Author's notes: The characters in this story are bilingual; it can be assumed that their conversations are sometimes in English, sometimes in French, occasionally switching between the two. For clarity and the convenience of readers, all dialogue has been rendered in English.
This story begins approximately twenty years before many of the characters appear in The Adventures of Ranger Ramona.
CHAPTER ONE
The train pulled into the McGill Metro station and Isabel Saucier hopped off, looking at her watch. For once, she was not running behind, and would make it to her first class with as much as two minutes to spare. But as she stepped outside into the stinging winter wind, she rushed, as usual, down Sherbrooke Street toward the university.
As she neared the lecture hall door, she saw a tall, dark haired girl approaching on her right. She recognized her as being in her class. She quickened her pace, arriving at the door just before her. Their eyes met, and Isabel smiled and pulled the door open.
"Thank you," the girl said, stepping through. She looked back over her shoulder as Isabel followed her, and said, "You're in Higginson's Psych class aren't you?"
"Yes, I'm Isabel."
"Natalie," the girl said. They walked down the hall together, and when they arrived at their classroom, entered and sat down, side by side. Isabel slipped off her coat and draped it over the back of her seat. Natalie was wearing only a light jacket.
"You must have been freezing," Isabel said.
Natalie shrugged. "I just had to walk over from Laird Hall, so I was only outside for a couple of minutes. Do you live on campus?"
"No," Isabel said. "I live at home, with my sister."
"Oh, you are local?"
"Yes. You?"
"I'm from New Brunswick," Natalie said, "But I have fallen in love with Montreal. Are your parents here as well?"
"No," Isabel said, casting her eyes downward, "They were both killed in a car accident when I was thirteen."
"Oh, I am so sorry!"
"Thank you. My sister, Marianne, is nine years older than me. She has taken care of my brother and I ever since."
"I've always wished I had a sister."
Professor Higginson strode into the room, and loudly dumped a stack of books on his desk.
"Time to get bored," Natalie muttered.
She was correct. Isabel had thought Introduction to Psychology would be a fascinating class, but Professor Higginson's presentation was as dry at dust. As he droned on, her mind, and her eyes, wandered to Natalie.
She was quite pretty, and somehow gave off an impression of elegance. Most of the class were dressed in jeans, and so was Natalie, but her jeans hugged her long legs and were tucked into an immaculate pair of knee high black leather boots. Isabel looked down at her own scuffed snow boots and felt embarrassed.
When the class ended, they stood, and Isabel began to put on her coat. To her surprise, Natalie took hold of the collar and helped her into it.
"Thank you," Isabel said as they walked out. "I guess I'll see you tomorrow."
"Definitely," Natalie said, as she smiled and turned away.
When Isabel arrived home after her last class, she found a note Marianne had left for her, stuck by a magnet to the front of the refrigerator. "Working late," it read, "There is soup for you to warm for supper."
She grinned when she saw the note. She knew that her sister was most likely not really working late; one day, a year or so earlier, she had been home alone, idly poking around in Marianne's room, when she found a book on her bedside table titled "The Price Of Salt." Struck by the odd title, she had picked it up. The author's name was Patricia Highsmith.
She flipped through it, reading a bit here and there, and soon realized that it was a novel about a woman who was in love with another woman.
One passage in particular caught her eye. Highsmith had written, "She had heard about girls falling in love, and she knew what kind of people they were and what they looked like. Neither she nor Carol looked like that. Yet the way she felt about Carol passed all the tests for love and fitted all the descriptions."
She put the book back, but those words kept returning to her mind. She had not given any thought to the fact that Marianne had never had any boyfriends that she knew of, but always had very close girl friends.
Now she was curious, but she did not know how to approach the subject with her sister, so she kept her thoughts to herself.
A few weeks later, she was at the university library, and she remembered the book. She had not seen it again, and wondered if her sister may have hidden it. She found Highsmith in the fiction section, and there was a copy. She took it down off the shelf, but before she reached the circulation desk, began to feel anxious about checking it out. She ducked back into the stacks. Why should she be embarrassed about the book? Was it even likely that the librarian knew what it was about? Or would care who checked it out? Still, for some reason, she felt like just holding the book, letting her vision touch its pages, was stepping into forbidden territory. Looking around and seeing no one, she slipped it under her jacket and left the library.
She kept it hidden all the way home on the Metro, and slipped it past Marianne when she came in the house. She stashed it under her pillow and, that night, began to read it.
The next day was a rainy, dreary Sunday, and Marianne had a shift at the hospital. Isabel read all day, and had finished the book before her sister came home. As they ate dinner together, she wanted to ask Marianne about the book, but was afraid to bring it up.
That night, she could not get to sleep. There was so much that she did not understand, and her mind would not let her rest.
She'd been profoundly touched by Highsmith's story of women in love. It was very well written, the characters were well drawn and sympathetic, and the plot kept her turning the pages. But she'd read lots of good books and she couldn't think of any that kept her awake at night.
It was not hard for her to reconcile herself to the idea that her sister was very likely a lesbian. She would still love her, nothing would change that. But another question was forming in her mind. She thought of Highsmith's words about girls falling in love with other girls, and how they were not always the kind of girls you might imagine them to be, and she wondered if she might be one of them herself.
She dismissed the notion as preposterous. Her experiences with boys were limited, but that was because she found them shallow and immature, not for lack of physical attraction. She was only months away from college, and looked forward to meeting more interesting men. So, how could she be a lesbian?
But, there was another category, wasn't there? She'd heard people referred to as "switch-hitters" or "AC-DC's." People who "went both ways." That was possible, wasn't it? Or was that just a cop out, a way for people to deny their true desires?
It was all too much to figure out, and she tried to put it from her mind. The next day, she dropped the book into the return slot at the library, but the feelings it had brought to the surface lingered. When she started classes at McGill in the autumn, she had come to terms with the reality that she was just as interested in meeting girls to date as she was men. But in two years, she had not met anyone who attracted her enough to take that scary step, and if anyone had been interested in her, they had shown no signs that she could recognize.
But now, there was Natalie. She warmed up her soup and thought about her as she ate. She was very pretty, and carried herself with a cool, assured confidence that Isabel aspired to attain. But there was something more. Thinking about it, Isabel realized that it was the small gesture of helping her put on her coat. That was not something people normally did for someone they had just met, was it? It seemed intimate; perhaps it was that unknown signal she had been looking for.
What if you are wrong, Isabel wondered, what if she is just a very nice, but very straight, person? How is someone supposed to proceed in these matters? She had no answers, and considered asking Marianne. But, she reasoned, if Marianne was comfortable letting her know her secret, she would have revealed it.
She finished eating and washed her bowl. When she finished, she sat back at the table and spent the next couple of hours studying. She grew sleepy, but did not want to go to bed until her sister came home.
Marianne finally returned, shortly after ten.
"How was your day, sweetheart?" she asked as she kicked off her shoes.
"It was a good day," Isabel replied, unintentionally grinning.
