The Wanderings of Amy
Copyright 2002, 2004 by EC
http://www.ecgraphicarts.com
(Warnings: Adult sex, erotic discipline, public nudity)

Chapter 5 - The First Summer

Amy's time throughout the rest of the summer was divided between her classes 
and Suzanne' photo sessions. Suzanne took Amy all over the Mid-west for photo 
shoots on weekends and whenever she had a break in her schedule during the 
week. They hit all of the Great Lakes, and traveled as far as Minnesota to the west 
and Pennsylvania to the east. Amy saw a huge variety of natural locations during 
the trips and was amazed at Suzanne's knowledge of the region. There were 
always side trips to historical locations, and of course, to art museums and 
galleries. The summer trips opened the world up to Amy in a way she could never 
have imagined the year before.

It was during the trips in July and August that Amy began to realize how good a 
friend Suzanne really was. For the first time in her life Amy had found a person 
she could trust. Unlike Courtney, it would never cross Suzanne's mind to have 
Amy do something that would risk injury or embarrassment. She would never do 
anything to exploit Amy for her own pleasure or entertainment. She found it a 
relief to have a friend who would never dare her to do something just for fun.

Amy knew that Suzanne was genuinely concerned about her well-being. In many 
ways Suzanne was strict with Amy, but always in ways that benefited her. Amy 
did well in her classes because of Suzanne. She was in excellent physical shape 
because of Suzanne. Her finances were in order because of Suzanne. She was neat 
and well organized because of Suzanne. Amy's character was changing. No longer 
did she feel that she was out of control and one step away from being back on the 
street.

Suzanne only turned tyrant during a photo shoot. Even as Suzanne's harsh voice 
snapped at her from behind her camera, Amy realized it was only because her 
friend knew what was needed for the photos to be successful. Modeling for 
Suzanne had become Amy's job, and Suzanne expected top performance. 
However, as soon as the camera went back into its bag, the Suzanne that Amy 
loved and trusted was always there for her.

Amy usually enjoyed her time Suzanne during the modeling sessions. 
Increasingly she enjoyed the thrill of the air and sun on her body when outdoors, 
the cool breeze blowing between her legs and on her bottom. It thrilled her to be 
naked, taking orders, and submitting to her friend's commands. Amy loved the 
feel of Suzanne's self-assuredness during the shoots. Afterwards it thrilled Amy to 
see herself in galleries and photo magazines.

Towards the end of the summer Suzanne took a picture of Amy kneeling on a 
white surface in a studio, wearing a gardening hat and holding a huge bouquet of 
flowers in front of her. From the angle of the picture it was hard to tell whether 
Amy was naked or not. This picture became the theme image for a fall gardening 
festival and appeared in newspapers all over Chicago. So was the pretty model 
behind the bouquet naked? Only Amy and Suzanne knew for sure.

After several months Amy became as proficient in working with Suzanne's lab 
equipment as Suzanne herself. Amy's help freed Suzanne from many of the more 
mundane tasks of her profession. Amy became confident in the darkroom. By the 
end of the summer she easily could have taken a job at a photo lab. When Amy 
was not modeling for Suzanne, for example when Suzanne was taking landscape 
pictures, Amy was there with the cameras, cleaning them, changing lenses and 
film, taking them out of their cases and putting them away as needed. Suzanne 
came to rely on Amy as her assistant. Amy felt a deep sense of satisfaction 
knowing that she had become an important help in Suzanne's life and career, and 
that her friend relied on her.

Suzanne was as interested in traveling and showing things to Amy as much as she 
was in taking pictures of her. After a while Amy suspected that Suzanne partly 
was using the summer photo shoots as an excuse to take trips with a close 
traveling companion. It dawned on Amy that in reality Suzanne was rather lonely, 
especially following her last break-up during the sports book photo shoot. Amy 
did not complain. She did not want to sit at home during the summer. Nor was 
there any way that Amy was ready to take on another relationship with a 
boyfriend at that point in her life. She needed to find direction own life first, to 
determine her own needs before having to worry about meeting someone else's.

Suzanne and Amy never lacked for topics to discuss during their trips, given that 
their life experiences had been so different up until the time they started living 
together. Each came from a world so remote to the other that under any other 
circumstances they would never have become friends. Just a year ago Amy would 
have dismissed Suzanne as an art nerd, and Suzanne would have seen nothing but 
a shallow party girl in Amy. However, they had entered each other's lives in such 
a way that they could take an interest in each other. Whenever one of them talked 
about herself and her past, the other always learned something new, not about just 
her friend, but about life in general.

During their travels it was inevitable that Suzanne and Amy would talk about 
their relationships with guys. Neither had much experience with stable 
relationships, but for totally different reasons.

----------

Suzanne's reasons for not having had a stable relationship differed now than they 
did when she was in high school. In high school she had largely kept to herself 
due to problems she was having at home. She hinted to Amy that she had serious 
problems with her father while in school, but did not tell her what those problems 
had been. She did tell Amy that the few times she dated in high school she had 
gone to great lengths to not let her father know about it.

Suzanne had another problem in high school that kept her alone. Her personality 
was too serious for most of her classmates to be interested in her. At an early age 
she became interested in photography. As Amy was well aware from her 
numerous trips with her friend and the countless hours spent in the photo lab, 
pointing the camera was only a small part of being a photographer. Suzanne took 
her work as the high school year photographer way too seriously. The 
commitment that Suzanne's photos demanded prevented her from doing much 
else during her free time. The result of Suzanne's dedication was a yearbook that 
received commendations for three years. However, the other result was that 
everyone thought of Suzanne as "the school photographer" instead of thinking of 
Suzanne as a human being with emotional needs and a desire for companionship.

Suzanne's solitude fed upon itself. Her pursuits were quiet ones. She listened to 
instrumental music and became hooked on New Age and classical. She could not 
stand the rap and heavy metal that her classmates enjoyed. Sports, cheerleading, 
and other school activities did not interest her, unless there was an opportunity to 
take pictures. She retreated into her studies, invariably doing well in all her 
classes and being liked by her teachers. She never caused any problems in school, 
never raised her voice, never drank or smoked. The only movies she was 
interested in were foreign ones. She turned her nose up at the Hollywood pop 
culture that so captivated everyone else her age.

In high school Suzanne only had one serious boyfriend, during the second half of 
her junior year. He was a member of the marching band, and shared Suzanne's 
interest in music. He did not find it strange that Suzanne did not want her father to 
know about him, because he did not get along with his parents either. For the first 
time in her life Suzanne was able to open up to another person.

Suzanne's brief interlude of happiness only lasted about 5 months. Her boyfriend 
was a senior. He graduated, and not knowing what to do with his life, went in the 
Army. He chose a specialty that required a lengthy stint of hard training in Ft 
Benning, Georgia, following completion of basic training. After six months of 
training his unit was mobilized, and he departed immediately overseas. Suzanne 
did not see him after that. Suzanne spent her entire senior year writing him and 
waiting for him to come back. He never did. Right after Suzanne graduated from 
high school, she learned that he had been killed overseas in a training accident. In 
spite of the loss, Suzanne moved on in her life. She already had endured many 
unpleasant experiences and her boyfriend's death was just one more.

Suzanne's time in college was not much happier as far as personal relationships 
were concerned. She entered the university thinking that, being with other art 
majors, she would have an easy time finding someone who shared her interests. 
Most certainly she did, mixing with other students who also, for the most part, 
had not fit in their high schools. What Suzanne had not anticipated was how self-
centered most of her art classmates were. Suzanne quickly became sick of her 
peers who thought they were the next Van Gogh or the next Mapplethorpe, when 
it was obvious their talent was mediocre at best. If there was one thing Suzanne 
could not stand, it was a person on an ego trip.

Suzanne's first boyfriend in college gave her a rude shock. A few weeks after they 
started going out he started asking her for loans. Suzanne had no money herself 
and her boyfriend knew that. Still, he insisted and finally she gave him what little 
she had to live on that week. Within days he started demanding more.

Suzanne had nothing more to give him. She was wondering herself where she 
would get enough to pay her food for the rest of the week. She lost her temper and 
broke off the relationship. For several months afterwards her ex-boyfriend stalked 
her, until finally she obtained a restraining order.

Unlike Amy, Suzanne was the sort of person who quickly learned from her 
mistakes. She learned to quickly size up potential partners, looking for signs of 
financial dependency, unrealistic expectations from life, and abusive 
personalities. She learned, the hard way, that finding a reliable partner in the art 
department would be much more difficult than she had anticipated upon entering 
college.

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Amy's reason for never having a stable relationship came down to a single word, 
Courtney.

At this point in her life Amy still adamantly defended Courtney. However, 
Suzanne picked up enough hints in her conversations with Amy to indicate that 
Amy was starting to recognize some of Courtney's faults. Suzanne did not like 
Courtney from Amy's description of her. However, Suzanne said nothing to Amy 
about her opinions about Courtney, wanting to give Amy time to question her past 
at her own pace. Amy was just beginning to realize that perhaps Courtney had not 
been such a great influence in her life. She was not ready to admit that out loud, 
not to Suzanne or to anyone else.

Deep down inside Amy realized that Courtney had bullied her mercilessly in 
school through peer pressure and by convincing Amy that only what Courtney 
approved of could be considered "cool". Amy began to realize that there had been 
many lost opportunities during her high school years due to Courtney's influence 
over her. This was especially true when it came to boyfriends. It was true with 
everything else in Amy's life as well, her classes, her relationship with her father, 
even her health.

Amy met Courtney in middle school the year that her mother died from cancer. 
Amy needed someone to look up to at the time and saw that in her classmate. 
Courtney seemed so self-confident, so arrogant to the guys, so sure that she knew 
how to be cool. Courtney had a comeback for anything anyone said to her. Amy 
loved the fact that no one could insult Courtney without receiving a sarcastic 
response that made everyone listening squirm. Some of Amy's teachers seemed 
almost afraid of her new friend. Amy stuck with Courtney, first out of insecurity, 
then out of not knowing anything else. Amy learned to talk with the same 
sarcastic in-your-face manner as Courtney, learned to use the same come-backs 
whenever anyone tried to insult her, learned to dress to draw guys' attention to her 
adolescent body.

Courtney loved living on the edge. She was what some people would call an 
adrenaline junkie, long before she became a junkie of much more dangerous 
substances. Courtney drank heavily. Later in high school she loved drag-racing. 
She tried anything at parties being passed around. Any new substance she 
immediately pressed on Amy, which was part of the reason why at first Amy was 
so surprised that Courtney would not let her try heroin.

Throughout high school the last thing Courtney wanted was calm in her life. She 
was impatient and became bored very easily. She was repelled by safe, stable 
guys. She gravitated towards the ones who led to trouble and saw to it that Amy 
did the same.

As her 18th birthday approached, Courtney realized that the final restraint on her 
having fun as she defined it was about to come to an end. Upon turning 18 she 
could take off and do whatever she wanted. All she needed was money, and 
during her final month in high school she plotted how to finance her upcoming 
road-trip from her mother's bank account. By the time they left, Amy was so 
conditioned to doing anything Courtney described as "fun" or "cool" that the idea 
of not taking off with her friend never crossed her mind.

----------

Amy and Suzanne had dinner with Robert several times over the summer. 
Suzanne seemed to trust Robert for legal advice and always showed him any 
contract she needed to sign. Robert spent hours with Suzanne and gave her 
hundreds of dollars worth of legal advice for free. Amy reflected that it seemed 
strange that Suzanne went to Robert for advice when Suzanne's own father was a 
lawyer and just as competent at reviewing contracts.

It was clear that Robert liked Suzanne. He seemed to enjoy talking to her. At first 
most of their conversation concentrated on how to study contracts to tell the 
difference between a good contract and a bad one. Suzanne had to tell Robert 
quite a bit about her work to give Robert an idea about her legal needs. Robert 
increasingly seemed to take interest in Suzanne's photography and her life in 
general as the summer ended and the fall semester started.

Every so often Amy noticed Robert looking at Suzanne with a longing in his 
expression. It was true that Suzanne had a sexiness about her, that she was mature 
for her age, and had a quiet, dignified manner of carrying herself. It was true that 
Robert had now gone a year alone since Tricia had died. However it was also true 
that Robert and Suzanne had absolutely nothing in common. Amy realized that 
nothing could ever come of Robert's thoughts about Suzanne, whatever they 
happened to be. Even so, Amy was jealous that Robert was looking at Suzanne 
instead of at her.

Robert was pleased about the influence that Suzanne had on Amy's life. He was 
hugely relieved at the thought of no longer having to act as a surrogate parent to a 
girl who had a crush on him. Being Amy's roommate, Suzanne had taken over 
that role.

----------

Amy felt much more relaxed as she started the fall semester. She no longer felt so 
tense about doing well in her classes. She started relaxing more and more. 
Although Suzanne was every bit as adamant about forcing Amy out of the 
apartment in time to make her classes as she had been during the spring, she could 
not stand over Amy and force her to keep track of her assignments. As the fall 
semester progressed Amy started to let her guard down. By the end of October 
Amy's attitude would land her into serious trouble with one of her professors.

