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.
I spread one of the dried slickspin sheets on the floor and went down as fast as I could get out of my clothes. Brown was in no hurry, and the frictionless sheet seemed to relax him. He smoothed his hands the full length of my body, “Tavvy,” he said, brushing his lips along the line from my hips to my neck, “your skin’s so soft. I’d almost forgotten.” He was talking to himself.
Forgotten what, for fucked’s sake, he couldn’t have been without any jig-jig all summer or he’d be showing it now, and he acted like he had all the time in the world.
“Almost forgotten… nothing like…”
Like what? I thought furiously. Just what have you got in that room? And what has it got that I haven’t. I spread my legs and forced him down between them. He raised his head a little, frowning, then he started that long, slow, torturing passage down my skin again. Jiggin’ Jesus, how long did he think I could wait?
“Come on,” I whispered, trying to maneuver him with my hips. “Put it in, Brown. I want to jig-jig. Please.”
He stood up in a motion so abrupt that my head smacked against the laundry-room floor. He pulled on his clothes, looking… what? Guilty? Angry?
I sat up. “What in the holy scut do you think you’re doing?”
“You wouldn’t understand. I just keep thinking about your father.”
“
“Look, I can’t explain it. I just can’t…” And left. Like that. With me ready to go off any minute and what do I get? A cracked head.
“I don’t have a father, you scutty godfucker!’ I shouted after him.
I yanked my clothes on and started pulling the other sheet out of the spin with a viciousness I would have liked to have spent on Brown. Arabel was back, watching from the laundry-room door. Her face still had that strained look.
“Did you see that last channing scene?” I asked her, snagging the sheet on the spin handle and ripping a hole in one corner.
“I didn’t have to. I can imagine it went pretty much the way mine did.” She leaned unhappily against the door. “I think they’ve all gone bent over the summer.”
“Maybe.” I wadded the sheets together into a ball. I didn’t think that was it, though. Brown wouldn’t have lied about a new boy in his room in that case. And he wouldn’t have kept talking about my father. In that edge way I walked past Arabel. “Don’t worry, Arabel, if we have to go lezzy again, you know you’re my first choice.”
She didn’t even look particularly happy about that.
My idiot roommate was awake, sitting bolt upright on the bunk where I’d left her. The poor brainless thing had probably been sitting there the whole time I’d been gone. I made up the bunk, stripped off my clothes for the second time tonight, and crawled in. “You can turn out the light any time,” I said.
She hopped over to the wall plate, swathed in a nightgown that dated as far back as Old Man Moultons college days, or farther. “Did you get in trouble?’ she asked, her eyes wide.
“Of course not. I wasn’t the one who tossed up. If anybody’s in trouble, it’s you,” I added maliciously.
She seemed to sag against the flat wallplate as if she were clinging to it for support. “My father-will they tell my father?” Her face was flashing red and white again. And where would the vomit land this time? That would teach me to take out my frustrations on my roommate.
“Your father? Of course not. Nobody’s in trouble. It was a couple of fucked sheets, that’s all.”
She didn’t seem to hear me. “He said he’d come and get me if I got in trouble. He said he’d make me go home.”
I sat up in the bunk. I’d never seen a freshman yet that wasn’t dying to go home, at least not one like Zibet, with a whole loving family waiting for her instead of a trust and a couple of snotty lawyers. But Zibet here was scared scutless at the idea. Maybe the whole campus was going edge. “You didn’t get in trouble,” I repeated. “There’s nothing to worry about.”
She was still hanging onto that wallplate for dear life.
“Come on'. Mary Masting, she was probably having an attack of some kind, and I’d get blamed for that, too. “You’re safe here. Your father doesn’t even know about it.”
She seemed to relax a little. “Thank you for not getting me in trouble,” she said and crawled back into her own bunk. She didn’t turn the light off.
Jiggin’ Jesus, it wasn’t worth it. I got out of bed and turned the fucked light off myself.
“You’re a good person, you know that,” she said softly into the darkness. Definitely edge. I settled down under the covers, planning to masty myself to sleep, since I couldn’t get anything any other way, but very quietly I didn’t want any more hysterics.
A hearty voice suddenly exploded into the room. “To the young men of Moulton College, to all my strong sons, I say—”
“What’s that?” Zibet whispered.
“First night in Hell,” I said, and got out of bed for the thirtieth time.
“May all your noble endeavors be crowned with success,” Old Man Moulton said.
I slapped my palm against the wallplate and then fumbled through my still-unpacked shuttle bag for a nail file. I stepped up on Zibets bunk with it and started to unscrew the intercom.
“To the young women of Moulton College,” he boomed again, “to all my darling daughters.” He stopped. I tossed the screws and file back in the bag, smacked the plate, and fung myself back in bed.
“Who was that?” Zibet whispered.
“Our founding father,” I said, and then remembering the effect the word “father” seemed to be having on everyone in this edge place, I added hastily, “That’s the last time you’ll have to hear him. I’ll put some plast in the works tomorrow and put the screws back in so the dorm mother won’t figure it out. We will live in blessed silence for the rest of the semester.”
She didn’t answer. She was already asleep, gently snoring. Which meant so far I had misguessed every single thing today. Great start to the semester.
The admin knew all about the party. “You do know the meaning of the word restricks, I presume?” he said.
He was an old scut, probably forty-five. Dear Daddy’s age. He was fairly good-looking, probably exercising like edge to keep the old belly in for the freshman girls. He was liable to get a hernia. He probably jig-jigged into a plastic bag, too, just like Daddy, to carry on the family name. Jiggin’ Jesus, there oughta be a law.
“You’re a trust student, Octavia?”
“That’s right.” You think I’d be stuck with a fucked name like Octavia if I wasn’t?
“Neither parent?”
“No. Paid mother-surr. Trust name till twenty-one.” I watched his face to see what effect that had on him. I’d seen a lot of scared faces that way.
“There’s no one to write to, then, except your lawyers. No way to expel you. And restricks don’t seem to have any appreciable effect on you. I don’t quite know what would.”
I’ll bet you don’t. I kept watching him, and he kept watching me, maybe wondering if I was his darling daughter, if that expensive jism in the plastic bag had turned out to be what he was boning after right now.
“What exactly was it you called your dorm mother?”
“Scut,” I said.
“I’ve longed to call her that myself a time or two.”
The sympathetic buildup. I waited, pretty sure of what was coming.
