It took a while for the smoke to blow away from that memorable evening in Tanisha’s room. Once the excitement of the moment passed, they both were a little abashed, and wordlessly agreed that perhaps they’d pushed it a little too far. That didn’t keep them from being friends, from studying together, spending time together – and yes, kissing a little.

It was another couple of weeks before they let themselves go that far again, this time in Jon’s room, one floor up in the same building. It started out as another study session – actually another McDermott special to crack, but this one fell easily, in comparison to the one the previous month that had seemed like a miracle. The feeling of victory set off another kiss of celebration, and without any discussion – although with plenty of joyous memories of the last time – they threw caution to the wind and soon found themselves quietly laying on Jon’s bed, fully clothed, kissing, hugging, enjoying the closeness. Jon had just gotten Tanisha’s bra unfastened and had just begun to explore the soft and warm wonders of the naked skin of her breast, which as before was still covered with her sweat shirt, when there was a rather insistent knocking on the door. The first thought on his mind, on her mind, was approximately the same: Why the hell now, of all the damn times?

The knocking came again. It couldn’t be his roomie, he thought; he was supposed to be out with his girlfriend till late, which is why he and Tanisha had taken the opportunity. God, how nice it felt to have a woman’s arms around him, her hands touching bare skin, to feel her lips on his.

Both of them wanted to ignore the interruption – what they were doing was lots more fun than anything anyone could be bothering them with could possibly be, but both were the kind of people who had to answer the door. After all, it might be important. He pulled his lips away from hers and whispered, "I better go see."

"OK," she whispered back, slipping her arms from beneath his sweat shirt, where she’d been doing some bare skin exploring of her own, while feeling sorry as he took his arms away from her.

"Coming," he called to whoever it was at the door, as he stood up and straightened out his sweatshirt. He went to the door, popped the latch and opened it, and looked up to see – of all people – Crystal looking back at him, bronzed to a golden tan and looking strong and confident as ever. He hadn’t seen his sister or heard a word of her since she’d stormed out of the house in a blizzard of swear words at Christmas. He’d have been less surprised to see his dad appear at the door – more fearful, but less surprised.

Tanisha was still getting her bra refastened, although out of sight, when Jon opened the door. "H-hi, Crystal," she heard him say.

"Hope I’m not interrupting anything," she heard a woman’s voice say casually. "I thought I’d stop off and say ‘Hi.’"

"N-no, that’s fine," he said, still shocked to see who the Starship Enterprise had just beamed down out of nowhere, after three months of total silence. "T-tanisha and I were just working on a homework problem. Why don’t you come in? How have you been?" he asked, almost as an afterthought.

"Oh, OK," she said casually, walking through the foyer, Jon on her heels.

Oh, boy, this is going to be a problem for Jon, Tanisha thought. With her clothes almost back in order, she leaned out from the bed, to see a big, confident-looking white woman, deeply tanned, looking strong, muscular, and healthy. She wasn’t what you could call pretty – she had a big nose and unkempt short brown hair. But then, Tanisha thought, I’m not exactly the prettiest black girl on campus, either.

"Uh, Crystal," Jon said awkwardly, "This is Tanisha. We work on homework and stuff together sometimes. Tanisha, this is my sister, Crystal."

"Hi, pleased to meet you," Crystal said, smiling widely and extending her hand.

"Hi," Tanisha said, a little uncertainly, but extending her hand in friendship. "You’re the surfer and raft guide, right?"

"Yeah, I’ve been known to do some of that," Crystal smiled graciously.

"Hey, look, if you two want to be alone, I can run down to my room or something," Tanisha offered, feeling uncomfortable at being caught like this with Jon.

"No, don’t bother," Crystal grinned. "I can only stay a few minutes. I just wanted to say hello to Jon since I’m in the area and won’t be back for a while. We sort of got interrupted the last time."

"I, uh, heard," Tanisha admitted.

"No matter what Jon says, I really don’t bite," Crystal smiled and turned to her brother. "Jon, any news from home?"

"You heard Nanci got kicked out of school?" Tanisha had heard the story before; there had been a series of long phone calls earlier in the month from his dad and mom both together and separately, calling from work. The stories that the two gave were considerably different; according to his mom, Nanci and her boyfriend had decided to spend the night together, and had locked her roommate out of her room, and the roommate had gone to the administration about it. According to his father, what actually happened was Crystal’s boyfriend Randy had threatened to beat her to a bloody pulp, and she left campus because she was scared. She knew Jon leaned toward his mother’s version as being more correct, but that there probably was some truth to his dad’s version, too.

"I heard," Crystal replied dryly without telling how she knew. Jon could pick up the contempt in her voice. "Didn’t surprise me much. What’s she doing?"

"Not much of anything, from what I can tell," Jon said awkwardly. "Crystal, uh, I haven’t been calling home much. It’s pretty uncomfortable around there."

"Oh?" Crystal said, with a lot being asked in that one word.

"Yeah, when I call home, it starts off pretty good, but pretty soon there’s a lot of bitching about you and Nanci. I had enough of that over Christmas."

Crystal shook her head. "Sorry I had to ruin your holiday, Jon, but mine was pretty bitched up, too."

"I stayed gone a lot," he said. "We couldn’t even eat dinner without a fight. Mom set a place for you every night, hoping you’d show up, and Dad got real pissed off about even that. As far as I know she still does it every night."

"I . . . see," Crystal said thoughtfully.

"Crystal, I don’t know what really happened between you and Nanci and Dad, and the stories are pretty different from everybody. Nanci fucked up pretty bad, didn’t she?"

"Big time," Crystal said. "I won’t tell you stories. That way you don’t have to judge them."

"I believe it," Jon frowned, thinking back and wondering how to say what he had on his mind. "I saw her a lot in high school. I don’t know how she ever kept from getting caught for some of the stuff she did. I guess it doesn’t surprise me if it was worse in college."

"But you weren’t going to rat on her, right?"

"Yeah," he said glumly. "Maybe I should have."

"I didn’t want to rat on her, either," Crystal said. "I mean, it was always us against them, right?"

"Yeah, pretty much," he grinned.

"Well, maybe I should have, too. But, what’s done is done."

"Yeah, I guess," he said uncertainly. "Damn, it was hard at home. It was hard as hell to keep from taking sides, to just stay the hell out of it. Finally, I left early and got together with Danny Rostenkowski, and we drove down to Florida for a few days, just for something to do."

"Oh?" Crystal asked, sounding interested. "Anyplace special?"

"Danny’s grandparents have a place south of Melbourne. We mostly pissed around on some old computer games and screwed around on the beach. I even tried surfing."

"Hey, good for you!" she smiled. "How’d it go?"

"I fell in a lot," he said sheepishly.

"Hey," she grinned broadly, "I’ll let you in on a secret. You ever want to try it again and really learn how to do it, B&G’s Surf Shop, on A1A down toward Sebastian Inlet. Tell Buddha I sent you. He’ll teach you right."

"Probably won’t," he said. "I got a pretty bad sunburn."

"Hey, Bro, that’s what they make sunscreen for, right?"

"Well, I wouldn’t have done it if I wasn’t pretty bored," he said. "But it was better than home. Honestly, Crystal," he summed up, "I don’t know what I’m going to do this summer."

It was something that Tanisha had talked about a lot with Jon ever since the first of the year – she definitely wasn’t going home next summer, but she really didn’t have any plans, either. "I told him he should check in the department for a summer job somewhere," she interjected.

"Sounds like a good idea," Crystal agreed.

"Yeah, but Dad expects me back at Hadley-Monroe," he said glumly.

"Jon, I don’t know a damn thing about engineering," Crystal shook her head, "But I can tell you that no one does it perfectly, even Hadley-Monroe," Crystal advised. "Seeing how they do things elsewhere will be valuable to you. Or, maybe you can find a seminar or a special session or something. Use your imagination."

"Yeah, maybe," he said. "Tanisha said that, too. Maybe I can work out something."

"Don’t think you have to wind up at Hadley-Monroe," she added. "You remember Randy, don’t you?"

"Sure. Jeez, he’s something else, isn’t he? How are you two getting along, anyway?"

"He’s OK," Crystal said obliquely. "He’s still in his last semester at NMU. The thing is, he’s pretty well locked into having to go into the family business starting in a couple months, and it’s going to keep him from doing other things he wants to do. It’s pretty sad, really, and it’s something we haven’t been able to work out. Hadley-Monroe may be OK, but you’re not locked into it the way Randy is."

"It’d be hard to say no," Jon said quietly, remembering all the times his father had talked of looking forward to the day that they’d be working there together.

"Jon, it may be harder if you say yes," Crystal told him bluntly. "Remember that you are your own person, and you have to cut your own trail in this life. Now, I need you to do a favor for me, OK?"

"What, Crystal?" he asked, a little suspiciously. He’d tried to stay out of the troubles, and didn’t want to get dragged into them.

"I need you to call Mom, probably at work. Mom, not Dad. Tell her I’m OK and I got her message. I’ll check in with you or her once in a while, not often, and probably not soon. Tell her . . . tell her I’ll probably see her again someday, but I’m not coming home until I can expect a damn sincere apology."

"Crystal, I don’t think that’s going to happen. At least not from Dad."

"Wouldn’t surprise me," she admitted sadly, "But who knows? Nanci may still change Dad’s mind. Tell Mom to hang in there, too, huh? Just see that she gets the message. And, Jon?"

"Yeah?"

"Keep your head down and don’t get caught in the middle. I can tell you it’s not a nice place to be."

"That’s pretty obvious," he nodded." That’s why I didn’t hang around at Christmas."

"Me neither," Crystal snickered. "Look, I gotta run. You take care. Do what you have to do. I’ll catch you again sooner or later."

"Where are you going, Crystal?" he asked curiously.

"I’m heading north," she said cryptically, turning again to Tanisha. "Good meeting you, Tanisha. I really hope I didn’t interrupt anything. Jon really is a pretty decent guy in spite of everything. He may even make something of himself some day."

"Nice meeting you," she said shyly. "Maybe I really should have left."

"No problem on my account," Crystal smiled, and headed for the doorway. "You take care, too." At the door, she turned back to her brother. "See ya around, Bro," she smiled. "Don’t worry. I won’t rat on you and Tanisha. Do what you want to do."

"I didn’t think you would. Take care, Crystal."

As quickly as she had come, she was gone, the door closing behind her. Jon stood there stunned for a second, then raced to open the door to say something else, but when he looked down the hall, she was gone, like the Starship Enterprise had just beamed her back up.

"That was Crystal, huh?" Tanisha said as Jon walked back into the room, all thoughts of an enjoyable afternoon of light petting as far from his mind as it was hers.

"Yeah, it was," Jon said. "Wonder when I’ll see her again?"

"Hard to say," Tanisha said distantly, obviously thinking about other things. "You notice she didn’t give any hint of where she is now, what she’s been doing, where she’s going, really anything personal."

"I noticed," Jon nodded. "She doesn’t know whether to trust me or not, so she didn’t say anything that would give her away. It’s pretty clear that she’s been talking to Randy, or else she wouldn’t know that Nanci got kicked out of school, or whatever it was."

"This Randy, he’s her boyfriend, right?"

"More or less," Jon said. "Interesting guy, about my size, but thinner, more muscular. He’s another martial arts freak like her, does whitewater, surfing, outdoor things like that, pretty quiet but pretty serious. I’ve only met him three different times, never real long, but then I haven’t seen Crystal all that much the last few years, either. I guess I sort of figured she’d wind up with him, but from the tone of what she said, maybe not." He shook his head. "I hope whatever it is works out for her. It’s got to be scary, to be out on your own like that."

"Yeah, I know," she said quietly. "I mean, it’s not quite the same thing, but I don’t dare go home again, any more than she does."

Jon nodded. "I’m coming to understand it, too," he said. "I mean, in theory, yeah, I could go back to Glen Ellyn when the term breaks, work at Hadley-Monroe again, but I’ll be damned if I want to." He shook his head again, and sat down on the bed. "For a while there, I guess things were cooling off at home, but now Nanci will be there, her presence just stirring them up again. I could go back but there’s no way I can. It’d just drive me up the wall."

"I could go home," she shook her head, "But it would mean surrendering. I barely got out of there after Christmas." She sat down beside him, and let out a big sigh. "I guess I’ve been denying the truth. I can’t go home again, Jon, at least not to stay."

"Yeah, I guess I’ve been denying it, too," he agreed. "Crap, she’s right. Really, it isn’t a lot different than your situation. A couple years ago Christmas, back when I was still in high school, she and I were alone together, and she got on my ass big time. She said Dad has just tried to mold me into an image of his own dull self. She said I might turn into a decent engineer, but no imagination, no soul. She said I ought to get off my dead ass, down there in the basement playing with my AutoCAD, because if I didn’t get an idea of what the world is really like, the best I’d ever do is contribute to someone else’s idea, not have any of my own. She said I’d be lucky if the world didn’t bite me in the ass in the process."

"That’s pretty brutal," Tanisha said. "I’m surprised you put up with her talking to you like that."

"I didn’t have a lot of choice," Jon shrugged. "She is a black belt, after all. I was pretty pissed at the time, and we had a pretty good yelling match. But, you know what? After I thought about it, and it took a while, I realized she was right. That’s why when the choice came up between Purdue and here, I chose here. Purdue is just too damn close to Chicago. If I had gone there, I knew I’d have had Dad looking over my shoulder all the time."

"Same thing," Tanisha nodded. "Purdue is too close to St. Louis, too. I guess I’m just as glad that it was too white for my father. Atlanta is farther away, so it’s better. I’m sure glad I don’t have to worry about my father or my brother walking in here and finding me necking with you."

Jon nodded. "Same here. I wouldn’t have dared even think about it if this was Purdue, it’d be too easy for Dad to drop in without warning. He doesn’t like to travel much. Mom could hardly get him out of the house with dynamite. The last time he was here was last fall, and he said over Christmas he was damn glad he didn’t have to come down here again until next spring." He let out a sigh, and said, "Oh, shit."

"What now?" she asked.

"He’ll be down here in, what, six weeks, all set to haul my ass back to Hadley-Monroe for the summer," Jon sighed again. "Now, how the hell do I get out of that?"

Tanisha nodded her head. "You get right down to it, I’ve got the same problem. I mean, I don’t have any intention of going home for the summer, but I guess I’ve been denying the reality of it. If I’m going to get away with it at all, I’ve got to have a solid-gold alternative, and I haven’t really been looking, either."

"Then I guess we’d better get in gear," Jon said. "I’d say we have four weeks to nail something down. Let’s face it, neither of us can talk about goofball summer jobs, like Crystal spent her summers as a raft guide up on the Ocoee. It’s just about got to be a useful job or internship in engineering, something valuable to our careers, something solid enough that we have an excuse to be gone."

"If I had to guess, I’d say we’ve missed the boat on those kinds of things," Tanisha sighed. "Maybe we can get in on a summer session someplace. If not here, well, somewhere. But, we’re going to have to get hopping on that if we’re going to do it, or the slots are going to be gone there, too."

"We’re probably best if we can do it right here," Jon agreed. "I mean, suppose we could get in a session at, say, MIT. Then your father is going to be all upset that it’s too white."

"There is that," she agreed. "But Jon, it isn’t something we have to do together."

"I suppose," he said. "But it sure would be more interesting if it was."

"Oh, I agree," she smiled, and shook her head. "You have to wonder what kind of impression your sister got of us."

"I told her we were working on homework," Jon protested.

"Oh, you did," Tanisha smiled. "But you let her in too quick. I was still getting my bra refastened. I’ll bet she thinks we’ve got a hot romance going on."

"Oh, damn," Jon said. "I’m sorry, Tanisha. I wasn’t thinking. I guess I was so surprised to see her that I didn’t think very much. But, you know what? If that’s the impression she got, I’ll bet it was fine with her."

"She didn’t seem very shocked," Tanisha smiled.

"Oh, she had to have been shocked," Jon laughed. "Not at us, but at me. She used to say that there’s no way I could ever get a girl friend since I could never be dragged away from the computer long enough."

"Funny," Tanisha giggled, "My brother used to say the same thing. Guess they never figured we’d bring our computers along with us, even if we really don’t have a hot romance scene going."

"Yeah," Jon said thoughtfully, "But you know, Crystal walked in here throwing truth right and left. If I read her right, and I think she was pretty clear, she said if we wanted to have one, it was all right with her."

"That’s something," she replied. "Of course, if we did, we’d have a heck of a price to pay with the rest of our families."

"True," he said thoughtfully, and was silent for a second. "But really, isn’t it pretty much the price we’re going to have to pay anyway?"

"I guess," she replied after thinking about it for a moment. "Let’s see what we can do about finding jobs or sessions where we can be together. Jon, if it’s all right with you, if we’re going to have to be alone, I’d just as soon we were alone together."

They spent much of the rest of the afternoon online, searching first the Tech website for open summer session classes, and then searching around for job opportunities. As both of them had suspected, the latter were limited. There really weren’t a lot of jobs in the engineering field that seemed to be open to the both of them in their specialty, at least at this late a date, but there were a few possibilities, enough to write up some résumés and send them off. It was hard to know where to look, what to look for, and Jon privately figured it was a lost cause before they started.

A summer session at Tech, though, had possibilities. There weren’t a lot of summer classes that would be useful to them in engineering, but there were some, and they could also go a long way toward filling out their non-engineering electives in the process. "We really ought to ask around the department," Tanisha suggested. "There might be some sort of special summer project, research or something, that might have some potential."

"Darn right," Jon agreed. "I’d say we ought to hit on everyone we know. There might be a lead there."

By the time they made it to the stress analysis class on Monday morning, they’d pretty well settled on the option of staying in Atlanta for the summer, and were just looking for something to fill out the schedule, a research project of some sort or another. However, just as the class was breaking up, Dr. McDermott said, "Ms. Blythe, Mr. Chladek, if you have a minute, I’d like to see you after class, please."

"Sure," Tanisha said, gathering up her books as Jon walked up to the professor. "We sort of wanted to talk to you, anyway."

"What is it, Dr. McDermott?" Jon asked.

"I was wondering if either or both of you have a job lined up for the summer," he inquired.

"Well, yes and no," Jon responded. "I do have a job lined up, but it’s one I’d rather not do. I’d really rather have something more useful for my career."

"About the same," Tanisha admitted. "I’ll do just about anything you can think of in engineering as opposed to wiping snotty noses in my church’s day care center."

"Then I might have something for you," the balding professor said. "A former student of mine is looking for a couple of undergraduates, or possibly low graduate students, who can think innovatively and are good self starters. This isn’t the first time he’s come to me with that request, and the students I’ve sent out there have done well, so he’s willing to listen to my recommendation."

"Sounds like it has possibilities," Tanisha nodded. "What can you tell us about it? Is it around here? Is it an internship, or a paid position?"

"It’s a paid position," Dr. McDermott said. "I’m not very clear on what the pay would be, but it would be well over minimum wage. But, it’s not around here. It’s in Phoenix, a company called Lambdatron. Have you ever heard of it?"

"I think so," Jon smiled. Yes, he’d heard the name, not often, but it wasn’t totally unfamiliar, either. "Mostly an R&D place, if I’m thinking correctly."

"That’s correct," Dr. McDermott said. "Much of what they do is defense related, and I’m not very clear on what exactly it is they do, but in general, it’s very advanced technology. Probably for a summer job for undergraduates, it’s going to involve a lot of boring detail work, but you’d almost certainly gain some valuable experience out of it, and have a good line on a résumé. On the other hand, if you do well, it could turn into something for the future. If you’re interested, I’d be glad to pass your names along with my recommendation."

It didn’t take much discussion on Jon and Tanisha’s part – a quick nod at each other was all it took. "Dr. McDermott," Jon said, "I think I can speak for both of us in saying we’re very interested in knowing more about it."

"And," Tanisha added, "We’d like to thank you very much for thinking of us, and for the support you’ve offered."

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