Read Online According to Jane by Marilyn Brant - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Marilyn Brant
Tags: Jane Austen Fan Lit
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do well at that."
Di snickered and hissed under her breath, "Yes. It's the one thing 'Our Ellie' knows how to do well."
I glanced at her mutely and sighed. Becoming Mrs. Evans had not improved my sister's temperament one whit. Name change or no, she remained the same nasty Diana Lynn Barnett who'd hated me since toddlerhood.
My brother, Gregory, however, in a rare gust of goodwill, said to Di's new husband, Alex, "Ellie was always the best student in the family. She got more A's in one year than I got in all of high school."
"That's cool," Alex said, his dangly silver earring swinging freely between strands of his long, dark hair as he nodded politely and dug into his dinner.
I shot Gregory a brief and grateful grin, but then Mom burst in. "Well, no. I think Angelique got more A's than anyone in the family. She's at Stanford now, you know."
Mom said this for Alex's benefit, but I was, indeed, well aware of my cousin's whereabouts. Aunt Candice, whose move to Illinois those years ago had afforded her easy weekly visits to my parents' house, proved herself incapable of speaking a multi-syllabic sentence without referencing her daughter's battle against "those uncouth Californians."
"Angelique is, of course, going to Stanford for her graduate studies," my aunt often commented. "They overlooked her after high school, put her on a waiting list for undergrad entry--the nerve of them! But, they sure realized their mistake later. I told her, I said, 'Angelique, darling, you should just forget about Stanford. Make them suffer. Give the Ivies another try, or keep living at home and continuing on at Northwestern.' But--" Aunt Candice sighed. "She insisted on moving out West and joining all those surfing and Rollerblading Californians." She grimaced. "They're going to get skin cancer, the lot of them. I keep sending her bottles of sunscreen, but I'm not sure it's enough."
Since I was staying safely in the frigid Midwest, I didn't require nearly as much sunscreen as my genius cousin, but Mom tucked a bottle into my bag anyway. And the next morning I left home and soon found myself on my new campus in my new life, three hours south of Glen Forest, registered as an official grad student.
Unlike my undergraduate years, I wasn't forced to take any sucky PE courses, pointless mathematics classes or boring humanities prerequisites. I could focus exclusively on literature with my side order of library science.
But, just like my undergrad years, and my high school years before them, it turned out that academic issues weren't destined to be my problem--guys were. And just like my coursework increased in difficulty from the undergrad to grad level, so did the degree of conniving I encountered from the male members of the species. Brent Sullivan headed the 400-level class on Problematic Men.
"Check the list," Brent said to me one early winter night during my first semester. "I dare you."
The curly-haired, future MBA grad leaned across Wilder Hall's front desk, where I was working the eight-to-ten p.m. shift. (I needed the money and wanted a job nearby. I lived on the third floor of Wilder, the only all-grad student dorm on campus, so it took me thirty-two seconds to get to work.)
Brent pointed to the reservation book. The saucy twist to his lips only grew more pronounced as he edged nearer to me.
I flipped open the book and, sure enough, his name was penciled in. Sauna key. Ten o'clock. That very night. In my best barbed tone, I said, "So, what then? Are you issuing a general invitation?"
He laughed and brought his nose a mere two inches from mine. "No. A very specific one. To you."
"I see." I pretended to be like a fine English lady I knew, and I forced my excitement and my anxiety under control. The sauna was our university's equivalent to something like Make Out Point, a locale visited for the purpose of getting personal with someone of the opposite sex. A private invitation to the sauna was right up there with the come-on "My
Di snickered and hissed under her breath, "Yes. It's the one thing 'Our Ellie' knows how to do well."
I glanced at her mutely and sighed. Becoming Mrs. Evans had not improved my sister's temperament one whit. Name change or no, she remained the same nasty Diana Lynn Barnett who'd hated me since toddlerhood.
My brother, Gregory, however, in a rare gust of goodwill, said to Di's new husband, Alex, "Ellie was always the best student in the family. She got more A's in one year than I got in all of high school."
"That's cool," Alex said, his dangly silver earring swinging freely between strands of his long, dark hair as he nodded politely and dug into his dinner.
I shot Gregory a brief and grateful grin, but then Mom burst in. "Well, no. I think Angelique got more A's than anyone in the family. She's at Stanford now, you know."
Mom said this for Alex's benefit, but I was, indeed, well aware of my cousin's whereabouts. Aunt Candice, whose move to Illinois those years ago had afforded her easy weekly visits to my parents' house, proved herself incapable of speaking a multi-syllabic sentence without referencing her daughter's battle against "those uncouth Californians."
"Angelique is, of course, going to Stanford for her graduate studies," my aunt often commented. "They overlooked her after high school, put her on a waiting list for undergrad entry--the nerve of them! But, they sure realized their mistake later. I told her, I said, 'Angelique, darling, you should just forget about Stanford. Make them suffer. Give the Ivies another try, or keep living at home and continuing on at Northwestern.' But--" Aunt Candice sighed. "She insisted on moving out West and joining all those surfing and Rollerblading Californians." She grimaced. "They're going to get skin cancer, the lot of them. I keep sending her bottles of sunscreen, but I'm not sure it's enough."
Since I was staying safely in the frigid Midwest, I didn't require nearly as much sunscreen as my genius cousin, but Mom tucked a bottle into my bag anyway. And the next morning I left home and soon found myself on my new campus in my new life, three hours south of Glen Forest, registered as an official grad student.
Unlike my undergraduate years, I wasn't forced to take any sucky PE courses, pointless mathematics classes or boring humanities prerequisites. I could focus exclusively on literature with my side order of library science.
But, just like my undergrad years, and my high school years before them, it turned out that academic issues weren't destined to be my problem--guys were. And just like my coursework increased in difficulty from the undergrad to grad level, so did the degree of conniving I encountered from the male members of the species. Brent Sullivan headed the 400-level class on Problematic Men.
"Check the list," Brent said to me one early winter night during my first semester. "I dare you."
The curly-haired, future MBA grad leaned across Wilder Hall's front desk, where I was working the eight-to-ten p.m. shift. (I needed the money and wanted a job nearby. I lived on the third floor of Wilder, the only all-grad student dorm on campus, so it took me thirty-two seconds to get to work.)
Brent pointed to the reservation book. The saucy twist to his lips only grew more pronounced as he edged nearer to me.
I flipped open the book and, sure enough, his name was penciled in. Sauna key. Ten o'clock. That very night. In my best barbed tone, I said, "So, what then? Are you issuing a general invitation?"
He laughed and brought his nose a mere two inches from mine. "No. A very specific one. To you."
"I see." I pretended to be like a fine English lady I knew, and I forced my excitement and my anxiety under control. The sauna was our university's equivalent to something like Make Out Point, a locale visited for the purpose of getting personal with someone of the opposite sex. A private invitation to the sauna was right up there with the come-on "My
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