FD #4: Freshman Nights

A+! KC’s story is touching, Faith grows a spine, and go Lauren!

This one is about Parents’ Weekend. Lauren’s parents won’t be there, but Winnie’s mom will, and Faith’s parents and sister. As for KC’s parents, we’ll see. (Dash doesn’t answer when Lauren asks if his parents will be there; remember this later.)

Winnie: Josh asks her out, in advance. Yay! Then Mom shows up for Parents’ Weekend. She’s encouraging, then she gives Winnie the letters from Travis. She’d thought Travis had forgotten her, but in fact his letters had been misdirected. And he thought she forgot him. Hard for her to choose whether to pursue Travis or Josh, since neither relationship has quite gelled yet. She calls Travis and leaves a message; hopefully he’ll call back. The pay phone is almost directly opposite Josh’s door, so she’s terrified of being overheard. Oh, I remember how hard it used to be to find privacy. How glad I am (for the current generation) that cell phones and social media have put an end to that! It was hell for us. 

On the night of the Official Date With Josh (he sent her a kooky invitation), she’s all dressed up, hyped up, revved up…and then she gets called to the phone. It’s Travis. She intends to talk to him only for a minute, but of course she doesn’t notice the time until shortly after she was supposed to be at Geppetto’s Cafe. Josh did wait for her, but left just before she finally showed up. Argh. (Oh, and Travis wrote a song for her. Squee!) 

KC: We find her having a guilt trip over never having worn the t-shirt her parents had custom made for her graduation: Presenting Kahia Cayanne Angeletti, University of Springfield Freshman Extraordinaire. On tie-dye, yet. I can see why she’s torn. I mean, on the one hand, I wish my parents had had that much pride in me. OTOH, it’s kind of pretentious, calling a freshman “extraordinaire”. What had she proved, besides getting into U of S, which a couple thousand others have also done? She’d asked for a briefcase and a computer; she got the briefcase, a book on using health foods to manage stress, and the shirt. Did she really think they could afford a computer? (1990, remember; it was pretty much like buying a car.)

KC reports on the soccer-shirt project for Intro to Business, and she still still has her shields up against Steven, because she thinks he was putting her down by introducing her to his father. He wasn’t, but he does something else that makes KC’s head explode: he intends to donate the enterprise’s profits to a food bank. (KC had been counting on her share of the $$, and of course she’d already quit the mail-delivering job.) Steven offers to lend her money; she’d rather starve. He tells her he’d thought the food bank idea would impress her; it’s the kind of thing her parents would do. Which is why she’s not impressed. He’s so earnest that she can’t accept his affections. 

So KC storms away, calls home and takes out her frustrations on her father. First she’s cringing at the thought of a long-haired, dashiki-wearing middle-aged guy on campus. Then she’s further aggravated by calling the restaurant and being on hold so long. She dances around the subject before telling him flat out not to come. She has kind of got a point when she tells him he shouldn’t close up or leave the restaurant short-handed over the weekend, but “I don’t want you to come” is pretty much unforgivable. Dad, being a new-ager, says, “I’m not sure what I did to make you say something like that.” Good response, dad! KC feels her heart turn to ice, as she should. And of course, as soon as the weekend gets underway, she starts regretting his absence. For instance, the tension between the Crowleys makes her wish Dad was there: he’s always been good at getting people to talk things out. 

Since Faith is not invited to ODT’s Saturday night party, KC offers to spy for her and find out if Suzanna is Hammond’s date after all. What she mostly hears about is what a loser a pledge named Howard Benmann is, and how Mark Geisslinger (Book 1, remember? He set up Lauren’s humiliation) wants him out, despite his family’s connections. He’s going to haze Howard, humiliate him, and get him to drop out of rush. Hammond tells Mark and his crew to do what they have to do, just don’t involve him. Oh, and he did break up with Suzanna. But he’s also macking on yet another girl. KC didn’t plan on telling anyone about the hazing, but when she catches on that Lauren is looking for that kind of info, she tells her, in hopes that this will “make up for…everything.” 

After all the Parents’ Weekend drama, KC goes back to Jacksonville with Faith and Marlee. It sinks in that she’ll be half a person if she’s all business, no sentiment. With that in mind, she goes into the Windchime. Ah, such cozy memories! Dad charms the customers, but he’s out of earshot when they want dessert. KC serves them, breaking her vow to never work there again, and admits to being “part of the Angeletti family”. After a tearful embrace with Dad, she tells him he has to improve his business ethic, but in the context of, people need to know how terrific the place is. Back on campus, she starts decorating her room! 

Lauren: Dash encourages her to stay in Tri Beta just long enough to get some dirt about hazing. She may have lost a few pounds, but I like that it’s not a goal with her to get model-skinny. KC is still holding a grudge; Lauren tells her to figure out why she’s so nasty. At the Tri Beta house, Lauren acts super-helpful and conformist; this is easier now that she knows she has other options. She teases it out of Marielle that some hazing will go on. She wants to get a good story for several reasons: to prove herself, to impress Dash, and to get expelled from Tri Beta. Dash mentions that it’s a moral quandary: hoping to get a good story means hoping something horrible happens.

On Saturday night, Lauren lurks on Greek Row, but doesn’t find out anything until KC tells her about Howard Benmann. The hazing is awful; I won’t get into it, but Lauren puts a stop to it by the simple means of standing in the street screaming her lungs out. The guys take off and leave Howard about to die of alcohol poisoning. Dash hears the screaming and rushes to her side. They get help for Howard…but after a passionate kiss. Sure is a lot of that! Anyway, Howard is okay after a night and day in the hospital. The Journal won’t use his name, but he’ll testify if it comes to that. (There’s no followup on Lauren + Dash in this installment, but believe me, it’s not a loose end.)

Faith can’t focus on anything except Hammond. He can arrange a weekend at a mountain cabin, and he’ll end things with Suzanna “soon”. Faith is conflicted about this: when is “soon”, and is she ready for what will happen during an overnight?

She’s volunteering at a day-care center, while stressing about coming up with an idea an independent-study project. She’s a good organizer: they’re acting out the Mad Tea Party and five kids all want to be the Dormouse, so Faith makes it a group effort. (And this kills me: one of them stands swiveling back and forth: “I was the door.”)

Both KC and Winnie think she should tell Hammond that it’s Suzanna or her before she gets any more involved. She does, and he promises to break up with Suzanna as soon as she shows up for the weekend. Which leaves her alone on Saturday night, until Marlee shows up, having refused to ride back with their parents. She’s been fighting with them a lot, and it doesn’t help that their default response is “Faith never had problems like that.” She got further fed up with teachers comparing her to Faith, so she started cutting class and getting high. “Did drugs,” no specifics, but the other kids were “real losers” and she got busted. By the school, not the cops. 

This is bad enough, but Faith is further devastated when KC tells her that Hammond knew about the hazing and didn’t stop it, and that he was flirting with “Willa”, whoever she is. Faith has to accept that her parents are not good listeners, to either of their daughters, so she can’t rely on them. It’s the last straw when Merideth tells her that Faith + Hammond is common knowledge. When she can track down Hammond, she tells him to forget her, because she’s not the same person who fell for him a few weeks earlier. 

It’s going to be work, work, work from now on; forget about guys! Starting with her independent-study idea, carrying over the daycare experience: experimental Alice in Wonderland, with multiple people playing one character, and people playing inanimate objects. She and Brooks are on okay terms now, but he’s still in the story for a reason. Stay tuned… 

There’s still a lot of connection between the characters. KC and Winnie know quite a bit about Faith and Hammond, maybe more than Faith wishes they did. Lauren accepts KC’s olive branch, though as I recall, they never really become BFFs. The other girls talk Winnie through the agony of having unintentionally stood up Josh. And for once, someone borrows Lauren’s car for a good purpose: she offers it to Faith, so she can take Marlee back to Jacksonville. 

Also, Hammond is a commitmentphobe. Suzanna told him he’s only faithful to himself, right before she threw her engagement ring at him. And he feels too old for the beery obnoxiousness most of the other guys wallow in. With both him and Courtney (as we’ll see later) the kind of people mature and stable enough to be officers are too mature for Greek life!  

Tidbits: KC hasn’t watched Best and the Beloved for weeks, and the storyline from the last time she saw is still ongoing! New hangout: Hondo’s Cafe, home of college pennants and sub sandwiches.