The Stars in the Sky

Chapter 1: First Impressions

God, I really had to pee.

There were only ten more minutes to go until I got there. Come on, come on, come on. I willed my car to go faster. I was out in the middle of nowhere and I really did not want to have to stop and find a bush. I squeezed my thighs together. Since it was a hot June day, and I was wearing denim short-shorts, this just made me sticky and sweaty. Not helping.

The "time of arrival" on my GPS app ticked down to nine more minutes.

I put my foot on the gas pedal. My car was an old Mercedes sedan that had been converted to bio-diesel, so I should probably call it the "accelerator" rather than the "gas pedal." I was trying to cut down on my use of fossil fuels. My car was powered by leftover vegetable oil from Chinese restaurants. My car proudly advertised its alternative fuel source on the back window in big green lettering. It always smelled like kitchen grease wherever I went, but I would do anything for the environment.

This morning, before I had left my apartment for the summer, with my car packed up for this next big adventure, I stopped by the new Santa Barbara location of Southwinds coffee, the local coffee chain owned by the boyfriend of my best friend, Amelia Crowley. Amelia's fiance, Ryan Fielding, happened to be working there when I stopped in, so I chatted with him while they made me the most amazing coffee. He knew that I was vegan, therefore I didn't even need to say that my coffee needed to have non-GMO soy milk and organic coffee beans. He just checked the boxes and handed it to the barista and then smiled at me and asked me about my summer internship.

Boy, he was cute. Yes, he was my best friend's surfer hottie, and they were totally devoted to each other, and I would never get in the way of that, but I had eyes and it was impossible not to stare. The fact that I was looking at him, however, probably meant that I seriously needed to get laid.

I shouldn't have ordered the ginormous soy latte, though.

Seven minutes to go. Now I was bouncing along a dirt road. The ruts and ribs in the road did nothing good for my bladder.

God, I didn't know if I could make it. I felt like a little kid. The bushes on the side of the road were starting to look mighty tempting.

I was driving to Headlands Ranch, my temporary home and job site, for the summer. For the past year, I had been going to school at the University of California at Santa Barbara, getting an advanced degree in Counseling Psychology. I became interested in counseling, honestly, after being with Amelia when she went through her suicidal depression. I felt hamstrung by not knowing what to do to help her. So, I went back to school, keeping my job as a preschool teacher at a progressive school during the day, and going to school at night. Although I wasn't sure where I wanted to end up, either setting up my own practice, or working somewhere, I knew that I wanted to help disadvantaged or special needs youth.

Hence, my interest in a counseling job at Headlands.

I had found Headlands Ranch on the internet after I saw an internship posting on Craigslist. From its website, I learned that Headlands was run by the fourth generation of an old California farming family, with William Charles Thrash, III, now in charge.

Headlands Ranch was located on California's Central Coast, about halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco, north of Santa Barbara near Santa Ynez. This was a rural part of California, where gentle, rolling hills met the Pacific Ocean. Often green with lush grass during winter rains (if we were lucky), the hills were brown in summer, with stocky, Coast Live Oak trees standing guard over row upon row of grapevines. It looked like the famous Napa Valley in parts, but it did not get as cold in winter as Napa. Besides the rolling hills, on the flatter areas, generally there were row crops, strawberries in coastal areas, colder crops like kale and cilantro more inland. Some areas had cattle grazing; being a vegan, I did not approve of their ultimate use. But the area more than made up for it with its natural beauty. Only a few scattered towns were in this area, which had an overall tiny population compared to the urban areas of California.