Free Hurricane Days by Renee J. Lukas

knew she’d made mistakes, but she’d never apologize for having goals. Nor would she ever join one of the support groups that encouraged career women to feel guilty, or to cope with their guilt. She saw flyers for them all around town—“How to Have It All,” “What’s Wrong with Having It All?” and “Split in Two and Suffering.” She despised the idea that women should feel ashamed for pursuing their dreams with as much drive as men did.
    “Whatever you may hear,” Robin said carefully, “it isn’t true.”
    “How many times are you gonna say that?” Kendrick asked with a smile.
    Robin looked warmly at her daughter. She hoped she would grow up to be like her, at least in all of the ways she liked. She prayed that unlike herself, Kendrick would be honest about who she was, no matter what. Robin started to leave. “Don’t forget to read your Bible after your studies.”
    Kendrick saluted her.
    “Don’t be disrespectful, or that video game will stay in the store.”
    Kendrick smirked. “Nah, you’ll get busy, then get it for me anyway to buy back my love.”
    “Come here!” Robin ran to her and mussed her hair until they were both laughing. When they calmed down, Robin sighed. “Oh, you precocious thing! I love you, Ken.”
    “I know.”
    Robin closed the door and paused in the hall for a long moment. What would her daughter think of her if she knew the truth?

Chapter Twelve
    Dr. Paul Gentry paced the auditorium stage, scratching his black beard, not really looking at us as we feverishly took notes. He seemed to be a pillar of composure, but he held his chalk like a cigarette, which made me wonder about his personal life. I couldn’t imagine him as a smoker. He was so neat and clean. His scrawny neck poked through a white shirt that was impeccably starched, and his gray suit was so perfectly tidy it could have still been on a hanger in a store. “Film Appreciation,” the words he’d scribbled on the board two weeks ago on the first day of class, remained on the blackboard, reminding us what he was trying to teach us.
    “Film is a conscious art,” he said. “Meaning that every character, every scene, right down to the last detail, is put there to move the story forward. Everything is there for a reason.”
    I smiled to myself at the truth of that statement. The predicament in which I found myself wasn’t an accident at all. Somewhere deep, deep down in the craters of my mind I’d known that this time was going to come, that one day I’d no longer be able to block out the memories of those schoolgirl crushes, no longer be able to convince myself that they were part of a strange phase that the Your Body is Changing book probably said was perfectly normal, not permanent and nothing to worry about. Then again, knowing Mom’s discomfort about all things sexual, I never got to read Your Body is Changing.
    I bet my guardian angel was knocking back martinis with her angel buddies at this very minute and having a good laugh about the ignorance and confusion that had kept me tossing and turning for days now.
    Dr. Gentry passed out a list of approved films we could check out from the film library in the Performing Arts building. The one that immediately caught my eye was Desert Hearts , about a woman who goes to Reno to get a divorce in the 1950s and falls for a female casino worker. I’d seen a write-up about it in Seventeen magazine—a short piece about the shocking content of this new movie about lesbians. Somewhere in my mind, I’d filed it away under “Things to See Later When I Wasn’t Living Under the Same Roof as Dad.” Maybe when Adrienne went home some weekend I could check it out and rent the VCR in the lobby…
    Later that afternoon on the way back from class, I spotted Adrienne heading up the hill to our dorm. There were so many hills in Tallahassee; it was the San Francisco of Florida.
    “Hey, stranger!” I called to her in a playful tone.
    Adrienne whipped around and smiled as