COLLEGE DAZE
Chapter 1
I love the desert at night. The heat of the day has dissipated and it is quiet, except for the wind blowing through the windows of my restored Caddy, cruising down the freeway at a little over a hundred with the radio blasting. The heavy "rush hour" traffic on Sunday night from Las Vegas to Los Angeles has passed and I have the freeway to myself. The only thing I need to look out for is the occasional cop, but most of them are at home in bed or at some truck stop scarfing donuts and swigging coffee. At this speed, the night is flying by, I should be back in San Diego a couple of hours before my first class at SDSU starts for the Fall semester of the last year of my Ph.D. program in computational physics.
Keeping a sharp eye for the enemy of the highway song, something flashes by, something that isn't right, out of place on the side of the road. I slam on the brakes, coming nearly to a stop in time to pull over and drive up the on-ramp (I know it's the wrong way, but I don't care).
Continuing back to the freeway using the off-ramp, I see the small figure, hurdled against one of the poles for the exit sign. Disheveled blonde hair obscures the face. It must have been the hair I saw, because everything else is clad in black: black shoes, black jeans, and a black shirt.
Alighting from the car, I yell, "Hello?" across the fifty foot gap. The sounds of the crickets chirping in the night and the air horn of a semi a quarter of a mile away on the other side of the freeway are the only responses to my query.
Moving closer, I hunch down about an arm's length away and repeat my salutation, this time barely above a whisper. I see the figure is definitely a woman. Rolling forward onto my knees, I reach out towards the mass of shoulder length curly hair. I find her chin and lift her face up.
The wind changes directions and I am assaulted by the overwhelming scent of alcohol as I get the first glimpse of her face. I smile and say, "Hi," calmly. Large, puffy eyes stare back at me, lines of mascara fade near her jaw line.
"Are you okay?" I ask. She shakes her head and tries to look down again. My hand, still on her chin, stops the attempt.
"Come on," I state, wrapping my arm around her waist and lifting her to her feet, not allowing her to refuse. She is tiny, a little more than a foot shorter than my 6'2" and probably weighing about one-half of my 195 pounds. As I stand to lift her up, I misjudge her size and we both tumble to the ground, her on top of me luckily.
She giggles.