“What are you talking about?”
“I’m saying,” He looked extremely serious, “That God is not some ancient bloke sitting on a chair looking down through the clouds, randomly lobbing lightning bolts at bad people. I’m saying that God is more than that. Like you, I’m saying he’s something we can’t understand.”
“And I am saying that one day Science will allow us to understand.”
Oliver leaned back in his chair, “I honestly hope not, Sil. I honestly hope not. If it did, what would happen to faith?”
I was about to answer him when there was a great clatter as Merlyn flipped backwards in his chair and landed flat on his back on the floor.
“Oh, shite!” He lay there stunned. “That wasn’t good!”
Alexander and Lance laughed shamelessly.
“Are you all right?” Oliver showed a mild amount of concern. He leaned forward a bit to have a look at his fallen comrade, but made no move to help him.
“My neck’s not broken,” Merlyn stood up and lifted his chair. “I’m okay, I think.”
“Well, that’s a good thing!”
I never answered Oliver’s question about what would happen to faith. I don’t know how I would have, to be honest. Whatever it would have been that I came up with, it wouldn’t have been nearly as profound as I would have thought at the time.
The next day proved to be sunny and warm. Oliver and I took one of our walks after breakfast, hand and hand down to the lake. We walked around a few times before we decided to sit down in the grass. I had a Snickers bar my father sent from home and I took it out of my jumper pocket, “Would you like to share, Ollie?”
“Silvia Cotton, you have to be the most fabulous person in the world! How did you know?” Oliver was a fan of mostly any kind of chocolate, but Snickers were far and beyond his favourite.
I let him take the first bite. “Great gliding green gophers!” He pointed, “How big are your feet?”
I blushed, “They’re not that big.”
“Not that big? They’re like gun boats! They’re bloody gigantic!”
“No they are not! They’re only a 41!” My face was on fire.
“Yeah, they are!” He teased, “A 41! They’re more like battleships!”
“My feet might be long, but they certainly are not battleships!” I covered them with my hands, “My feet are too narrow for most shoes! And look at yours! Yours are as if…I don’t know! They’re like oil tankers!”
“May I have another bite of chocolate?” He asked and I indulged him. He looked at his shoes as if to inspect them, “Yeah, I suppose they are large, if a 48 and a half is large. They’re a full size larger than my brother’s.”
“My goodness! You have feet like great, giant sea faring vessels!”
“Yeah, well, I guess if we had children they’d be doomed to sport massive footwear. We could teach them to float sitting on one of those inflatables and send them here to Bennington and they could paddle about the lake like bizarre little ducklings.”
I laughed and took another bite of my candy bar. “You’re very funny,” I told him sincerely.
Oliver’s face came close to mine.
He kissed me. It was quick, smooth, and square on the lips. I felt my face go redder. I dropped my eyes and continued to chew my chocolate.
Oliver looked away casually and then turned back, “That was nice. I think you got more chocolate than I did. May I have another?”
I nodded and held out the candy bar.
That wasn’t what he was talking about. He kissed me again, only this time it was longer and more skilfully done with his palm against my cheek. His mouth was so warm. I had no idea a boy’s lips could feel as soft and lovely as his did. I closed my eyes and I let him kiss me and I kissed him back.
Merlyn Pierce catcalled us from across the lake, “Snogging!”
“Right in public!” Lance added, “That’s a thirty minute detention, Dickinson! I’ll tell Pennyweather straight away!”
“Brilliant, Oliver!” Yelled Alexander, “Can I have a go next?”
More people who were walking or studying turned and looked. I could feel my face beating and burning. Oliver leaned in and kissed me again then shouted to our hecklers, “There! Now it’s an hour in detentions and worth every second! Light off flair to alert the staff if you like, Lance Crosby! Piss off, you, Alexander Dickinson! She’s my Sil!”
“I’ll stop the world and melt with you, Oliver Dickinson!” Merlyn replied. It was about two seconds later that the three across the lake began to serenade us with the Modern English song that those lyrics came from before they returned to their golf game.
After that day I was “Oliver Dickinson’s girlfriend”.
“What’s with the new girl?” A girl named Peggy McGhee whispered in library. She was good friends with that Jennifer Eisenberg, the prefect who had been so rotten to me the day I arrived. I could see her between a row of books and the top of the shelf as I roamed the reference section. She tossed her dark hair off her shoulder as she leaned toward another friend, Molly Weathersby, “Which Dickinson is she involved with? I see her with them both all the time.”
“She’s Oliver’s girlfriend.” Molly Weathersby replied, taking a half step forward. “He was kissing her by the lake!”
“Kissing her?” Peggy stiffened.
“Oh, yeah,” Molly seemed to be enjoying her friend's disappointment. She smiled evilly, “It looked rather sweet.”
“Really?” Peggy's shoulders slumped. She took a quick breath, however, and seemed to have a change of attitude, “Oh, well. That won’t last. Oliver never has girlfriends at Bennington. Are you sure it was him and not Alexander?”
“It was definitely Oliver.”
“Oh, crap.” She sounded sincerely disappointed as they walked away.
Later that day, I entered a classroom. It's a horrible feeling when you know people are staring at you and the prof, an older man with a charcoal coloured hair and a thick black moustache, did not see me enter. He continued to scribble course instructions on the blackboard while I shifted my books from arm to arm and rubbed the tip of my maryjane into the back of my other. When he finally noticed me, he yanked his belt up to his chest and smiled kindly, “Oh! Hello! How can I help you, Dear?”
“Hello. Professor Nickels? I’m Silvia Cotton. My schedule has changed. Is this Advanced Chemistry?”
“Ah, yes, you must be Oliver Dickinson’s girlfriend!” He set down his chalk, “I was told you were coming by! Please, yes, find a seat! What was your name again?”
Oliver was, as I had guessed when I’d first seen him, quite popular, and that made me less welcome by most of the girls. Sandra Ashby, who had quickly become my best girlfriend ever, always knew everything about everyone at Bennington. It wasn’t that Sandra was the gossipy type, quite the opposite, but she was involved in everything from being President of the Student Body to being a long standing member of the Photography Group. Sandra had a hand in everything you can imagine at Bennington. She was always darting from class to this meeting or that meeting and at those gatherings, people talked and Sandy listened. Therefore, she heard all the codswallop imaginable. After gathering it up, she usually set about finding out the truth from fiction. She was an excellent source of both tittle-tattle and genuine scandal. She never spread it about, but she was always more than happy to sit and give me the full report after curfew when her meetings were over and it was just her and me in our room.
I was telling her about what I’d heard Peggy and Molly saying in the library and about how I felt I was getting the cold shoulder from many of the female students. “It’s been like this from day one. People staring at me and gossiping. I don’t think it’s very friendly here,” I told her, hugging my pillow to my chest, “I don’t know what I’ve done wrong.”
“You haven’t done a thing!” She answered sincerely, pulling her uniform shirt out from her skirt and kicking off her shoes as she sat at the head of my bed, “They’re just brassed because Oliver likes you and not them. Any one of those girls would pull out their eye teeth to have Oliver. Bitches, all of them,” She took off her glasses and held them to the light to check the clarity of the lenses, then tossed them on to the side table, “Peggy’s been throwing herself at him for four years and she can’t get it through her head that he’s not at all interested.”