Deep Fried and Pickled (Book One - The Rachael O'Brien Chronicles)
Read Deep Fried and Pickled (Book One - The Rachael O'Brien Chronicles) Online
Authors: Paisley Ray
THE RACHAEL O’BRIEN CHRONICLES
FRESHMAN: DEEP FRIED AND PICKLED
A PAISLEY RAY NOVEL
FRESHMAN: DEEP FRIED AND PICKLED
Copyright 2012 Paisley Ray
Cover Design by Chantal DeFelice
Formatted by
IRONHORSE Formatting
Kindle Edition
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.
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ISBN: 978-0-9885528-0-7 (Ebook)
Table Of Contents
Personal message from Paisley Ray
“There are no good girls gone wrong,
just bad girls found out.”
~Mae West
Prologue
My
four-year plan included getting an art history degree, losing my virginity, and partying--hopefully not in that order.
However, sometimes even well-thought-out schemes don’t unfold the way you envision. The wealth of knowledge instilled into my brain as a freshman didn’t come from books or lectures. My nine-month south-of-the-Mason-Dixon-Line experience at North Carolina College wasn’t overly focused on academic pursuits. Instead, I followed a nagging feeling about a painting that turned into a full-blown compulsion to uncover a fake. The little voice inside my head kept warning me, but I didn’t pay much attention until it was almost too late.
AUGUST 1986
1
G
rogan
H
all
“
DEEP
FRIED AND PICKLED,” my dad said as he parked the car in front of Grogan Dorm at North Carolina College. “That’s the way they like things down here.”
I would have preferred driving the four-hundred-thirty-six miles from Canton, Ohio, to Greensboro, North Carolina, in a more subtle, neutral-colored vehicle, but Dad liked the idea of free advertising. Before the sun had risen, we packed his work van, a cherry-bomb-red, and cobalt-blue block-letter billboard that read, “How’s Your Art? O’Brien’s Fine Painting and Furniture Restoration.” Half-asleep, I casually mentioned the trip’s purpose – settling me into my dorm, not finding commissions for his business. My innocent comment morphed Dad into Captain Buzzkill, “Young lady,” he lectured. “Who do you think is paying your out-of-state tuition?” He droned on that one from our driveway until we crossed the Virginia state line.
College campus move-in-day mirrored a directionally-challenged, lawless rush-hour with drivers blatantly ignoring one-way streets, curbs and no parking zones. Boiling frustration and a herding mentality short-circuited my dad’s normal rule-abiding modus operandi, and he wedged the van between a stockpile of triple-parked vehicles. Outside of Grogan Dorm, Campus Drive was completely bunged up.
When I slid the van door open, heat waves bounced off the asphalt and collided with the arctic blast that escaped it’s air-conditioned interior. Squinting to block the light from the unrelenting sun, I positioned my hand like a sailor looking for land and leaned against the painted logo on the sliding door.
Figuring we were sitting ducks for a parking violation, I rushed to unload my belongings and heaped them in a pile on the curb. Everyone had the same idea, and the sidewalk in front of the Tower Dorm looked like a flea market that had exploded.
Inside the van, as I climbed through a hanging clothes rack onto a mountain of essential stuff, sweat beaded under my bra. A mom and daughter two cars down were in the throes of a blowout over who forgot to pack bedding. Through the open van doors, I spied a man clutching a floor lamp. With his free hand, he picked up a box of my toiletries that had merged into an adjacent pile.
“Dad,” I shouted out the back, “my bathroom supplies are walking away.”
Near the bottom of a flight of stairs, he caught up with the perpetrator. Mom and I watched him retrieve my six- month supply of toothpaste and tampons.
Rings of sweat stained his armpits, and he snapped, “Rachael, only unload what you can carry.”
Mom managed to crinkle the tip of her nose. “Rachael was just unpacking. It’s not her fault.”
“Maeve, come down to earth and help carry something.”
Mom and Dad had bickered in the car the entire road trip and hadn’t stopped, even though we’d arrived.
Weird.
It was the longest running disagreement I’d ever witnessed between my parents. Until today, my PUs—parental units—functioned as a united front, not crossing the other in front of me. Under an asinine umbrella of, “We know what’s best,” they had managed to ruin my teenage social life with a barrage of ridiculous rules and regulations about vehicles and boys. Having a 10:00 p.m. curfew and minimal car access crushed any hopes I had of dating and by default, loosing my virginity. After we unpacked, the PUs would be driving home without me, and I planned to make up for lost time.
At six-feet tall, my dad wore size eleven, laced suede shoes. His hair had more salt than pepper and was overdue for a cut. Reaching behind the van seat, he handed me a worn leather-bound Bible. “You may want to browse Thessalonians before you go out. I marked it for you.”
Dad abided by a strict Catholic code and was a regular holy day and early Sunday mass patron. Mom and I exuded less zeal. A bible wasn’t the sort of book that I’d browse through in my free time. He was testing me. That was the only explanation. If I refused the book he handed me, he’d probably go parental, forgoing the nonrefundable tuition he’d already paid to haul my ass back to the buckeye state. I drilled my pupils into his, concentrating on vaporizing him. But I couldn’t muster any super powers. He smiled at me, waiting for a response. I knew how to can this conversation. My years of teenage experience had sharpened my silent treatment skills. Biting my lip, I swallowed my annoyance and tucked the tattered book into one of my duffel bags while mumbling a less than ecstatic “Thanks.” If he stuck around too long, people would get the wrong impression of me. The sooner I got rid of him, the better.
The air inside the van hung motionless. Mom rested against the bumper and blotted her neck with her scarf. Hearing Dad’s mention of the Bible, she closed her eyes and kept them shut. Herbal tea and meditating were the newest accessories she’d added to her mom arsenal. Dad or I could be midsentence and Mom would go into ‘the zone.’ She signaled this by pinching her index finger and thumb. After recharging, she’d make herself a cup of ginkgo biloba herbal tea--her brain tonic. I once made the mistake of sticking my nose into the tin of Gypsy brand loose tea leaves. It smelled like an ode to dried cat piss, and I passed whenever she offered me a cup. Until now, I’d only seen her trance out in the privacy of our home. While Dad ignored her, I felt embarrassed by her homage to the sixties and shouted, “Mom.”
Her eyelids flew open, and she ran a hand through the waves that the humidity unraveled in her Dorothy Hamill haircut. Flapping her shirttails, she turned to tell Dad, “Rachael’s eighteen. Do you really think that a bible is going to keep her in on Friday nights?” She didn’t bother to whisper.
Mom’s words weren’t meant for discussion. Dad continued to unpack a cardboard box full of homemade lemon squares, chocolate everything cookies and iced brownies. She moved to the passenger side of the van and fumbled inside her purse, unlatching a compact case mirror. Seeing for herself how the southern humidity had transformed her hair, she chucked the compact back into her handbag. Before zipping it closed, she clutched a wrapped book-size gift. Fiddling with the bow, Mom turned toward me. “I also have something for you.”
Dad hadn’t moved on from Mom’s quip, and I heard him grumble, “It’s always good to have a bible.”
My parents had already spent a fortune on supplies and new clothes for me, and it surprised me to get anything else, not that a used Bible counts. “You shouldn’t have,” I said, and clumsily reached between the seats, to hug her. I let go, but she didn’t. With her embrace lingering, I asked, “Should I open it or wait?”
She released me and smiled with distant eyes. “Why don’t you save it until you’re settled in?”
Attending college in North Carolina put me in a euphoria that was ten times better than a pan of double-chocolate brownies, powdered with sugar and rinsed down with a cold glass of milk. Since the PUs’ irritation level was already high, I concentrated on hiding the bounce in my step and tried not to gloat. Being an only child, I guessed Mom and Dad would go down Emotional Lane when they pulled away from campus without me.
TOWER DORM SOUNDED FANCY, Grogan was not. A high-rise, all-girl dorm, it lacked two crucial comforts not noted in the brochure. Carpet and air conditioning. Inside the elevator, Pine-Sol air clung to my skin and sweat gathered behind my ears, in the small of my back and ten paces directly south.
I’d left the PUs on the curb. Dad’s van idled while he waited to move and Mom guarded my belongings by sitting on them. Rubbing my thumb over the notches of my room key, I ignored the duffel bags slipping off my shoulders and the cardboard box full of sun-baked confectionaries in my hands and focused on finding my room.
I spied into every open door I passed by, glimpsing power strips overloaded with mini-home appliances, stockpiles of Ramen noodles, and unmade, gray-striped twin-bed-mattresses piled high with luggage.