All of the characters in this story are at least 18 years old. The setting is somewhere in Southern California.
*****
**THURSDAY 1 to 4 p.m.**
Carter heard a soft cough and a light knock on his office door jamb. He looked up from the journal he was reading and peered over his half rims. A girl, framed in the doorway, clutched a manila envelope in her extended left hand.
"Are you the counselor?" She asked quietly. "They said I should bring my transcripts to the counselor." The girl hesitated, flashed a smile, and continued, "I guess I didn't pay enough attention to where I was supposed to go...I'm...a little lost?" Shyly, she cast her eyes down toward her feet.
Carter grinned easily, pushed his work to the side and stood up. Stepping around his desk, he reached for the envelope, ushered her in, closed the door and said, "Hi! My name is Dr. Carter. It looks as though you listened well enough." Winking, he continued, "I am the Head of the Counseling Department, but there is certainly no reason I cannot assist you, Miss...?"
"...Halstead," the girl replied. "Periwinkle Halstead, but," she added hastily, "Everyone just calls me Peri."
"Well, Peri, that is just fine. Have a seat over here, give me just a moment to study what you have, and we will see about the next steps." Carter beamed his most jovial avuncular look as he showed Peri to a huge brown overstuffed easy chair to the right of his desk.
Peri tried to seat herself carefully and modestly in the beast, but its soft cushion and deep, slightly reclined, back surprised her. She plopped down and fell backward against the chair at a very un-lady-like angle. She managed to cross her ankles and close her briefly spread thighs but had to lean forward and scrunch her bottom back on the cushion to maintain an upright posture.
Carter, meanwhile, had returned behind his desk and angled his chair toward Peri. He viewed her straight on over the right corner of his desk and sat down just in time to see the girl flail backward. Her awkwardly angled legs kicked her skirt hem up and she showed a fleeting glimpse of white cotton beneath the sheer, darker crotch panel of her navy tights.
"Good for her," he thought, noting Peri's self-aware and modest recovery as she repositioned and balanced herself in the massive chair. Carter opened the envelope and saw the familiar course titles, grade statistics and basic personal identifiers, including her date of birth. "This is all very impressive, Miss Hal..er, Peri," began Carter. "All A's, including your Advanced Placement Level courses. I probably should not be surprised, since your Scholastic Aptitude Test scores are perfect 800's, but aptitude and application are both important for academic, or personal, achievement. I often see young people who are unwilling or unable to put the two together. It is most refreshing to find an exceptional young woman, such as yourself." Carter applauded and smiled broadly, then continued, "I see yesterday was your 18th birthday. Happy Birthday, Peri!"
"Thank you, Dr. Carter," Peri murmured. She was used to compliments on her brains and hard work. Even so, she found the counselor's praise was heady stuff. He was, after all, a university professional, and must see lots of incoming freshmen, yet, clearly, he was sincerely impressed.
"Right off the top, I see three realistic targets." Carter began. "These really only depend on how you want to approach your collegiate experience." Carter continued, "First, you have sufficient AP credits that you will earn your baccalaureate in just five semesters with only a minimum full-time course load. Second, you could get your degree in four semesters, if you simply chose to take the average full-time course load." Carter paused a moment before continuing. "Third, if you were to decide to burn through University with extra courses on top of the average load, you could possibly have your Bachelor's Degree in as few as three semesters."
Peri struggled, but maintained polite interest in Carter's words while she looked around his office. Behind his desk a large window, with both venetian blinds and dark olive, heavy velvet curtains, looked out onto the quadrangle and admitted the early afternoon sun's light. Across the room to her right, and continuing around the corner toward the door, bookcases lined the walls from the floor nearly to the ceiling. Directly in front of her, in the corner to the right and behind Carter's desk, were two smaller straight chairs and a petite credenza with a green shaded lamp. Carter's own desk was a clutter of piled books and papers surrounding a funny-looking, almost out of place, modern, adjustable chrome gooseneck light. This lamp, the pole lamp beside her chair, the desk light and the ceiling light were all off and the room was dappled with myriad natural shadows from the main window.
Peri recognized the strains of Vivaldi's 'Autumn' from 'The Four Seasons' filling the office unobtrusively. She could not pinpoint the speakers; the music was magically everywhere, and nowhere, at the same time.
"You are obviously capable and unafraid of hard work, Peri," Carter droned on, "but there is more to matriculation than just amassing credits as fast as possible." He smiled across the desk and noticed she was distracted. "that's a good sign," he thought to himself, "she may be a good subject for my project." Speaking aloud again, he continued "it is very important, in my opinion, to enjoy the process and not to focus only on the outcome. Unless funding is an issue, I always recommend taking as much time as needed to achieve not only academic credentials, but also, the personal development goals attainable at a university."
"Mmm-hmm, I have been grinding pretty hard ever since Mom and Grandma died five, almost six, years ago. Money is no problem, since I have a trust fund set up, and it would be nice to be a normal teenager for a couple of years, without totally goofing off." Peri's head rocked left and right with little twitches as she spoke her thoughts aloud, responsive to Carter's speech. She was taken aback when he paraphrased, "Oh? Your mom and grandma died? I am so sorry to hear that." Peri had not been aware she had actually been verbalizing as she considered what the counselor was telling her.
"Hmm? Oh! Yes," Peri said, "Sorry I guess I was thinking out loud! Yes, Mom and Grandma were travelling in that plane that was blown up by a hijacker, or whatever, en route from Baghdad to Amman, Jordan on Christmas Day, 1986..."
For his own part, Carter was not so much distracted, as he was dialing in, while he rambled through his typical, well-polished, 'make the most of your experience' speech. He studied Peri sitting opposite him in "Monstro', as he called the great chair by his desk.
Her light-brown hair fell straight to her shoulders. It cascaded across the tops of her breasts, implied beneath her simple, pink, shirt-cut blouse and cream lambs' wool cardigan. Peri's hair framed her face which was accented by thinly arched brows over hazel eyes with long lashes. Her nose was small, slightly upturned, and sprinkled with a smattering of freckles splashing across its bridge onto her rounded cheeks.
Peri's outstanding facial feature, to Carter's mind, was a full sensuous lower lip, below a thinner cupid's bow, which it joined at the bracketed corners of her mouth so that her least smile was punctuated by dimples drawing attention to her short, wide, yet delicate chin.
Carter loved that she seemed to smile frequently. His eyes tracked down her neck, past a light gold chain with a small solitaire tourmaline attached, to her blouse collar. Discreetly open at the neck, it was buttoned just above where he figured her cleavage would begin had she been more daring in her dress code.
Involuntarily, Carter licked his lips and exclaimed, "What? My Goodness! I remember that tragedy from the news...that must have had a big impact on your world at that critical age. But, what of your father? You speak as if you were orphaned," he concluded.
"Yes," Peri answered, "I was, for all intents and purposes. Mom said my Dad left her before I was born and she took me to live with Grandma on a sheep station in Australia. So, with them gone, I had to leave boarding school in Adelaide and come to California to live with my guardian, Uncle Arthur, on his ranch." She continued, "It was OK because he had a huge extended family, including girl and boy cousins who were around my age. It was weird, too, though. I never was sure who, if anyone, was married to whom. It was really like a commune, except even closer knit."
"Anyway, they took good care of me. I just got really nerdy and into school stuff. No one at the ranch was a dummy, but I guess I was most like a bookworm," Peri concluded. As she spoke, she sucked her lower lip in and out and her fingers absently twirled her top blouse button.
Carter was intrigued by this combination of nervous display and lush naivety. He felt a swelling in his groin as her tale unfolded. "Well, Peri," he managed to say, thinking his voice had a peculiar rasp, which he hoped was unnoticed, "It does sound as if, despite the awful event, you landed on your feet in a loving situation which can be all the difference between hope and despair."
As Carter said the word, 'Despair', Peri's fingers twisted her button, popping it free from its slot. Verifying Carter's guess, the top of the valley between her breasts hove into view giving rise to both Carter's 'Hope' and his cock.
Unfazed, Peri continued her unconscious twiddling. Carter earnestly pursued his theme, "I hope Peri, you will find similar loving conditions here at University. I encourage you to consider me a mentor, a friend, a confidante even, as needs be."
Peri's second button popped loose, further exposing the trench of her bosom, as she leaned forward in "Monstro' saying, "Oh, Dr. Carter, that is so awfully kind! You are such a nice man and I will not disappoint you, I am sure. I will absolutely come to you, whenever! Thank you so much!" She pressed her hands down on the chair arms and rose, giving Carter a fuller sense of her developing form as she stood.