The Long Winter #3
Orientation part 3
The whole of Upper Michigan was sand, trees, and rocks. Penny Stark stood upon one of these rocks some 10 meters 30 feet above the surface of Lake Superior. Waves surged up against the rocks, spray reaching halfway up the black granite cliffs, and a cool wind blew her short dark hair across her face.
“Jump, Penny!”
Her roommate Maddie laughed at her from her safe spot several meters yards behind her on the uneven black rock jutting out into the lake. Penny glanced back at her and stuck her tongue out. Maddie showed off her athletic body in a string-y pink bikini, the only one of the three females (including Penny herself) to bare so much skin and she had laughed at Penny shortly before when the PMer took her sundress off to reveal her dark blue boy-shorts-and-tankini swimsuit.
“How old are you? Do your parents know you’re here?”
Penny had stuck her tongue out at her roommate then, too. After one last look down at the surging water she backed away from the edge and Maddie and their other friends groaned, but she ignored them and took two running steps to hurl herself far out over the lake from the highest spot on the rocky promontory. The journey to the Gravenreuth Institute flashed through her mind in those endless seconds she was airborne. The flight from her island home Port Matthew and its magnificent cliffs and beaches, so far away. The drive from the airport in the back of that big, luxurious Lincoln Navigator through the hills and forests that felt like they extended into every direction forever. Meeting Maddie for the first time, and Clark and Leah and now Bart—
The water hit her, so icy cold every muscle in her body tensed quite against her will. She plunged deep down into its frigid, dark depths, and some primal survival instinct woke and forced her frozen limbs into motion, jerky and awkward at first, but eventually she was swimming and the cold was not so severe and yes, there was the surface and she burst into the air and gulped deep the fresh, clean northern air, so different from the thick ocean air back home. And this water! It was so clear, it tasted so good. No salt at all. She looked forward to surfing that fall, and hoped to find someone who would want to go with her.
She looked up at the top of the cliff. Leah, Clark, and Bart stood at the edge cheering her bravery.
“Way to go!” Clark shouted.
“That was awesome! I thought you were going to chicken out!” Bart was a golden boy with glowing skin and bright yellow hair, slim and wiry, and a little older than the rest of them with a mysterious background in law enforcement, most of it “downstate,” as he referred to Michigan’s Lower Peninsula.
“You’re braver than your roommate,” Leah added, her tone as dry as her colorful triangle bikini, hidden under the towel protecting her creamy white skin. And Penny waved back and them and then swam away, for the end of the black rocks where they dove down into the water at an easy, shallow angle as Clark threw himself into the lake behind her. She swam until it was shallow enough for her hands to touch the rocky bottom and then she stood up and walked up the sloping, uneven black rocks for her friends, shivering even under the warmth of the sun.
“Now I know why you wore that swimsuit for babies!” Maddie laughed as Penny rejoined them. “It helps you keep a little less cold!”
“I’m not cold,” Penny answered, her teeth clenched to keep them from chattering.
“Yeah, I guess you’re just too nervous to be out here like this, showing so much skin!” Maddie wiggled her mostly-bared and very fine backside at Penny.
“Modesty is a virtue,” Leah said, watching Clark swim back to the point where the rocks sloped into the water through her glasses. Watching too closely, Penny thought, for she would much rather have that girl’s eyes on herself.
“That was great!” Maddie shouted past them at the fair-haired boy. Then she smiled at Penny. “You’re so much braver than me. I could never jump, especially not from this high.”
“Then why did you wear your bathing suit?” Penny asked, wondering if she would get in trouble for ogling Maddie’s taut, athletic body.
“To tease you and the boys.”
They giggled together and Penny continued to enjoy the view.
Bart shared a laugh at Clark’s expense with Leah.
“He hit that belly-first!”
“I doubt he even felt it,” Leah muttered, amusement playing across her lips. She kept her towel tight around herself.
Clark stood up at the bottom of the sloping rocks and covered the distance to them with an easy, loping gait. He was indeed red and Bart winked at the girls when he turned towards his friend.
“Your swan-dive looked great there, buddy!” he said, slapping Clark square on his sternum
“Ow! You fucker!” Clark gave him a shove as he cringed back and Bart laughed.
“Serves you right for getting so fancy back there!”
“Serves me right for trying to prepare for tonight’s fancy party with a swan dive.” He paused and smiled at Leah. “Did it impress you, though?”
“I would not use that word,” Leah said.
“Did you wear a bikini up here only to hide under a towel this whole time?”
“I did not at first, but the longer we’re here the more I am thinking so.”
“Let me borrow it, I’m getting cold.”
“Just air dry like Penny.”
“I am way more sensitive than Penny.”
“You should have had the foresight to bring your own towel.”
The pair stared at each other for a long moment until Leah smiled and dropped the towel from her shoulders. She held it out on her finger to her shivering friend.
“Fine. Here.”
“Great, thanks!”
Leah looked at Penny. “If you need to stare at me, I’ll tolerate it.” She struck a pose without looking like she was striking a pose, and with that pose came the impression that she had seen her share of flashing cameras.
“I don’t need to stare at you.” Penny frowned and held Leah’s eyes. “It’s not like I’m some sort of weird alien.”
“To her you are!” Maddie said, jumping between them. “To these boys, too!”
“Being a PMer is nothing special,” Bart said. “They’re people just like the rest of us.”
“She’s not worried about that aspect of Penny’s essential being,” Maddie said. She ran her eyes up and down Penny’s gym-forged body, still dripping with lake water, and leered laciviously at her. “She’s worried about the totally gay aspect of Penny’s essential being!”
“And you’re not?” Clark did not look at Penny as he pulled the towel off his well-touseled hair. “You’re living with her, you know.”
“So? I’m engaged!”
“To a boy, right?” Leah’s eyes narrowed as they swung from Penny to Maddie.
“A man!” Maddie shook her bottom yet again at Penny. “Too bad for you you won’t get to enjoy this. It’s promised to someone else!”
“I don’t need it,” Penny’s voice was a croak as she took in the sight of Maddie’s shaking rump. Then she smiled at Bart. “I’m glad none of this seems like a big deal to you!”
“I’d have imagined it would be a big deal to Maddie, at the very least,” Clark said, steamrolling Bart’s response even as he opened his mouth. “She’s the one who has to live with you ogling her ass like that.” Instead of looking at Penny he ogled Maddie’s ass.
“I like her ogling my ass!” Maddie turned and poked his shoulder. “You should have better manners, though. You’re being totally weird about her being a lesbian.”
“I am not.”
“You are a little.” Leah yanked her towel off his shoulders. “Can you even look in her direction?”
“I can, but what’s the point? Even if she is a pretty girl, she’s going all to waste.”
“Waste how?” Leah gestured at Penny’s pelvis. “Those are not hips destined to bear children.”
“Neh, Leah, should I feel insulted?”
“No. It was just an observation.”
“But now Clark can’t stop staring at her hips!” Maddie was laughing, once again, at Penny.
“Maybe you’re projecting!” Penny squared off with Maddie, hands on those slender hips of hers.
“Whatever, of all of us here, I mean, besides you of course, I’m the only one here who’s ever even talked to a lesbian before.”
“What, were you hitting up the lesbian bars in South Beach when you were in high school?” Clark asked.
“No, I played soccer!” Maddie laughed. “Half the team was gay!”
Penny squirmed. They had attracted the attention of a group of other students taking their own jumps into the lake. She did not recognize any of them from the Institute. So Penny surmised they must be University students, although she had seen none of them at the University’s extracurricular fair. And one of them was staring at Penny. A big one, several centimeters inches taller and (conservatively) more than twice her mass, in a bathing suit that did nothing to flatter her preponderance of curves. She tossed her artificially black hair over her big, round shoulders and smiled when Penny’s eyes met hers.
“Let’s not talk about this anymore,” Penny said, shushing them. “My sexuality is not the most interesting thing up here.”
“No, but it’s in the top ten!” Maddie continued laughing, even as the other girl approached from behind her.
“Did I hear you guys right? Are you all gaybies?”
Maddie’s grin vanished as she saw the way Penny’s expression fell into the pit of despair.
“No, just her,” Clark said helpfully, nodding in Penny’s direction. “But I am wondering about her.” He scowled at Maddie.
“Hey!”
“If you’re confused, you need to work that shit out on your own.” The girl shouldered past her and reached out for Penny. Her hands, big, soft, and much too warm, engulfed Penny’s. “Will you marry me? I think I just fell in love with you.”
Penny glanced at her friends—well, her roommate and the two classmates she had talked to that day, and the townie the boy seemed to know—pleading with her eyes for some help. Leah stepped beside Penny.
“She seems to be getting over her recent long-term relationship, so I’m not sure she’s ready to move on just yet.”
“I’ll be your rebound girl!”
“I’m not going to go out with anyone—”
“Go out with? What are you, 12? Wait, your accent! I love it! Are you Mexican? I love Latin American culture! Tacos and mariachis and sombreros! What’s your major? What’s your sign? Let’s jump into the lake together, and then put on a show for all these normies here!”
“What? I’m not—I’m—we were, we were really getting ready to go back to the Institute—”
“The Institute? You mean Gravenreuth? You’re going there?”
“Yes, we have lots to prepare for this year—”
“Prepare?” The big girl laughed at them, her body quivering with derisive mirth. “Yeah, right, like you’re there for your brains or something! Your daddy will just buy you your grades! I’m rich, too, though, we're in the same boat so I get it!”
Penny’s mouth dropped open, only managing to make an appalled sound in response.
Clark and Bart stepped in.
“We really were just leaving.”
“What?” The big girl’s arms swallowed up Penny, and the PMer strugged to breathe as the big girl swung her away from the boys. “You can’t take her from me! This is destiny at work! I felt it when I woke up! We’re destined to be together, I felt it all the way here!” She swung around, Penny dragged around like a toddler’s doll, and shouted at her friends. “Didn’t I say that? I knew today was going to be my day as soon as I woke up!”
They agreed with varying degrees of lukewarm enthusiasm and the big girl swung back towards Penny’s friends.
“You don’t even know her name,” Leah said.
“Oh! That’s right!” The big girl set her back on her feet and Penny stumbled back, successful in keeping her hands out of the big girl’s marshmallow talons. “I’m Geri Nye. Now get on your knees and propose! You’ll look much better on your knees!”
“No! We’re leaving!”
“Wait, I don’t know how to contact you!”
“It’s a small town. Bye!”
And Penny fled ahead of her friends, ignoring whatever it was that Geri was shouting after her. She was glad her feet were steady beneath her over the uneven rocks, but she was not as fast as Maddie and the boys and had fallen behind when she reached the treeline. They dove ahead of her through the jackpines for Bart’s big burgundy Jeep parked by itself under a maple tree on the far side of the gravel parking area. Leah fell in beside her, once again cloaked in her towel, however damp it may have been from Clark’s usage.
“You’re going to get Bart’s Jeep wet,” she said.
Penny pouted, casting a sideways glance at the bespectacled girl. Was that a smirk on her face? Penny was sure she was smirking.
“That Geri is hardly enough to make me wet,” she muttered, earning a snicker from her smirking friend.
“I’ll let you sit in the middle,” Leah said, pulling her glasses off and cleaning them with her towel. “Maybe Maddie’s enough to get the job done.”
“Ugh, we have to be roommates. I don’t want to form feelings for my straight roommate who’s totally engaged to some boy rich enough to buy her a diamond the side of my fist.”
“To be fair, your fist isn’t all that big.”
“Penny and Leah! Hurry up!” Maddie shouted from the open door of the Jeep.
The Jeep was waiting for them. It was not just any Jeep, but the grandest of the grand, a Grand Wagoneer that seemed even bigger than the big black Navigator in which the Institute’s man had picked Penny up from the airport. Leah slid into the back row and the seat slid back into place for Penny to take her place in the middle. The door closed with a solid thunk and then Bart had the Jeep in gear and out onto the park’s road. Penny sighed.
“Why does everyone think I’m Mexican?”
“I did for a moment, but I was never stupid enough to guess,” Clark said. Maddie laughed.
“The PMer accent is very distinctive,” Leah said. “You sound nothing like a native Spanish-speaker, from Mexico or otherwise.”
“Yeah, and you look a hell of a lot more Asian than you do Latina,” Maddie added. “First of all, you’d need much wider hips to classify as Latina, but don’t take that as an insult! If I was into girls, which I’m not, I’d definitely find your hot little bod appealing!” She reached up between the two front seats and patted the boys’ shoulders. “Don’t you agree? Quite the exotic little hottie we have back here, huh?”
“Yeah, exotic, whatever,” Clark muttered, frowning over his shoulder at Maddie.
“I think you’re very cute,” Bart said. “And I’m always happy to meet people from Port Matthew. I have family there.”
“Really?” Penny perked up. “Where do they live?”
“Stranahan Terrace. Killer view of Mori-cho.”
Penny beamed at the back of Bart’s head. He had even said the place names with the proper pronunciation. With her mood lightened she gave the back of Clark’s head an impish smile.
“You know,” Penny said, “I’m glad that when I was cliff jumping this time I didn’t encounter the kancho-shark like I did last time.”
“Kancho-shark?” Clark turned and frowned at her.
“It was a real danger to us last summer,” Penny said with a giggle.
“Kancho means enema in Japanese,” Bart said. “I can therefore only speculate on what a kancho-shark might be.”
“It seems like it might be safe here, though—“
“Seems safe? Are you implying that swimming with you means being in danger of a Japanese-enema-giving aquatic predator? If so, I’m going to have to bow out of any future aquatic outings with you,” Clark said.
“I didn’t know you had those sorts of things in Port Matthew,” Leah said. “Are they freshwater fish or salt water?”
“We were cliff jumping at a waterfall above a hot spring town.”
“A waterfall leads me to believe they would be freshwater,” Clark said. “If she’s got their eggs or spores or whatever on her somewhere we’d better keep her out of the lake from now on so she doesn’t contaminate it with an invasive species!”
“I didn’t encounter a kancho-shark when I was in Port Matthew,” Bart said.
“I only encountered it the one time. I hope to never again do so.”
“Then why bring it up?” Clark almost wailed.
“Someone seems overly sensitive about his asshole,” Maddie said. “Problem with hemorrhoids?”
“He is a giant hemorrhoid,” Leah said. “Despite that fact, he is still better company than Braden Garies. Regardless, since we left the rocks early I still have nearly two hours open in my schedule. Shall we ladies break from the boys to assemble our outfits for the evening? I am interested in seeing what you both have in your closets.”
“Oh, the evening, that’s right,” Maddie shared a helpless look with Penny and they sulked together.
“He’s going to call me a Mexican all night,” Penny sighed.
“Friends make time to support each other,” Leah said, prodding the screen of her phone. “If we are to become friends, we must put ourselves through hardships such as these together. My status requires I attend Braden Garies’ party tonight. We do not need to stay the whole time, but we do need to make an appearance.”
“What if I don’t want to become friends with all of you?” Penny asked, tossing a frown at Leah over her shoulder.
“I was under the impression that you were in the robotics program. I am, too. We will be colleagues. All our classmates will likely be boys. It might do us good to stick together.”
“Oh, sure, I’m sure that your interest in the only lesbian in the whole damn institute is strictly professional!” Maddie said, leaning over the arm of her chair to smirk at Leah. “Now who’s the one projecting?”
“Cut it out, you two. I’m not going to go out with anyone up here. I want to study and then I want to help make robots—”
“She’s going to end up with a sexbot,” Clark said. He turned back with a goofy grin on his face. “A sexy one!”
Maddie laughed. Leah rolled her eyes. Bart ignored them and drove on.
“I am not interested in sexbots! Why would I be interested in sexbots? That’s weird! Only boys are interested in sexbots!”
“That’s an awful lot of protesting for a totally innocent person,” Maddie said.
“I believe her,” Leah said. “She looks more like she’s into tentacles anyway.”
Penny slapped her forehead but still laughed with them. There was no way Leah could have known what was on Penny’s own mobile device, that is, her phone, and she did not want to protest louder and really fire up their suspicions. Besides, with the party at Braden’s to prepare for, there were plenty of other things they would need to focus on. Bart took them back to the Institute and dropped them off. The girls parted from Clark in the common area and went to primp themselves for the evening. Penny hoped Leah would not drag them to any more of these high-profile events, but the bespectacled girl was right: it would be nice to have another female friend in classes that were likely to be all boys.