Free Adelaide Piper by Beth Webb Hart

pending escape.
    â€œLook at it this way, Diz: you and Lou will have the whole backseat to yourselves on the way home. You could practically stretch out and sleep.”
    She shrugged, then couldn’t help but gawk at the beautiful green campus that opened up before us, its weeping willows and oaks waving us in. NBU was on the edge of the quaint valley town of Troutville, and beyond the campus gates and the three-block town, there were rolling hills with pastoral vistas of barns and silos and cows grazing on patches of emerald. Rising up above the hills were the colossal Blue Ridge Mountains that surrounded us as far as the eye could see.
    Daddy lifted his hand out the window to feel the cool air.
    â€œIsn’t this something, girls?”
    Mama cooed in agreement as we passed the colonnade and the quadrangle with its bright red bricks and Corinthian columns. A bearded professor in a stereotypical tweed jacket stopped to chat with a circle of students who were tossing a hacky sack. And a girl with a golden retriever at her feet napped on a rocking chair in the center of the quad.
    â€œAdelaide, I think these mountains are like wise sages calling you to learn, baby!” Daddy said.
    â€œI guess so,” I said with a chuckle. He was poetic in a Geechee sort of way, and so I had him to thank for that gene.
    â€œThis ought to be an incentive to get those grades up, Dizzy,” he added. It was an untimely remark that hit below the belt.
    Dizzy flicked a Nabs wrapper onto the floorboard and rolled her eyes. At this rate, she’d be lucky to get into Myrtle Beach Technical College, and we all knew it.
    â€œDon’t hold your breath, Daddy dearest.”
    Thankfully, I knew my roommate, Ruthie Baxter from Gastonia,
    North Carolina. We had shared a cabin together at Camp Greystone a few summers in a row and had set out to room with each other when we found out we had both been accepted.
    And good old beauty queen Jif had gotten her wish: she had been plucked from the NBU waiting list and would forgo her Clemson scholarship to join me in the class of 1993.
    Now another strapping upperclassman with his hair pulled back in a ponytail, of all things, met us at the steps of the dormitory and helped Daddy carry in the luggage. This place is extremely organized, I thought as the Range Rover pulled in behind us and another boy ran out to grab its belongings.
    Out of the corner of my eye, I could see some sort of demonstration going on at the rear of the quadrangle. I saw a map that read “Beijing,” and a gravestone that read “For the thousands killed in Tiananmen Square,” and thousands of plastic forks were sticking up from the ground with different names inscribed on them. Where is Tiananmen Square, anyway? I thought to myself. I had become so engrossed in my literature that I was certainly not up on current events. It must be somewhere in Asia.
    Intimidation crept up on me like a rash. Was I already in over my head? Was I country-come-to-town even in my first hour on campus?
    I had to remember that just because I was near the top of my class in Williamstown didn’t mean my chops were up to some of the sharpest kids from around the country.
    Upperclass girls from the NBU Student Wellness Committee greeted me at the foyer with a pink care package that included bubble gum, Band-Aids, Tylenol, an instruction manual about how to check for breast cancer, and, much to my shock, a pack of condoms. There was a floral notice taped to them that read “Practice safe sex! Come See Ms. Eugenia in the health clinic if you need birth control pills” on one side and “A health and wellness seminar will be held in the Tully lounge on Friday at 4:00 p.m.” on the other.
    Daddy’s eyes met mine as I peered up from the bag. I could tell he was weighing his words carefully before he spoke. “Now, Adelaide, you’re going to be exposed to a lot of outlandish ideas up here, you