Free Honesty - SF8 by Susan X Meagher Page A

you’re such an improvement over Cassie!"
    "Gee thanks," Ryan said weakly. "That’s scant praise!"
    Taking a chair at the kitchen table, Mia sipped the beer Ryan handed her and said, "Ooh, Jamie, I forgot to tell you. I’ve got news."
    "Spill it," Jamie demanded, knowing that Mia always had a firm hold on the latest gossip.
    "I saw the aforementioned ex-roommate today. She was with a different guy, and they looked like they were ‘together.’ I wonder if Chris got sick of her sorry butt."
    "How could he not?" Jamie shivered. "Actually, even though every word that came out of her mouth was probably a lie, she did mention that they were breaking up when she came here this summer to torment me. Did you talk to her?"
    "I would have, but she looked right through me. We were at the bookstore and she acted like I didn't exist!"
    "Her impeccable manners are obviously still in place," Jamie observed. "I wonder where she’s living this year?"
    "Ask your mom. She still hangs with Cassie’s mom, doesn’t she?"
    "Yeah, I guess so, but I don’t think they’re as close as they used to be. My mom doesn’t really talk about her much anymore."
    Ryan walked over to the twosome and took a pull from Jamie’s beer. She squeezed her shoulder and said, "I’d be happy if that sour little face never darkened our door again."
    "You didn’t like her from the start, did you, Ryan?" Mia asked.
    "No. I really didn’t, and I don’t say that about many people. I can usually find something to like about anyone, but I disliked Cassie from the day that I met her. And when she started giving Jamie a hard time…" She made an exaggerated display of smacking her open palm with her fist. "Lights out!"
    "My hero," Jamie sighed as she wrapped her arm around Ryan’s hips.
     
    Over dinner they all shared news of their day. The consensus was that Jamie had the toughest schedule since she had to keep Monday and Friday free to travel to golf matches. With practice every morning from seven to nine, and a class schedule that was without a significant break from ten until four thirty on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, she was really going to be swamped. Her classes were no day at the beach either. Since she had decided to concentrate on managing her own money, she was taking Introduction to Financial Accounting, Federal Income Tax I, Money and Capital Markets, and Introduction to Real Estate and Urban Land Economics. Just to keep her sanity, she added a course that she was looking forward to—Literature and Sexual Identity. On top of her classes she still had to make time for therapy, which she moved to five o’clock on Monday and Wednesday, barely leaving her room to breathe in the middle of the week.
    Mia’s recitation of her schedule had her roommates shaking their heads and laughing. "I hate taking upper division courses," she grumbled. "The classes get smaller and smaller! I had to really scramble to get into the big ones. I’ve got one with 105 people, one with 60, and one with 50. I long for the days of those huge survey courses," she said wistfully.
    "Um, Mia?" Ryan asked. "Do your courses have names, or do they only tell you how many people are in them?"
    "Oh, they have names," she said, shaking her head. "Some nonsense about examining cultures in time and space—blah, blah, blah. I swear the professors must have competitions for the most meaningless course descriptions." She brightened appreciably when she announced, "I do have one cool course, though. It’s got 435 people in it!"
    "What’s that?" Ryan asked.
    "It’s in the music department, and it looks like we just sit around and listen to music. I can’t understand why we get credit for that, but hey, if they’re dumb enough to offer it, I’m dumb enough to take it!"
    Ryan didn’t understand her friend’s focus on class size, and she asked, "What’s up with wanting the big classes? More people to copy from?"
    "Ha-ha," she sniffed. "I don’t copy, Ryan. You never know if the