Deferred Interest (eBook)

Ryan Pollyea (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2016 | 1. Auflage
348 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
978-0-9968461-0-3 (ISBN)

Infos

A college slacker with only three days left until expulsion starts an ill-advised student protest in DEFERRED INTEREST. Chip Lockwood knows little about organizing a protest and even less about his largely apathetic classmates at Pemberton University. But since he's well aware of what his parents will do to him if he gets expelled, he charges forward with a fake protest in an attempt to fool the entire campus and the administrators in this quirky college comedy that's told from the school's own point of view.

Textauszug

Chapter 1: Charles “Chip” Lockwood

THE BEST place in Lockwood’s less than esteemed academic career to pinpoint this tale’s beginning is around two a.m. on October the eighteenth of 2005. It was a Tuesday and Charles Lockwood was relaxing underneath a lilac ceiling, between bed sheets belonging to a girl who believed his name was Jia Xiong.

Earlier that night, Lockwood found himself not where the university wanted him, which was at a discussion section to receive the results of his latest midterm, but at an off-campus bar called Home Reading. As he’d chosen to fill out the exam with little regard for the correct answers, he felt no need to retrieve it.

The bar was a hot spot for PMU students, especially those who found humor in saying they spent a night “at Home Reading” as it sounded more like they were studying, not drinking pitchers of beer through garden hoses.

In an example of Lockwood’s extremely good fortune, the junior learned while at the bar that an attractive coed he had been eyeing was mutually interested. The young lady was a freshman who was convinced the very Caucasian Lockwood was the PhD student from China who was serving as her Teaching Assistant in Seventeenth Century European Conflict (EURP-180, offered FALL and WTR). As she believed she was failing this class, her goal was to find her TA at his favorite bar, woo him into bed, and coerce him into boosting her grade.

Even after the three rounds of a game called “quarters” he played (according to those who were present and later questioned by my staff), the young man was able to piece together the girl’s scheme without letting on that he knew something was awry. Upon realizing that she was coherent and perhaps just hard of sight, he proceeded to let the intriguing opportunity take him where it might.

In his first two years at Pemberton, Charles Lockwood did little academically or civically notable with the exception of being barred from ever again entering the state of Ohio.

When this story began, he was a man of twenty-one who lived by an untamable appetite for recreation and a carefree attitude that flirted with unflinchingly indifferent. In all, he would have been difficult to love if society didn’t encourage others to emulate his boldest qualities.

He stood about six foot three inches when not slouched over a coffee table piled high with beer cans. Accompanying his face’s strong features were pale blue eyes he inherited from his mother and surfer blonde hair that highlighted his southern California roots. His classic mid-20th Century good looks even landed him on the cover of an admissions packet his sophomore year, amid students joyously watching a PMU football game. In the picture, Lockwood was smiling at the camera with his perfect teeth, welcoming eyes, and strong chest visible under a PMU shirt emblazoned with an aggressive-looking butcher knife. (Incidentally, the Admissions Office later found out that off camera he was, in fact, not wearing pants.)

Either through courtesy of his upbringing, the freedom afforded by his wealth, or a combination therein, his cushioned existence’s protective coating preemptively brushed away life’s harsher circumstances at all times. Winds changed in his favor when at sea and consequences of any severity voluntarily altered themselves in his wake. It was almost as if fate herself not only existed, but she interacted with mortals solely to protect Lockwood.

From his first days at Pemberton, he did not use his powers to strengthen his business acumen, benefit charity, or help classmates realize their potential. Rather, Charles Lockwood was often busy using his abilities to be Charles Lockwood. He was not being asked to live in simple terms, so he naturally did not respect certain societal norms.

During his freshman year he grew famous for having convinced a yacht owner in South Beach to allow forty students onto the ship on a whim. (The party was halted before he managed to steer the boat to Havana.) His past also featured a visit to Chicago during which he became the only Pemberton student in history to spontaneously place a bid on and drunkenly attempt to sign a lease for the purchase of one of the city’s grand museums. He also gave the school an international first on a flight from Los Angeles to Sydney at the age of twenty when he became its first student to organize an in-flight beer pong tournament on a major airline.

His antics were the kernel of fraternity legend. His ability to avoid penalties was hurtful to anyone with a conscience. And to administrators who dealt with the costs he ignored and the students who felt they could sculpt their reputations in his image, Lockwood’s presence was, at times, simply destructive.

So it is no coincidence that his most storied misadventure at Pemberton begins here.

After thirty minutes of talking, during which the intoxicated Lockwood noted the freshman never once asked him his name or major, twenty of walking, and fifteen of what students in the mid-2000s considered courting, the couple made it into her dorm room. Not terribly long after that, two a.m. arrived.

Looking up at the lilac ceiling, Lockwood smiled and the girl giggled. Lockwood recognized it as a cue that a conversation might start. His eyes remained on the ceiling.

“So I had a great time,” she began, rolling onto her side and away from Lockwood, “and I hate to bring this up now, but about the midterm…”

Lockwood recalled who he was supposed to be. “Should I have seen this coming?”

“I don’t want you think this was only about that,” she replied insistently. “I just really need to know that grade before class.”

Had he been listening, Lockwood might have brainstormed a way to dull the agony of the pending moment when the girl discovered he was not Jia Xiong. He opted for a higher risk response. “It’ll all work out, baby.”

The girl laughed, signaling what sounded like a temporary truce.

“So, what’s with the ceiling?” he asked. “I thought you couldn’t paint dorms.”

The girl turned on her back. “I heard that whoever had this room two years ago was some rebel who was sick of not being able to change anything here. She got fed up one night and painted it out of some sort of protest.”

“What kind of rebel thinks light purple makes a big statement?”

“I don’t know,” the girl said with a shrug. “But the school got upset and told her she had to paint it over or pay some huge fine.”

“What’d she do?”

“My RA said she refused and the school charged her a thousand dollars to clean it.”

Lockwood tried to make sense of the story but couldn’t. “But it’s still purple.”

“I know. Weird, huh? It’s like the school got the money and just forgot. Speaking of something totally different,” she continued enthusiastically, “can we talk about the midterm now?”

“Wow, really? Why?”

“Because I’m worried about it, Jia!”

Despite being called a name that was not his own while nude in bed, Lockwood managed to simultaneously dodge the issue and offer support. “Listen, it’ll sort itself out, believe me.”

Although the topic of academic excellence was brought up under questionable circumstances, her concern was justified. For decades, Pemberton has been one of the most respected, prestigiously ranked, and selective universities in the nation.

Since its founding in 1857 as Pemberton Methodist University and Culinary Institute, PMU has enjoyed a reputation of the highest caliber. Cradled by the shoreline of one of the country’s greatest lakes, Pemberton has been a peaceful source of mental rapture and emotional growth for hundreds of thousands of students. By the time the culinary school closed in 1872 and “Methodist” was dropped from its name, Pemberton had grown from a notable yet quaint institution into a nationally renowned powerhouse of education, research, and civic significance.

In Lockwood’s case, worrying about classes was not an affliction he was capable of developing. It was not for a lack of intelligence, as results from the standardized test scores attached to his application showed, rather it was due to his mindset about academia as a whole. He decided as a child that learning class material strictly for a test or a grade wasn’t beneficial. The problem morphed when he learned he could find a way around anything he felt was superfluous to the learning process, namely lectures, course work, and often common decency.

What helped drive his reprehensible attitude was a theory he tested regularly: no teacher he would meet was really going to fail a student. Whether it was thanks to his privileged life or by accident, his theory typically worked for him. Even instructors who didn’t know his family’s history seemed to be hesitant to let him fail their class.

At PMU Lockwood regularly attended three sessions of any given course: the first day (to sign the university’s only official attendance form), the day of the midterm (to get through the questions as rapidly as he could), and the day of the final (to pass the exam using notes he pilfered from students he met while handing in his...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 8.3.2016
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Comic / Humor / Manga
• ISBN-10: 0-9968461-0-7 / 0996846107
• ISBN-13: 978-0-9968461-0-3 / 9780996846103