Copyright 2017 by Juliana Conners; All Rights Reserved.
Chapter 1 – Elizabeth Jane
Ten minutes isn't very long. But it feels like an eternity every time I'm waiting for my mom to pick me up in the parking lot by Messer Hall. I swear, I'm the only person whose mother still picks her up from school every day. And "school" for me is now college. So that’s how pathetic it is.
Ten minutes is the amount of time it takes my mom to drive to my campus after she gets out of work, which ends at the exact same time as my last class of the day— evolutionary psychology. That’s pretty fast in terms of a commute time. But it’s plenty of time for a lot of things I don’t want to happen to happen.
For instance, right now Michelle walks by me on her way to her car and doesn’t talk to me. And then Diana walks by and does talk to me.
I don’t know which scenario is worse. Because I have social anxiety, both are bad. The first makes me wonder why barely anyone talks to me. The second reminds me that it’s because I’m weird.
“Hey there, Elizabeth Jane," Diana calls out to me.
I envy her stride— a subtle swagger that combines assertive confidence with laid back unconcern. My walk has always been more self-conscious— when I actually have to walk somewhere instead of fading into the background like the wallflower I am.
“Hi Diana.”
We sit next to each other in class and sometimes talk afterwards—I guess you could say we’ve become friends. Except “friends” isn’t really something I “do”— because of both my shyness and my over-protective mother who is always telling me that everyone’s out to get me.
“Want a ride?”
“Nah, I can’t…”
I trail off, hoping she leaves before my embarrassing mother shows up.
“Your mom coming to get you again?” she asks.
“Yeah.”
My eyes dart back and forth along the road leading to the campus from the main street. I’m praying that I don’t see my mom’s car driving along it.
“That’s what you said last time,” Diana says. “You know, you’re always free to grab a ride with me. That way she doesn’t have to go out of her way. You live over near Ridgemont So, do I. So, your house is on my way to campus.”
Now I have to force my eyes not to widen in surprise. I’m paranoid, wondering how she knows where I live.
“The Wright dissertation,” she says immediately, as if reading my mind and answering my question for me.
That’s right. I remember we worked on a class project together— a dissertation on Wright’s Moral Animal— and we had to fill out our addresses on the information sheet.
I nod.
“Thanks,” I tell her. “I appreciate the offer.”
She glances at me as if expecting me to continue— to tell her I’ll take her up on it next time or offer some reason why I can’t. I get that this is how a normal conversation— average human interaction— is supposed to go.
But I have no excuse to turn down her offer to give me a ride that anyone would understand. Just an overbearing, mortifyingly embarrassing mother who insists on taking me everywhere I need to go and picking me back up again.
I’ve tried to gently request— and then openly protest— this “preference” of my mom’s, but her response is always to remind me that I live under her roof and she pays my college tuition, so I must do as she says. Then she quotes her favorite Bible verse to me, from Ephesians, which reminds me that if I obey and honor my mother, things will go well with me and I will live long in the land.
The way she arches her eyebrows and squints her eyes at me after that line is her way of adding her own subtle threat at the end: “And if you don’t, then things won’t go well with you and you won’t live long in the land.”
I swear, my mom should write her own book of the Bible; she is straight out of the Old Testament sometimes.
Now, waiting for Diana to leave, I shift my weight from one foot to the other (which reminds me that I need to go on a diet soon or my mother will give me a lecture about sloth and gluttony). The other times that Diana has offered to give me a ride home, she has eventually taken no for an answer, but this time she seems more insistent, or at least intent on talking to me more.
“That lecture today was pretty wild, right?” she asks, putting the keys she had been carrying into her Coach purse.
Great. That’s the opposite of what I wanted her to do— which is to keep on walking to her car and then unlock it, get in, and drive home to her normal life with her undoubtedly normal parents. It’s not that I don’t like her— it’s just that I’m completely unable to relate to her or anyone else, it seems.
“You think?” I shrug.
It’s my attempt to cut the conversation short by giving a non-committal response, but Diana sees it as an open invitation to continue letting me in on her thoughts.
“Well, I was particularly fascinated when Dr. Calvert described the sexual instinct of older male animals in the wild; how they want to pounce on the younger and more definitively fertile female animals. Weren’t you?”
I look at her, then look quickly away while blushing. It’s almost like she could read my thoughts during the lecture.
I have to admit, while Dr. Calvert had been talking my panties were dripping wet and I was squirming a little uncomfortably in my chair, because the topic was driving me wild— no pun intended. Maybe Diana— who eagerly participates in class discussions about sex and has even brought it up to me outside of class before, telling me she can’t wait to head home to meet a hot date and she hopes he rips her clothes off like tigers in the wild bite their mates before they mount them— has some sixth sense about sexual thoughts and was somehow able to sense my wicked, dirty desires.