Message from Nam by Danielle Steel Read Free Book Online Page B

restaurants near school, the hangouts where all the kids went, the action on Telegraph Avenue, and he commented more than once on her accent and said he liked it. When they reached the campus, he pointed to a collection of tables at the corner of Telegraph and Bancroft, and explained that they were organized to support various causes. There were signs everywhere for SNCC, for CORE, peace symbols, and there was a huge cardboard sign propped up heralding “Campus Women for Peace.” And she was suddenly excited just being there. Just breathing the air there excited her, and reassured her that she had done the right thing in coming. She could hardly wait to get out and look around, start meeting people, and go to her classes.
    She already knew the name of the hall where she would live, and the driver took her right there, and shook her hand and wished her luck before he left her. Everyone seemed to be friendly and open here. No one cared if you were black or white, rich or poor, Junior League or a bum, northern or southern, all the labels and distinctions she was so fed up with after growing up in Savannah among her mother’s friends, to whom it meant everything if your grandfather or great-grand-father had fought in the Civil War, and whether or not you had owned a plantation and slaves. It was like living plunged in the past, a past she abhorred and wanted no part of.
    The room she’d been assigned was on the second floor, way at the end of a long hall. In fact, it turned out to be the very last room, and it turned out to be a “quad,” two bedrooms joined by a sitting room, with two girls assigned to each bedroom. There was a brown tweed couch in the middle of the sitting room, with multicolored patches sewn all over it to cover the abuses of earlier tenants. There were posters everywhere, a few battered pieces of furniture, and an orange rug, with an avocado-green vinyl armchair. For a moment, Paxton stopped as she surveyed the room. It was far from lovely, and a far cry from the quiet elegance of her mother’s home in Savannah. But on the other hand, this was a small price to pay for freedom.
    The bedroom she had been assigned to was smaller and more austere. It was a tiny room with two single metal cots, a desk, two chests of drawers and a straight-backed chair, and a closet barely big enough to put a broom in. They would have to be good friends to live in a room like that, but she hoped that she was about to meet three new people who would rapidly become soul mates. She had quickly glimpsed three suitcases stacked up in the other room, and a moment later, when she walked back into the sitting room again, wondering what they could do to it to make it a little less brutally ugly, she saw that one of her roommates was there. She was a beautiful girl with long legs, and creamy coffee-colored skin, and she was quick to tell Paxton that she was from Alabama, and her name was Yvonne Gilbert.
    “Hi.” Paxton smiled warmly at her. She was a striking looking girl, and she had bright, alert, almost jet-black eyes, and she wore her hair in an impressive Afro. “I’m Paxton Andrews.” But somehow she hesitated when it came to telling the girl where she was from. But the girl had heard it anyway.
    “North Carolina?”
    “Georgia. Savannah.” Paxxie smiled easily, but Yvonne looked instantly wary.
    “Great. Just what I needed. A cracker. What do they want us to do, re-fight the Civil War? Someone in central casting has a hell of a sense of humor.” She looked deeply annoyed and Paxton continued to treat it lightly.
    “Don’t worry about it. I’m on your side.”
    “Yeah. I bet. I can hardly wait to see where the others are from. How about Mississippi and Tennessee? Maybe you can start up a chapter of the Daughters of the Civil War, this oughtta be real fun, honey. I’m just gonna love roomin’ with y’all.” She exaggerated her own drawl with a vicious glance at Paxxie, and then strode into her own room and