The Secrets of Jane Harvard, Part I
Michael Melcher shivered over the rickety pine dining room table. His drafty graduate student garret offered little protection against the chilly Palo Alto winter. Yet the mildly depressed but still devilishly handsome young man noticed not the cold, so transfixed was he on the newspaper before him. A college classmate, a pleasant-enough friend of his roommate, had just become engaged to the Crown Prince of Japan. He sighed. Was it simply too much to want fame? … And fortune? … And a super-meaningful career? He had shown such early promise, after all. Suddenly, he jumped up, seized by an idea, a chance for salvation, or… something! He grabbed the phone. "Operator! I need to talk to Nigeria, and quick!"
As the other passengers fussed with the overhead luggage racks, stowing appliances and bolts of kente fabric, Faith Adiele relaxed in her first-class recliner and let her heavy-lidded eyes close. Her tray table stowed, her complementary earphones plugged in to Tejana, she was ready for MGM Grand’s 14-hour nonstop flight from Lagos to Chicago. The biracial beauty, beloved anchor of Nigeria's leading daytime feminist talk show, contemplated the awesome task before her. To chronicle an entire generation’s college experience in an entirely original new way! To be fresh and exciting, yet concerned with "issues!" Not everyone could do it. And those college years were but misty water-colored memories…
In her coldwater railroad flat in Somerville, Julia Sullivan chucked the paperback across the floor, briefly frightening the bunny in the kitchen. Most mysteries were bad, but this lesbian "thriller" was simply insolent in its idiocy. The uniracial beauty walked over to the frosty window and peered out at the little people trudging on their way home from the Porter Square T stop, going from their little jobs to their little lives. "Wake up, people!" she wanted to scream, but decided that would be a little too Dagney Taggert of her. There had to be a better way to speak truth to facts (a firm understanding of praxis being her only takeaway point from the Marxist section of Ec. 10). Perhaps this little scheme that her devilishly handsome, half-Chicano college chum had cooked up might actually have some potential…
The giant golden harp moved toward him, its tightly strung strings vibrating menace. "Please… please… Just stay away from me…," he begged uselessly. At the center of the harp, an opening began to form, an undulating, monstrous hole… that threatened to pull him inside. "Ahhhhhhhh!" he screamed in delirium. Bennett Singer suddenly vaulted out of bed, the beads of sweat already turning cold on his smooth olive skin. His bare feet clattered along the floor of the fabulously decorated 19th century farmhouse that his parents were graciously lending him for the week. "Must… make… nightmares… stop… " the handsome Semitic lad told himself. In the corner of his eye, he spied a copy of Julia Cameron’s fabled classic, "The Artist’s Way." "Way, may, gay, say," he intoned to himself. He checked his watch. Only six more hours until his co-authors would arrive. They would have a week in this desolate Illinois suburban countryside to make a bestseller happen. And it was all on his shoulders! It would all work… So long as no one mentioned that night at Lowell House…
Home
About the Authors | A Cast of Thousands | Hot Sexy Excerpts
Reviews | Secrets of Jane Harvard | Buy This Book!
"The Student Body" (ISBN 0-615-11344-3)
© 2000 Jane Harvard
jane@thestudentbody.com