Deep Fried and Pickled (Book One - The Rachael O'Brien Chronicles) Read online

  THE RACHAEL O’BRIEN CHRONICLES

  FRESHMAN: DEEP FRIED AND PICKLED

  A PAISLEY RAY NOVEL

  FRESHMAN: DEEP FRIED AND PICKLED

  Copyright 2012 Paisley Ray

  Cover Design by Chantal DeFelice

  Formatted by IRONHORSE Formatting

  Kindle Edition

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Amazon.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

  ISBN: 978-0-9885528-0-7 (Ebook)

  Table Of Contents

  Prologue

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  Epilogue

  Personal message from Paisley Ray

  Acknowledgements

  Also by Paisley Ray

  “There are no good girls gone wrong,

  just bad girls found out.”

  ~Mae West

  Prologue

  My four-year plan included getting an art history degree, losing my virginity, and partying--hopefully not in that order.

  However, sometimes even well-thought-out schemes don’t unfold the way you envision. The wealth of knowledge instilled into my brain as a freshman didn’t come from books or lectures. My nine-month south-of-the-Mason-Dixon-Line experience at North Carolina College wasn’t overly focused on academic pursuits. Instead, I followed a nagging feeling about a painting that turned into a full-blown compulsion to uncover a fake. The little voice inside my head kept warning me, but I didn’t pay much attention until it was almost too late.

  AUGUST 1986

  1

  Grogan Hall

  “DEEP FRIED AND PICKLED,” my dad said as he parked the car in front of Grogan Dorm at North Carolina College. “That’s the way they like things down here.”

  I would have preferred driving the four-hundred-thirty-six miles from Canton, Ohio, to Greensboro, North Carolina, in a more subtle, neutral-colored vehicle, but Dad liked the idea of free advertising. Before the sun had risen, we packed his work van, a cherry-bomb-red, and cobalt-blue block-letter billboard that read, “How’s Your Art? O’Brien’s Fine Painting and Furniture Restoration.” Half-asleep, I casually mentioned the trip’s purpose – settling me into my dorm, not finding commissions for his business. My innocent comment morphed Dad into Captain Buzzkill, “Young lady,” he lectured. “Who do you think is paying your out-of-state tuition?” He droned on that one from our driveway until we crossed the Virginia state line.

  College campus move-in-day mirrored a directionally-challenged, lawless rush-hour with drivers blatantly ignoring one-way streets, curbs and no parking zones. Boiling frustration and a herding mentality short-circuited my dad’s normal rule-abiding modus operandi, and he wedged the van between a stockpile of triple-parked vehicles. Outside of Grogan Dorm, Campus Drive was completely bunged up.

  When I slid the van door open, heat waves bounced off the asphalt and collided with the arctic blast that escaped it’s air-conditioned interior. Squinting to block the light from the unrelenting sun, I positioned my hand like a sailor looking for land and leaned against the painted logo on the sliding door.

  Figuring we were sitting ducks for a parking violation, I rushed to unload my belongings and heaped them in a pile on the curb. Everyone had the same idea, and the sidewalk in front of the Tower Dorm looked like a flea market that had exploded.

  Inside the van, as I climbed through a hanging clothes rack onto a mountain of essential stuff, sweat beaded under my bra. A mom and daughter two cars down were in the throes of a blowout over who forgot to pack bedding. Through the open van doors, I spied a man clutching a floor lamp. With his free hand, he picked up a box of my toiletries that had merged into an adjacent pile.

  “Dad,” I shouted out the back, “my bathroom supplies are walking away.”

  Near the bottom of a flight of stairs, he caught up with the perpetrator. Mom and I watched him retrieve my six- month supply of toothpaste and tampons.

  Rings of sweat stained his armpits, and he snapped, “Rachael, only unload what you can carry.”

  Mom managed to crinkle the tip of her nose. “Rachael was just unpacking. It’s not her fault.”

  “Maeve, come down to earth and help carry something.”

  Mom and Dad had bickered in the car the entire road trip and hadn’t stopped, even though we’d arrived. Weird. It was the longest running disagreement I’d ever witnessed between my parents. Until today, my PUs—parental units—functioned as a united front, not crossing the other in front of me. Under an asinine umbrella of, “We know what’s best,” they had managed to ruin my teenage social life with a barrage of ridiculous rules and regulations about vehicles and boys. Having a 10:00 p.m. curfew and minimal car access crushed any hopes I had of dating and by default, loosing my virginity. After we unpacked, the PUs would be driving home without me, and I planned to make up for lost time.

  At six-feet tall, my dad wore size eleven, laced suede shoes. His hair had more salt than pepper and was overdue for a cut. Reaching behind the van seat, he handed me a worn leather-bound Bible. “You may want to browse Thessalonians before you go out. I marked it for you.”

  Dad abided by a strict Catholic code and was a regular holy day and early Sunday mass patron. Mom and I exuded less zeal. A bible wasn’t the sort of book that I’d browse through in my free time. He was testing me. That was the only explanation. If I refused the book he handed me, he’d probably go parental, forgoing the nonrefundable tuition he’d already paid to haul my ass back to the buckeye state. I drilled my pupils into his, concentrating on vaporizing him. But I couldn’t muster any super powers. He smiled at me, waiting for a response. I knew how to can this conversation. My years of teenage experience
had sharpened my silent treatment skills. Biting my lip, I swallowed my annoyance and tucked the tattered book into one of my duffel bags while mumbling a less than ecstatic “Thanks.” If he stuck around too long, people would get the wrong impression of me. The sooner I got rid of him, the better.

  The air inside the van hung motionless. Mom rested against the bumper and blotted her neck with her scarf. Hearing Dad’s mention of the Bible, she closed her eyes and kept them shut. Herbal tea and meditating were the newest accessories she’d added to her mom arsenal. Dad or I could be midsentence and Mom would go into ‘the zone.’ She signaled this by pinching her index finger and thumb. After recharging, she’d make herself a cup of ginkgo biloba herbal tea--her brain tonic. I once made the mistake of sticking my nose into the tin of Gypsy brand loose tea leaves. It smelled like an ode to dried cat piss, and I passed whenever she offered me a cup. Until now, I’d only seen her trance out in the privacy of our home. While Dad ignored her, I felt embarrassed by her homage to the sixties and shouted, “Mom.”

  Her eyelids flew open, and she ran a hand through the waves that the humidity unraveled in her Dorothy Hamill haircut. Flapping her shirttails, she turned to tell Dad, “Rachael’s eighteen. Do you really think that a bible is going to keep her in on Friday nights?” She didn’t bother to whisper.

  Mom’s words weren’t meant for discussion. Dad continued to unpack a cardboard box full of homemade lemon squares, chocolate everything cookies and iced brownies. She moved to the passenger side of the van and fumbled inside her purse, unlatching a compact case mirror. Seeing for herself how the southern humidity had transformed her hair, she chucked the compact back into her handbag. Before zipping it closed, she clutched a wrapped book-size gift. Fiddling with the bow, Mom turned toward me. “I also have something for you.”

  Dad hadn’t moved on from Mom’s quip, and I heard him grumble, “It’s always good to have a bible.”

  My parents had already spent a fortune on supplies and new clothes for me, and it surprised me to get anything else, not that a used Bible counts. “You shouldn’t have,” I said, and clumsily reached between the seats, to hug her. I let go, but she didn’t. With her embrace lingering, I asked, “Should I open it or wait?”

  She released me and smiled with distant eyes. “Why don’t you save it until you’re settled in?”

  Attending college in North Carolina put me in a euphoria that was ten times better than a pan of double-chocolate brownies, powdered with sugar and rinsed down with a cold glass of milk. Since the PUs’ irritation level was already high, I concentrated on hiding the bounce in my step and tried not to gloat. Being an only child, I guessed Mom and Dad would go down Emotional Lane when they pulled away from campus without me.

  TOWER DORM SOUNDED FANCY, Grogan was not. A high-rise, all-girl dorm, it lacked two crucial comforts not noted in the brochure. Carpet and air conditioning. Inside the elevator, Pine-Sol air clung to my skin and sweat gathered behind my ears, in the small of my back and ten paces directly south.

  I’d left the PUs on the curb. Dad’s van idled while he waited to move and Mom guarded my belongings by sitting on them. Rubbing my thumb over the notches of my room key, I ignored the duffel bags slipping off my shoulders and the cardboard box full of sun-baked confectionaries in my hands and focused on finding my room.

  I spied into every open door I passed by, glimpsing power strips overloaded with mini-home appliances, stockpiles of Ramen noodles, and unmade, gray-striped twin-bed-mattresses piled high with luggage.

  Seven-hundred-seventeen had to be next. Like a can of shaken soda, the pressure inside me was ready to burst. The hallway bustled with students, siblings, parents and grandparents; their voices seeped through my headphones and garbled in a mix with my Dépêche Mode cassette playing in my Sport Walkman. The lid on the baked goods box edged off, and I secured it with my chin.

  Weaving around a cluster of bodies, I used tunnel vision to count down the room numbers. In a blink, something zunged my ankles and yanked my feet from under me. My teeth clipped the edge of my tongue, and I lobbed the box toward the ceiling. Lemon bars and brownie bits rained down in a hailstorm of baked goods, and the bags on my shoulders went splat-o. In a domino effect, I toppled into two bystanders, and the three of us nosedived until we made intimate contact with the green and white linoleum floor.

  My headphones twisted, and one pirated my left eye. In a tangle of limbs and snarled hangers, an uncradled telephone rested between my thighs and a voice called out, “Katie Lee?”

  Nobody spoke until a New York accent near my ear clipped, “Get the fuck off me.” Her red-polished index finger propelled into the air. “God damn it, I broke a nail.” Her face wasn’t visible, but her liberal cussing clued me into her coordinates below me.

  In a body snarl that rivaled a collapse in a game of Twister, a moaning noise reverberated, “With cussin’ like that, it’s no wonder we’ve been stricken down. The Lord is sayin‘ somethin’.” An unshaven leg, the color of chocolate syrup you drizzle on top of ice cream, rose an inch off my shoulders before clunking back down. Her bedazzled canvas slip-ons dangled from her foot. “That mouth is going to send us all into the eternal inferno.”

  “Fuckity-fuck-fuck-fuck.” The New Yorker wiggled below me. “Don’t Bible-belt me. I’ve been assaulted with baked goods.”

  Now feeling unsafe, I pushed preachy sparkle shoes off my neck and rolled off the profanity princess. This was not how I envisioned meeting new friends in the dorm.

  A medium-build brunette, who smelled as though she’d bathed in Lauren perfume, peered down at the three of us. Her brunette bob haircut cradled her face. Like a page out of The Preppy Handbook, she wore green madras Bermuda shorts that she coordinated with a pink polo. She looked like a slice of watermelon who wore its collar up. Sucking wind, she gasped and with linguistic precision, spoke in rhythm to her exhale. “Y’all dropped like a spare. I don’t see blood. Are-all-y’all okay?”

  As far as I could tell the only things injured were Mom’s baked goods, and the bathroom supplies that littered the hallway outside the dorm room I’d yet to see.

  “Katie Lee? Katie Lee?” the phone chirped.

  The standing southerner stared at the phone that had landed between my legs. She squatted beside me and her cheeks flushed. “Pardon me,” she said and tugged at its cord. Sandwiching the telephone between her reddened earlobe, and neck, she whispered, “Gotta go,” and hung up.

  The girl in the sparkly shoes propped herself up on her elbows. Under her breath, she garbled “P-shwank. Do you have a license to talk and walk?”

  The walking watermelon removed a chunk of brownie from my hair. Tucking her chin into her neck, she creased her eyes, like a mother composing herself to do battle with unruly children. “Where are my manners? Y’all, I’m Katie Lee Brown. I didn’t catch your name,” she said to sparkle shoes.

  Sparkle shoes’ voice dipped. “Francine Battle.”

  Delicately pointing at Francine’s left breast, Katie Lee shielded a side of her mouth. “You’re leaking lemon curd.”

  Tilting her gaze down her shirt, Francine used her thumb to wipe yellow glop from her chest and touched it to her tongue. “Personally, I prefer coconut cream.”

  Busying herself collecting the panty liners that had exploded from someone’s open bag, Katie Lee stuffed them in the outside pocket of an oversized fringed purse that I didn’t recognize.

  Francine tugged the shoulder bag from Katie Lee. “Lord girl, I’m not a mini kind of woman. Those don’t belong to me.”

  The New Yorker, still on the floor, opened her palm and Katie Lee handed over the stack of feminine care pads. “I was talkin’ with my boyfriend. Nash and I are missin’ each other somethin’ terrible. I heard voices out here and thought one of you might be my roommate, Rachael O’Brien.”

  Brushing crumbs off her black designer jeans, the New Yorker stood. She raised her chin to the ceiling and mouthed, ‘thank you.’ “You got the wrong girl. I’
m Macy Stephen.”

  I pushed to my feet, stepped out of the remnants of the confectionary cyclone and offered my hand. “I’m Rachael O’Brien.”

  Swaddling me in a hug, Katie Lee swooned, “So glad to finally meet you.” She released me but held onto my wrists. “This year is going to be amazing.”

  Francine gripped her back and moaned. Katie Lee let go of me to lend a hand to her while Macy and I sorted our belongings. I rescued an antique gilded frame from the floor and blew crumbs off a black and white photo of a toddler in cornrows. The child’s plump fingers clutched the hand of a gray-haired woman in a cotton dress. Francine snatched the frame from my grip, her stare softened as she became lost in the memory she held. Meeting my eyes, she spoke under a light breath. “My great memaw. She’s an artist you know. Pushed me to get the education she never had.”

  Macy leaned her head in toward us. “I’m hopeful that this is the start to nine months that’ll make Animal House look like a fucking retirement home.”

  Wiping the humidity from my hairline, I twisted my head to make sure my PUs hadn’t appeared. “Me too.”

  NOTE TO SELF

  Getting rid of the PUs--glorious.

  2

  Twenty-One-Year-Old Freshman

  I’d been away at school for one week. My body hadn’t adjusted to the southern climate’s secret whammy, heat n’ humidity. Between classes, I skirted into the shadows cast by campus buildings. The blocks of shade didn’t help much. My legs dragged like telephone poles, and my crevasses were like trees that leaked sap. During peak heat, I conserved words, not responding when a head nod sufficed. A newly purchased mini- plastic fan rested on my desk shelf, and it blasted recirculated hot air onto my face. It dried the sweat off my eyebrows, but my thighs still stuck to my shorts and my T-shirt to my back. The heat wave that started the day I’d arrived was relentless and unbroken.