at the idea but she kept calling to ask me to meet her. When we were together she was fine with it but when we were apart she had second thoughts. Eventually she told me she accepted my prediction. One night she was standing under a streetlight in a driving rainstorm and shouted across the street to me, 'I'm your domino.' But it didn't last much longer. She thought she needed security and dumped me for an older guy."

Penelope's expression showed puzzlement but she turned her body to the front and I must have dozed off. The next thing I knew we had driven another hundred miles to the half way mark on our trip and Ned was asking if I wanted coffee. Coffee sounded good and I was glad to get out of the car and stretch my legs.

We were seated at a table, having pastry and coffee, when Penelope broached the domino subject again.

"There was another domino, wasn't there?"

I grinned, remembering the sound of Karen's cynical laughter when I told her the meaning of the six and six domino. "She hung up on me. I'll probably never hear from her again," I said.

"So that makes two domino predictions you've made that haven't materialized. Do you think the others were coincidence? Are you sure you didn't wish for some things that just happened to come true?"

"I didn't wish for Trisha to have three affairs. That's how it came to me, I told her and its happening the way I said. I don't even like to think about her being with someone other than Greg but I told her it would happen. She didn't believe me. It's not something she wanted to happen either, but it's happening."

Penelope was looking into the bottom of her cup, like the answer was hidden there. Ned was looking on, interested but staying out of our discussion.

"Perhaps it was the power of suggestion. Have you thought of that?"

"All I know is that it's beyond my control. Once I see a domino and the meaning enters my mind the outcome is inevitable."

She gave me a quizzical look and smiled. "How do you account for the ones that haven't played out the way you predicted? You said yourself that Karen will never talk to you again and the Rowell chick left the office without looking at you."

"You're right. Maybe I've lost my touch," I conceded, hoping she would drop the subject. I didn't want to have to explain the three and one domino. Telling Penelope and Ned about what happened in the cottage was something I wanted to avoid. Besides, it was not a good example of how the domino worked; I hadn't predicted the outcome for that one. There was no way I would even mention the two and two domino, how Sheila had spread her legs and placed her hands on the counter, inviting me to enter her.

It had been a year since Mr. Oldham and I had been to the small town of Pontiac, but I was able to direct Ned to the college. We entered the gates to the school at eleven fifteen a.m. and found the grounds abuzz with activity. All the entrances to my dorm were crowded with cars which were being unloaded by fidgety freshmen with their anxious parents trying to help. After we found a place to park, Ned helped me with my footlocker and Penelope followed, carrying a box filled with photos and keepsakes.

The room I had been assigned was on the second floor. The entrance from the hall was to a small common room where a table, four chairs, a small refrigerator and the telephone were located. Aside from being small, the room seemed comfortable with a fresh coat of paint hiding the battered look. There were two doors leading to rooms. My name was on the one to the right, along with a second nametag that read Roland Marlow.

Ned and I were anxious to set the footlocker down. It wasn't heavy, just awkward to handle. I opened the door and that is when I met my new roommate.

"Don't you fucking knock? Cocksucker!"

I bristled, surveyed the room and signaled to Ned to drop the footlocker. He turned to Penelope, took the box from her and told her to go check on the car. She didn't argue. It was now eleven twenty-five a.m. and the guy I assumed to be Roland was in bed. I took the few short steps and extended my hand.

"I'm Sammy Oldham," I said, avoiding adding, 'looks like we're going to be roomies, ' or that I was glad to meet him.

Roland scowled, lowered the sheet and extended his hand. His arm was burly, his chest hairy and I saw what looked like an abused nipple on his chest. His hand was incredibly soft. I squeezed slightly more than a first-meeting handshake required but didn't try to make his eyes pop out or anything. As soon as I released his hand he pulled the sheet over his bare chest and turned over to face the wall.

Ned was busy rearranging the furniture at my end of the room. In addition to my bed and a desk, there was a closet. At the bottom of the closet were two drawers for underwear and socks. I stored the box of pictures in the closet and we placed my footlocker next to the desk before going back downstairs to bring up another load.

"Sorry about that," I said to Penelope when we reached the car.

"Don't worry about me, she laughed. You're the one that has to put up with him."

Ned told Penelope to watch the car. He and I made two more trips up and down the stairs amidst other excited freshmen. Roland's body was turned to the wall. He didn't reprimand me again for not knocking. He didn't say anything.

We were heading back to the town to find a place to have lunch when I saw Charlie driving his mother's Volkswagen. We flagged him down and invited him to have lunch with us. He wanted to unload his car and get settled but we insisted that he join us and he succumbed to our demands.

On my previous visit to Pontiac, Mr. Oldham and I had sampled both of the better eating establishments in town. We'd had lunch at the school cafeteria; dinner at Stella's and breakfast in the hotel dining room. Stella's Restaurant was packed with freshmen and their parents, and judging by the traffic around the only hotel, its dining room was crowded too. We waited thirty minutes for a table, which had been pushed snugly against another table. Charlie struck up a conversation with the people seated next to us, another student and her parents.

Talking about anything serious was difficult, but Ned got a chance to warn me about my roommate.

"You need to be able to live with him for a year and the first few days are important. He must weigh two-fifty but don't take any shit from him," Ned whispered and I assured him I wouldn't. We ordered, ate and left Stella's as soon as possible. Ned and Penelope were anxious to be on their way home and the atmosphere wasn't conducive to after-lunch talk anyway. They dropped us off at Charlie's dorm and said goodbye.

"I got her name," Charlie boasted as we lugged his stuff up to the third floor of his dorm.

"And?" I asked. He went on to tell me the student at the table next to ours was Angie Forbes and that her room was on the first floor of my dorm.

"And?" I asked again.

"She's a business student."

"And?"

"That's all I found out."

"You don't get it, do you? The last I knew, you were practically engaged to Margaret and here you are hitting on the first female you meet."

"I wasn't hitting on her," he said, defensively, but without the conviction I would have expected to hear from someone who professed to be hopelessly lovesick.

Charlie's mother had bought a new car and given him the Volkswagen. We drove around the campus and then the town to become familiar with the layout of both.

The campus consisted of twelve buildings. There were only four dormitories, two of which were exclusively for freshmen students as we were required to live in a dorm our first year and the other two were for upper classmen. There was an administration building adjacent to the student center, where one of the two cafeterias was located. The learning center was a stand-alone building as was the sports center. The other eight buildings were mainly classrooms with professors' offices and other school functions wedged into inconspicuous corners.

There was no football program or any other competitive sport at the school, only intramural sports according to the school's literature. I spotted a running track around the perimeter of the all-sports field and there were several tennis courts scattered around the campus.

There was not much to the town. It was evident that the main business section catered to the student population. In addition to three clothing stores, there were two pizza shops, a Chinese restaurant, a movie theater and a beer hall. We drove around the neighborhoods and were able to pick out where some of the professors lived, where business people resided and where upper classmen rented apartments in three and four family homes. Several 'for rent' signs dotted the landscape.

Charlie and I had our evening meal in the only cafeteria that was open, and then parted, saying we would meet for breakfast the next morning.

Just for the hell of it I knocked on the door to my room. There was no answer but one of the guys from the other room came out and introduced himself. Skip Canon was average in height and weighed maybe one hundred forty pounds. My first impression of Skip was that we would get along well. His expression was serious but friendly. He said he had just arrived and hadn't seen Roland, nor had he seen our other roommate. I invited him into the room.

Something hit me the second we entered the room. I went to the closet and removed the box containing photographs and other personal items. The box had been ransacked. Becky's picture, which had been face-down in the box, was turned face-up and the top was off a box of diskettes. One of them was missing.

"Shit! The Bastard has my journal," I said. Only one disk was missing but I knew it was the one labeled 'Becky, ' even before I sorted through the others.

"What are you going to do?" Skip asked.

"I don't know," I said, cursing myself for copying my journal onto diskettes and bringing them to school. How could I be so stupid as to leave them in an unlocked closet? I knew exactly what I was going to do. Too bad I didn't have an apple-coring tool handy.

Skip stayed with me while I waited for Roland to come back to the room. We talked about everything, high school, girls, what our old man did for a living, siblings and more about girls. His dad was in marketing and the family had moved three times since he started kindergarten. He had two sisters and had just split up with his second girlfriend. I gave him a basic overview, telling him that my 'dad' was in real estate, that I had one sister and that I didn't presently have a girlfriend.

I woke up fully dressed, lying on top of my bed. Roland was asleep in his bed and Skip was not there. Something told me to check the box of diskettes before I pounced. The 'Becky' disk was back in the box.

I grabbed my shaving gear, clean underwear, and a towel and headed to the bathroom which was between the two rooms, in back of the common area.

Skip was shaving. He introduced me to the tall kid using the other sink. Kent Kincaid was built like Skip, only six inches taller. Judging from his long legs and arms he could have been a basketball player. We shook hands and I noticed his hands were long, an asset to a basketball player.

Since both sinks were tied up I jumped in the shower. When I came out Skip was waiting to shower next and Kent was back in their room.

"How come you didn't wake me?" Roland said when I went back into the room. He was still under the sheet.

"Let's get a couple of things straight. It's not my job to wake you and it's your job to stay out of my stuff," I said.

For a big man he was fast. The next thing I knew he was out of his bed and towering over me. Ned's estimate of his weight, I decided, was off by twenty-five or thirty pounds.