Harvestland

TWENTY

Waverly, Iowa

Sofia saw the tall dark shape standing on the sidewalk a few houses down. He was half-hidden behind a hedge in someone's yard.

"Hey, look," she said, nudging Brittany who walked alongside her, rooting through her book bag.

"What?" Her friend looked up.

By that time the shape was gone.

"You missed him," Sofia said. "I saw this guy watching us, up behind the bush."

"One of the many guys after you?"

"Hush."

The girls eventually reached the hedge and looked behind it. There was no one there.

"Could have sworn I saw someone," Sofia said. She kept looking behind her as they continued walking.

"You've screwed so many guys," Brittany said, "now you're seeing them behind bushes."

"He was right there. And fuck you, Brittany."

"Poor Sofia."

"I've only slept with..."

"See, you can't even think of the number off the top of your head!"

"Shut up, no, it's...six. Six guys. There, you happy? That's not so bad." She didn't add all the guys she'd done other stuff with, stuff like oral and fingering.

The two friends laughed as they walked the last few blocks to their college campus.

Sofia Sutherland was a freshman at Bremer County Community College. She was tall, slender, and lithe—in her own right a beautiful young woman. She was model thin, short in the bust and long in the legs, legs that always ended in a pair of sensible heels. She had brown eyes that matched long brown hair that often fell teasingly across her face, a doll's face.

She had grown up in Waverly and hadn't managed to escape yet, as her grades had not been able to get her into anything beyond the local community college.

Waverly was small-town USA. Had more Lutheran churches than people and more cows than both. The race demographics: white. The only black person Sofia ever got to really know was walking beside her now. Brittany Ward had moved from Cedar Rapids with her family just that past summer. When they met, Brittany overheard Sofia making a comment about how white she sounded for a black girl and how she was expecting someone more ghetto. Brittany pulled her aside and told her if she wanted ghetto, here it was you ignorant white-ass Midwest beauty-queen coke-whore looking bitch, all this corn around can't even get corn-fed you skinny triflin' skank. I don't need this shit—forgive my cussing, Jesus. But I tell you, it's really something. White people never really accept me because I'm black, and then a lot of my own kind won't accept me because to them I act too white. Just take me as I am. This is me.

So Sofia smiled. She apologized. She said I like you. They were best friends by the end of orientation.

They walked the pathways of the college now, tracing the sidewalks through grass so green it hurt the eyes on a sunny day. Everywhere bustled with students going to class.

Sofia returned to the topic they had been discussing before she had noticed the man behind the hedge.

"Anyhow," she said, "you're telling me that sex is always better than food?"