Chapter 29

Cindy's Turn:

Summer used to be something that I survived. School was sort of a refuge because I was out of Mom's hair. Living in a thirty-odd foot travel trailer with Mom did not exactly lend itself to lazy days. I didn't have friends my age. Mom certainly wasn't exerting herself to see that I had any summer activities, so I was on my own in the RV park. The only kids my age came and went with their own families, and very few people choose to visit RV parks in Alabama except for the odd weekend.

I could've gotten in as much trouble as one person could stand, maybe more, if I had Mom's open mind about sexuality and the employment thereof for personal gain, but I just couldn't. There were a lot of hopes in my life, and ending up like Mom wasn't among them.

When this guy moved his trailer in, told Mizz Helen, my great-aunt, that he was planning on being there for several months, it sort of popped up on my radar. When I saw that he went to work every day, five or six days a week, then came back to the park, went for a swim, he was somebody to investigate.

When he actually TALKED to me and didn't treat me like either a moron, beneath his intellectual level, or a tasty bit of flesh, we became friends. And as they say, the rest is history.

Which brings us to NOW. Tail end of August. 'School' is about to start, at least the official 'for everybody else' version of school. Across the country, millions of people from pre-school to post-grad are getting ready to go to school. Since last year when I counted myself as one of them, 'school' has never stopped.

Since I determined that Dan Richards was The One, and I managed to get him to figure out the reciprocal to that idea was that I was The One, I've been learning. Oh, yes, a lot of what I learned in the last twelve months belongs to subjects one does not approach in a traditional academic environment. I've learned that I can go from breathless to unconscious in a matter of minutes, and that sighs and giggles and touches are a whole magnitude different level of communication when two people love each other.

I also know that I went from 'How do I work this math problem?' at the beginning of the year to helping my teacher, Mizz Crocket, on her math for her master's degree program to going toe to toe with TWO college professors to establish my mastery of college-level mathematics.

And last year, it was just me, all confused about who I was and who was in the world around me.

Now I have family. Community. Sisters, every one of 'em smart and sane and moral and bright and funny and loving.

My birthday's coming up soon. I will be fifteen. That's a milestone in Alabama, because I will be able to get a (Wow!) learner's permit to drive a car. I have taken some good-natured ribbing because of that. I'm the youngest of the bunch, except for Terri, but Terri's my niece, not my sister.

I'm the current winner of the spot-landing contest for flying in our community, which means that I can make our old Cessna 180 listen to me very well. Of course, I think I get a break because she's a tail-dragger, but we had a Sunday afternoon at the airfield with EVERYBODY. My Dan set a camera up to video a stripe we put across the runway and we all took turns trying to touch down on that stripe. Dan had to fly with me, but I missed the strip by less than a foot. It's on video.

But I can't drive. In two weeks, though...

Birthdays. We had a summer full of 'em. Terri's was first, when she turned eight. I got her cake. Found a great cake shop that could do some really good decorating, and got her a 'My Little Pony' cake, done to perfection. Tina thought it was perfect, and when Terri saw it, she said "This has Cindy written all over it!"

A couple of weeks after that, we did a double with Tina and Nikki. They collaborated on a seafood gumbo. "I know it's supposed to be a wintertime food," Nikki said, "but we'll just turn the A/C down and pretend!"

The first part of August, we had Susan's, and her mom and dad were there. Susan and Jason flew Tina's plane up to Tennessee to bring them down. Susan's got proud parents. Very proud. Sometimes I wish Mom would see me and be proud. Mizz Helen and Mister Charlie are proud of me. I'm proud of me. Dan's proud of me. I just wish Mom...

It might be silly. After all, Mom just signed papers making Mizz Helen my guardian, gave me a hug, and left for Vegas with one of a long series of guys. It was months before I heard a peep from her. That's not a lot of 'motherly instinct' showing, there, and I really shouldn't get my hopes up. Still, Dan didn't know, but I did write Mom back. And then I told him.

"I understand, sweetie," he'd said. "Moms're moms. Just like a mom has difficulty writing off a bad kid, I guess kids have difficulty writing off a bad mom. And you're far from being a kid."

Still, that's the dark spot in my life. I naturally brought it up to my sisters. Nikki's mom writes her from prison in Arkansas. They've gone to visit her. Tina's mom is in prison, too, but Tina didn't want to initiate contact.

"Your case is different," Nikki said. "Your mom has a choice. If she wanted, she could come back here to see you. Mine's kinda limited on travel options for at least another four years, maybe more."

Tina's face. Wasn't smiling.

"Tina, I didn't mean to drag you down over this," I said.

"That's not your fault, Cindy," she said. "We all hurt over these issues. We're almost the same, except you, Susan."

"I know," Susan said. "It's sad. You know how many times I've listened to kids gripe because their parents cared enough to set limits?"

"Uh-huh," I said. I was thinking of Mizz Kathy and Mister Mike and how they loved and cared for their daughter. No, check that. They cared for all of us and just about everybody else we knew. Good people. I'd promised myself that I would care about people, not use them.

"I'll be okay," I said.

"You will, you know. Just think about us from last year, how far we've all come." That was Nikki. Sometimes I think Nikki and I think entirely too much alike.

So. Back to school. Mizz Patel told us that we needed to do the freshman orientation. "It's required of all full-time students, ladies," she said. "Even though there's not a freshman among you."

So Susan goes on line and orders T-shirts in Auburn colors. Across the back, they all said 3Sigma Engineering and the numbers were our ages: fourteen, sixteen, eighteen and nineteen and twenty-seven. That's Jason. Our names were on the left breast.

As you might imagine, campus was a madhouse that day. We were kind of spoilt, I guess, having spent the summer there, bopping from one hall to another. Yes, we were on a schedule all summer but the schedule was individualized because of our status.

On Orientation Day, though, it was a different story as hundreds of eager young scholars descended on the hall. School colors. Oh yeah, We stood out like snowflakes in a blizzard as we determined to stay together. The hall was, to use a good word, 'boisterous', I hadn't really expected to gain much knowledge, but we attended and got that block checked off on our college transcripts.

Working our way out of the building, Jason said, "Don't get in a hurry. It's not gonna help and you don't need the aggravation of struggling over it."

He's right. So we're standing there and I hear a voice. "Uh, Cindy?" Male. I look. Typical college kid, unlike me, you know.

"Yes. Do I know you?"

"I don't think so. My name's Garrett. Garret Jones." Garret is maybe six feet tall, a bit shorter than my Dan, his hair is brown like his eyes. He's not fat, but not skinny, either, and he's dressed in that informal fashion that one would expect on campus.

"Hello, Garrett," I said. "I'm Cindy Richards. Happy to meet you."

"You look young to be in college," he said.

Ah, that's the reason he chose me out of the crowd. Young. "I'm fourteen. I will be fifteen in two weeks."

"No shit!?!?"

"Zero," I said. Now that I knew what his angle was, I decided to sort of crank things up. "I've been here since last June."

"You're a freshman?"

I saw Susan's smirk behind him. "Nope. Just never attended the orientation. I'm unclassified as far as the 'freshman' thing is concerned."

"How can you be unclassified?"

"Same way I can go to college when I'm fourteen." I smirked. "And this is Nikki and she's sixteen, and Tina here is eighteen and Susan is nineteen."

Jason stepped up. "And I'm Jason Ellerbee and Susan is my wife, and if you look, Cindy's wearing a wedding band."

"Duuude," Garrett blurted, "I wasn't, like, hittin' on Cindy. Just curious."

So I defused the situation with the obvious question. "Garrett, what's your major?"

"BIology," He said. "Yours?"

"All of us are working toward electrical engineering. Jason's got a bachelor's in engineering technology already."

"Wow." The crowd started thinning out so we could move towards the door. "Uh, I guess I' may see you all around." Garrett made his escape.

Susan elbowed Jason. "You jumped in awful hard on the boy, didn't you?"

"Uh, I was just sort of takin' care..."

"Thank you, Jason," I said. "Your heart's in the right place. But I think I can handle that sort of thing."

Susan hugged his arm. "But we appreciate you being 'big brother', honey. Really."

I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned. A brown-haired girl stood there, she was bit on the chunky side. No, quite a bit past Susan. Susan's voluptuous. This girl wasn't exactly fat, but definitely past Susan.

"Uh ... Cindy? Did I hear you say you're here for engineering?"

"Yes. All of us are," I said.

"I'm sorry. I'm Tara Helton."

"Cindy Richards. And Nikki, and Susan, and Tina and Jason."

"I'm guessing you're not staying on campus, then," Tara said.

"No, we have an apartment building a couple of miles out from campus." By this time we were out of the building. The crowd was thinning, fanning out. We made our way to a somewhat crowded shady spot.

"I'm here for engineering, too," Tara said. "I didn't know how many girls there would be..."

"With you, at least five," Tina said. "But I'm thinking there are probably more."

"Yeah," Tara replied. "But y'all aren't really freshmen?"

"No," Tina said. "All my courses are junior level. Why?"

"Study group. I was hoping for a study group."

"Give me your cellphone number," I said. "We may just have what you need." As she spoke her number I punched it into my iPhone, then attached an e-card to a message back. "There! You have us now."

"What's this address?"

"That's the strip mall we own. We have one unit for our husbands' engineering company, one is part lab and part study area, and there's an Indian restaurant in one. We have one empty unit, too. We live in the apartment building behind it."

"You live here?"

"Yep!"

"Tara, where are you from?" Susan asked.

"Georgia. Savannah. But Dad's an Auburn alum," she said. "I sorta had to come here."

"Well, you got a place to come hide," Susan said. "Come visit us."

"I'll do that," Tara said.

We watched Tara heading off across the campus and then we bunched up again and headed to our cars. Make that 'their' cars. I can't drive, so I don't have a car. Of course, neither does Nikki. Yet. Tina and I and Nikki got into Tina's car. Jason and Susan were in hers.

"Madhouse, huh?" Nikki said.

"What did we expect?" Tina replied.

"Yeah. Get ready for the college experience. And Cindy didn't make it through orientation before she got hit on."

"He said he wasn't hitting on me," I protested.