Chapter 2 - August 2 -4, 1979
Will poked his head into Sandy's bedroom. "You feel like coming for a drive to campus? I have to go meet with an advisor for a little while this afternoon."
It had been a week since she'd moved in, but during that time Sandy had been to the University of Minnesota campus (or the U as Will insisted she call it) a few times with Will, who was constantly needing to go there. She didn't mind, because she enjoyed watching the crowds of harried, stressed people walking around there, even in the summer, but she assumed that Will took her there to try and inspire her to go to college. His attempts weren't working, but she wasn't planning on telling him that. "Sure," she said.
The drive from the house to campus took about a half an hour, and as they passed over the Minnesota River, Will said, "make a wish." It was something their parents had always done when driving over a bridge, a superstition based on nothing in which Sandy (and evidently Will also) had always indulged. Sandy closed her eyes and wished that she could meet another person, just one other person in this new place so that she wouldn't have to spend all her time with Will and Jenny. When she opened her eyes, Will was grinning over at her. "I wished for my advisor to tell me that I'm going to have a more manageable course load this year."
Sandy raised her eyebrows at him. "You know it won't come true if you tell someone what you wished for, right?"
He laughed. "I think the trick is to wish for something that's likely to come true. That way it doesn't matter if you tell someone, because it was going to happen anyway."
"I think it's cheating for you to be able to make a wish every time you go over this bridge. You go over it every day."
Will shrugged. "Hey, I don't make the rules."
When they arrived on campus, she followed Will to the building he most often frequented there, an ugly building called Moos Tower, and he left her seated on a row of benches near the door with instructions to, "just take it easy for a while." After Sandy had been there for about fifteen minutes, another girl walked through the doors and settled down on a bench near where Sandy was sitting. She was very tall, with vibrant red hair and a face full of freckles, and she looked to be about Sandy's age. Sandy peered over at this girl, and noticed after a moment that she would straighten her posture and fluff up her hair whenever men would walk past.
After this had happened three times, the girl glanced over and caught Sandy looking. She grinned. "You're clearly not a student either," she said. "I'm just doing a better job than you are."
Sandy blinked. "Pardon?"
The girl got up and moved to sit next to Sandy on her bench. "I hope it's okay if I sit. We can pretend we're here together and hopefully nobody asks." Seeing Sandy's confused expression, the girl smiled again. "The men," she said emphatically, gesturing at a couple of them as they walked past, deep in conversation. The men glanced at them and started to walk faster. "A lot of girls I know like to hang around with the guys on the sports teams—you know, the football and the hockey and everything, but I think with them it's too likely you attract one that never goes anywhere or does anything important. Do you know what the odds are that someone will go on from college sports to playing pro? Not good. A lot of them just quit and get jobs at banks or something stupid. You know?"
"I'm just waiting for my brother, actually," Sandy told her. "He's meeting with an advisor," she added, even though it seemed doubtful that this stranger cared.
At her words, the girl's eyes opened wide. "Your brother, really? Is he in med?"
"Uh-huh."
"So do you know other med students?"
Sandy shook her head. "And he's married."
The girl folded her arms. "Well, you should have said so. I'm not that kind of girl. I'm Diane, by the way." She held out a hand. "You can call me Di."
They shook hands. "I'm Sandy. So you're here to... meet a guy?"
Di shook her head, paused, and then nodded, giggling. "I guess kind of. I figure if I'm going to meet somebody at some point, it might as well be somebody who's going to be a doctor. So I'm trying to tempt fate in a very specific direction. It's kind of silly, but I've gone on some fun dates with people I've met here. Don't knock it until you try it," she said, catching the expression on Sandy's face. "So you really don't know any other students?"
"No. I'm not from here—I just moved from Washington a week ago," Sandy said. "I moved in with my brother and his wife. He's not really the sociable type, anyway. I doubt he spends much time with people he goes to school with."
"Well," Di said. "what's the point, then? Anyway, Washington, huh? DC or state?
"State."
"Oooh, near the coast! What made you want to move here?"
Sandy shrugged, considering how much she wanted to reveal. "I just felt like a change of scenery," she said after a moment, hearing how stupid this sounded in her voice and seeing it on Di's face. "I didn't really have much going on back home, and so I just thought it would be nice to try something different for a while. Will and Jenny were nice enough to let me come stay with them, and it's been interesting so far."
"How come? Is it really different from home?"
Sandy thought about this. In the short amount of time that she had been living there, she'd noticed that Jenny was acting oddly. A few days prior, she'd gone into the washroom in the morning and turned the light on to find Jenny in there, fast asleep on the floor, basically wrapped around the toilet. She had tried to leave quietly, but the light had startled Jenny awake and she'd sprung to her feet. Jenny had left the washroom without a word, but not before putting her finger to her lips in the same way she had done the day Sandy had moved in. She wasn't sure what secret she was supposed to be keeping, but Sandy hadn't mentioned it to Will. If his wife wanted to sleep in the bathroom, that was something between the two of them, she thought. "No." She shook her head. "It's pretty similar, but my brother is a lot older than me so I didn't really spend much time with him growing up, and they didn't come back to Washington that often, so it's just different being around them all the time. Do you have any brothers or sisters?"
Di nodded. "I have a sister. But she's twenty-two, so just three years older than I am. We were pretty close when we were kids. Maybe that's just because we're both girls. What do you think? Are you close with your brother's wife?"
Prior to being in a situation where she saw Jenny every day, Sandy would have said that Jenny was a fairly bland person. She hadn't gotten to know her very well before she and Will had moved to Minnesota, and although she had been a member of Jenny's wedding party, Sandy knew that this was more of a formality than anything. Her present odd behaviour aside, Jenny had proven herself to be a lot more fun than Sandy had expected. She teased Will about his obsessive tendencies and got Sandy to come out shopping and for ice cream with her. Sandy shrugged. "I think I will be now that I'm living here. I never really had much to do with her before."
"Oh. Well, maybe she was jealous of your gorgeous blonde hair," Di said, reaching out and fluffing a handful of it. She grinned. Three men walked into the building and, noticing them, Di giggled loudly and mussed her hair up again. She stuck her tongue out at their backs as they continued walking without paying attention to the girls. Di turned back to Sandy. "Do you think I'm a bit much?"
Taken aback by the blunt question, Sandy laughed. "I think you're a lot more outgoing than I am, but it's not a bad thing. You're fun."
Di beamed. "You're sweet. I'm just doing what my sister taught me, and you should see the results she gets. You know what?" She drew her legs up underneath her on the bench, turning her entire body to face Sandy. "The other night she came home from the bar and told me that she ran into some guys who played for the North Stars. The Minnesota North Stars. In the NHL," she supplied, when Sandy didn't understand the enormity of this. "You really aren't from here, are you? Anyway, these guys told her they had a buddy waiting for them in their car because he wasn't old enough to get in. I guess he was just nineteen or twenty or something like that. She was there with a couple of her girlfriends and one of them really knows a lot about hockey—she's from Canada, you know, and she told my sister—her name's Beth, that this guy was a big deal. So these guys told Beth that she should go out there and... you know, hang out with him for a while."
"And she did it?" Sandy asked, raising her eyebrows.
"Yes!" Di nodded. "She went out there, and I guess this kid was absolutely not into the idea and so she didn't make him do stuff or anything like that, but she said she had so much fun." She sighed dreamily. "I can't wait until I'm old enough to go into bars."
If this had been the point of the story, Sandy had missed it. If anything, it sounded like a cautionary tale about the things that might happen to a person if they were nice enough to drive their friends somewhere. But she didn't have a single friend in Minnesota other than family, and she felt like it would be bad luck to refuse a friend that had been so clearly provided by her bridge wish. And so she grinned. "Well, I turn twenty-one in October, so maybe we can get you a fake ID and we'll go together some time."
"Oh no," Di said, shaking her head. "Our dad is a cop. If I ever got caught drinking before I turn twenty-one, there would be some serious hell to pay. I'm not a prude or anything, though," she told Sandy, somewhat unnecessarily. "Hey, since you just moved here, are you looking for a job?"
Sandy had been planning to find something at some point after she got "settled," whatever that meant. That was definitely part of the deal when she moved to Minnesota. "Kind of," she said. "Why?"
"A friend of my dad's owns a little grocery store. I work there, and when the school year ended, the poor guy lost half his staff to people moving out of state, so he's looking for somebody. You should definitely come work there—it's a blast. It doesn't really get busy, so we'd get to talk and hang around a lot. Sound like fun?" She grinned expectantly at Sandy.
"It does," Sandy said. "What's it called? How would I apply?"
Di dismissed her questions with a wave of her hand. "You might have to come in and meet the owner, but he basically lets me pick who they hire as long as people aren't stealing or drinking on the job." She giggled. "And you don't really seem like the type. Here." Di opened her purse and pulled out a pen and a small notebook. She scribbled a phone number down on a page and handed the book and pen to Sandy. "Take my number and write down yours. I'll call you in a few days once I talk to him and I'll let you know what he says."
Sandy nodded, ripping the page out of the notebook and writing her own number down on a blank page. "Thanks for asking for me. I really have no idea where to start in terms of finding a job here. I'm qualified for nothing, basically."
"Me either!" Di laughed again. "I want to come back here and go to college, but not for a couple of years. I feel like I just finished high school." She grinned at Sandy. "At least I can come here even if I'm not a student."
Will came walking down a hallway, accompanied by a middle aged man with thinning hair. "... anyway, just call me if anything comes up," Will was saying to the man. They shook hands, and the man left.
"Is that your brother?" Di whispered, and Sandy nodded, waving at Will as he came over.
"Looks like you wasted no time making friends here," Will said, apparently forgetting the times he had brought Sandy there before, when she had sat alone the entire time and spoken to no one. He puffed his chest out and grinned at them. "Will Benton," he said, reaching out for Di's hand.
They shook. "Di Richards," Di said, pumping Will's hand up and down.
"Are you here getting ready for September, too?"
Di giggled. "Oh no, I'm not a student," she said, exchanging a look with Sandy.
"Di has a lead on a job for me," Sandy told Will.
This seemed to cushion the blow of finding out that Sandy was not rubbing elbows with fellow collegians, and he suddenly looked thrilled. "That's great," he said. "Where at?"
Di explained the grocery store situation to him and if he was unimpressed by it, Will gave no indication. Later, after they had said goodbye to Di (with her promising to call Sandy in the coming days) and had returned to the car, Sandy noticed her brother looking over at her with an odd expression on his face. "What?" she said.
He looked away, startled, and shook his head. "Nothing. I'm just... I'm happy that you're starting to get settled. We were worried you'd be out of sorts for a long time, what with the Ray of it all."
"I'm still working through the effects of the 'Ray of it all,'" Sandy told him. "You know, my Bridge Wish was actually that I'd meet somebody to talk to."
Will laughed. "Well, what do you know? Maybe it is cheap for me to use that one every day. My advisor told me I'm going to have a good year in terms of courses."
"What do you know?" Sandy echoed, grinning.
"I guess that's one thing you can be thankful to Mom and Dad for, huh?" He looked over at Sandy and, seeing the expression on her face, scoffed. "Can you at least tell me what they said to you? I really would like to know."
Sandy had always avoided talking specifics about the last conversation she had had with her parents. She knew how much Will loved them, especially their mother, and she didn't want to sour his opinion of them. She shook her head. "I could, but I'm not going to. You can ask them if you really want to know. Just suffice it to say that it was bad, and you should be happy that you're the kid they're proud of."
Will was quiet for the rest of the drive back to the house. As he pulled into the driveway and parked the car, he looked over at Sandy. "I wish they'd given you a chance to make them proud."
Taken aback by this oddly tender statement, Sandy laughed uneasily. "Me too."
Two days later, while Will and Jenny were out having dinner together and Sandy was sprawled out on the couch watching television, the phone rang, and it was Di. "I talked to Mr. Lawson yesterday and he said you should come out and work a shift sometime next week to see how you like it. He said I'd need to interview you, but I'm definitely not doing that. You're as good as hired."
"He didn't even want to meet with me first?" Sandy asked, surprised.
Di giggled. "Oh, I'm very trustworthy," she said. "I told him your brother was going to be a doctor, and I think that helped. I hope that's okay."
"I mean, whatever helps."
The two of them chatted for a while, and then Di said, "hey, do you want to come with me to a movie tonight?"
"Sure," Sandy said. "What are we seeing?"
"Do you like scary movies?" Di asked. "The Amityville Horror just came out and I've been wanting to see it but everybody I know is too chicken to come with me."
Sandy weighed her options. On one hand, she did not like scary movies. On the other, Di had just set her up with a job and was poised to be her first Minnesotan friend. "Sounds like fun."
Okay, so now we're done posturing and we're ready for it to be boy time. In the meantime, you gotta check out at least the trailer for the Amityville Horror from 1979, because my friends, it's Something Else.
