Free Road To Nowhere by Christopher Pike

to drop her hard classes so that she wouldn’t have to take Fs in them. She ended up with only six credits. She got Cs in both psychology and English. Her counsellor called her into his office, and it was all she could do to keep him from calling her parents. She promised to do better. The counsellor put her on a much easier schedule and told her to forget about going to med school – she would never get in. In a way she was relieved, but at the same time she was in shock. Her parents were paying for her tuition. If they found out the way things were going, they’d be furious. She figured they would probably cut her off. Then what? She would have to crawl home on her hands and knees and get a job at the local fast food joint. Panicking, she went to the administration building and managed to have her parents’ address changed to a P.O. box that didn't exist.
    “Candy returned home for Christmas and gave vague answers about how she was doing. Her parents fell for it, for the time being. She spent most of her vacation trying to track down John. She went to his parents’ house but they wouldn't even let her in the door. All she got was John’s stepdad. He said he had no idea where John was. She went to his old job – same story. Her leads were in short supply. John had never been one to have friends. Really, that was the sad thing about John. She was his only true friend, and he had so many wonderful qualities, but people couldn't see beyond his abrasive personality. But what was equally true was that John had been Candy’s only true friend. When they had lost each other, they lost a great deal. Candy returned to Berkeley with a heavy heart.
    “She did better her second semester. It would have been hard for her to do worse. But she had no major and was basically a young woman going through the motions of getting an education. She was in a paranoid state. The axe was going to fall soon, she knew. When it did, she didn’t want it to cut her whole head off. When her parents found out she was no longer pre-med, she, at least, wanted to be able to point out that she was still fulfilling her basic requirements. For that reason, she was afraid to take an art class. It was absurd. Sometimes she’d stop by a drawing class to see the quality of work being done by the students. I wouldn’t be exaggerating to say she was better than the teachers. Candy had talent, and it was all going to waste.
    “Near the end of the second semester she met a man. She wasn’t looking for a relationship, although she was desperately lonely. It was just one of those things that happened. The relationship was cursed. The man was a teacher, and he was a married teacher, in his mid-thirties. His name was Henry and he taught art. He saw some of her work – she showed it to him in a brave moment after talking to him. He fell for her because she was a natural genius and he was an academic hack. That’s what he told her. But maybe he fell for her because he was as lonely as she was.
    “He wasn’t a bad man, Henry. He was a patient teacher. His students loved him. He just didn’t have any talent, and his wife was always nagging him to quit teaching and get a commercial job where she thought he’d make more money, but where he knew he would fail miserably. He wasn’t handsome at all, not like John. In fact, he was the opposite of John in every respect. He was so mild mannered that he had a hard time protecting his place in line at the movies. He wore thick glasses and was helpless without them. He had an ulcer and was always chewing Maalox tablets.
    “But he was a comfort to Candy. He took her to dinner and helped her with her homework. But their relationship had severe limits placed on it. He wasn’t ready to leave his wife – he told her that right at the start. And the administration couldn’t find out about their affair or he’d lose his job. They went to late dinners, late movies, and he always wore a hat. Henry’s wife didn’t seem to