Young Again
Copyright© 2018 by Edward Douglass Patterson
Chapter 12: Lab Partners
Ash was surprised when she realized Jenny was waiting outside of the Physics classroom for her.
“Ash, would you be my lab partner? There’s a guy who I want to avoid as a partner.”
“Jenny, that’s a great idea. Thank you for asking me.” She realized there were many reasons why having Jenny as her lab partner would be useful.
Sarah was learning that selection of a chemistry lab partner when you were a pretty sophomore girl in a class with older students was a problem she hadn’t anticipated. She had three students arguing over who should be her lab partner. She was expecting a fight might break out and was mentally giving odds on the girl being the one to start it.
“Hi, you’re Jim’s sister, Sarah.” She turned around as the arguing stopped. “Would you be my lab partner? Oh, I’m Bert Wilson.”
She knew who he was. He had been the starting quarterback at the end of last year. His passes to her brother had been the only reason Woodside had won the last game after losing all the others. Jimmy had said he was kind of a loner even with him being the starting quarterback again this year.
“Yes, I would like that. Thank you for asking me.” Sarah smiled at him, not that she was looking for him to ask her out but because he had rescued her from an unpleasant situation. He took the seat next to her at the lab table.
As the teacher talked about the rules for the lab, the different equipment, and where things were located, Sarah noticed the other students glancing over at her and Bert throughout the rest of the class period. Some seemed envious while others were trying to size her up. Not until the end of class did she realize some of the looks of envy were directed at Bert for having her as a lab partner.
As she stood up to leave, Bert turned to her. “We should exchange phone numbers. Mine is.” Sarah touched her iPhone to his and hit an icon on her phone.
“There we just traded phone numbers.” Sarah saw his startled look turn into a smile.
“That’s a real handy app. Is it new? I haven’t seen anything like it mentioned.”
“No, Ash did that one. I guess we should really submit some of our apps for sale.” They started walking towards the door.
“Who’s Ash? Do the two of you work together on the apps?”
“Ash is my friend Ashley Sawyer.” She was surprised at the smile when he realized Ash was a girl. “We each do our own apps but then we reverse engineer each other’s app and critique them. It’s kind of a game we do.”
“I have done a couple of apps. Would you look at them and offer some suggestions?”
“We can trade some tomorrow before or after class. Thanks again for asking me to be your lab partner.” Sarah headed off to Mrs. Purcell’s English class. She looked at her phone and the message Ash had just sent. ‘Jenny asked to be my lab partner.’ It ended in a smiley face. She replied ‘Bert Wilson asked to be my lab partner’ but refrained from adding anything more. She was close to Mrs. Purcell’s classroom and saw Ash showing her message to Jenny and her brother. Jimmy raised an eyebrow and smiled but none of them commented. They went in and took their seats.
Lunch found only Sarah sitting with the other cheerleaders who didn’t have boyfriends with the same lunch period. She had been tempted to go sit with Bert who she saw sitting alone, but had just smiled at him as she chatted with Leslie on the way to their table.
Ash had taken her lunch tray and sat beside Jimmy. He and Jenny were sitting with Maria and Benny. After she was introduced to Benny, she gave her apology to Benny and Maria.
“Benny, Maria. I am sorry the dinner interfered with your plans last week. Maria let me know if I cause a conflict in the future. There weren’t too many options for last week, even though Jimmy skipped out. We’re hiring Jimmy and Jenny to do research.” She saw Maria’s surprise. “We need to find any references to similar items or anything else which gives a hint into what may have happened. Maria, do you think Benny might be able to help us?”
“You want me to do research for a high-tech company?” Maria’s hand on his arm stopped him from commenting further. She was considering how Benny’s interests and abilities might be useful.
“Benny is very interested in old legends. His band is having a hard time finding places to play since their songs are about those legends. They’re good, but even a coffee house isn’t the right place, though they are drawing a number of students in to listen during the week. If he knew what we had, then he might be a good person to look for references in old songs or legends, but I’m thinking more about how we may attract those who have knowledge or may even have similar objects. He may be able to write some songs which would do that for us.”
“Oh, I certainly made the right choice for an assistant.” She saw Maria blushing but turned her attention to Benny. “Do we have you curious enough to spend this evening learning more? Jimmy and Jenny will be there. Maria could bring you. You would learn about what we have and what we have learned in the last few days. Sarah and I have our martial art class tonight, so we won’t be there.” She saw he had some more questions, but in the middle of the lunchroom was not the place to ask them. “You can learn more tonight. I’ll pay fifteen dollars an hour, even if you decide not to take the job.”
“I’ll be there. I was curious before about why you hired Maria. She wouldn’t tell me anything, but she was very excited, and I could tell she was having a hard time not telling me. Yes, I have a lot of questions, but I’ll hold off until this evening. I have been looking for a job, and there’s not much out there except fast food or sales jobs at the mall. Being able to work with Maria will be good.”
“It’ll be a little different from that. The three of you are working under Maria’s direction. We will decide what things have to be looked into. Maria will hand out assignments on who will research which items. She will need to know when you have time to do the work and when you have something else to do. Also, there may be things I tell her she won’t tell you.” Ash started to say something but shook her head. “I don’t need to get in trouble for cussing. I don’t like keeping secrets, especially from friends.” She started attacking her lunch. It was obvious to the others she wouldn’t be saying anything more.
Jimmy realized some of what they had talked about had been overheard by others sitting nearby. He wondered at what rumors were going to be going around the school in the next few days. He then realized Ash had deliberately talked to them where others would overhear.
Sarah and Ash entered their robotics classroom. This class was the one they expected to be the most challenging. The challenge wasn’t the technical difficulty but their plan to head up Woodside’s robotics team. They were going to have to master the new material quickly so they would be selected by the other students to lead the team. Ms. Wainwright would have the final say, but she had told them she only wanted to make sure the leads had the ability to do the work.
Ms. Wainwright stopped the class early. “I gave you the permission slips for joining the robotics team yesterday, but I learned just before class that the school district didn’t get the funding needed to have teams at each school. We will combine with Menlo-Atherton and Sequoia to form one team.”
“Ms. Wainwright, I understood the robotics teams were to be funded by donations from companies in the area. Can you explain what happened?” Ashley knew MSI was supposed to be one of the companies donating.
“You may have heard Rusti shut down. They were our biggest donor. MSI was also supposed to be donating, but I haven’t been able to get in contact with Mrs. Sumner.”
Ashley’s face went white when she heard her aunt’s name.
“Kathy Sumner died in the plane crash which took most of Ashley’s family.” Sarah looked over at Ash. “My father is a vice president at MSI. May I have a few minutes in the hall to make a phone call? I think we can get the funding issue straightened out. We may be able to get MSI to cover the amount Rusti was going to donate.” She saw Ash nod in agreement.
“It is a little irregular, but I’ll give you a note to make the call. Please just stand outside the door. Just call and tell your dad the problem and come back to class. It’ll take a while to get approval.”
“Oh, I have a contact who should be able to speed that up.”
Sarah went into the hall and called Len Smith. “Hi, Martha. It’s Sarah Pierce. Ash and I have a problem we need Len to straighten out. Oh, that’s great. My second call was to be to Mark’s cell phone if I couldn’t talk to Len. Thank you.” She waited while Martha Pearlman, Len’s secretary, let him know about her call. “Hi, Len. Can you switch to speaker? I want Mark to know about this also. Hi, Mark. Ash and I were in our robotics class when we found out that there were problems with two of the corporate sponsors for the robotic teams for the school district. Rusti shutting down cost them the biggest donor. Yes, Mark, that’s what Ash and I were thinking, but it turns out they were having problems with their contacting their contact at MSI. It was Aunt Kathy. Yes, it hit Ash hard also. She was sitting in the middle of the class. Mark, I just forwarded Ms. Wainwright’s contact information to your cell phone. If you or someone at MSI can contact her about donating, it will be a big help. Yes, Ash and I were really looking forward to being on the robotic team. She agreed with the idea of covering the RUSTI donation. I need to get back to class and make sure she’s OK. Thanks.”
Sarah returned to class.
“Were you able to get through?” Ms. Wainwright stopped the demonstration she was giving when Sarah entered the room.
“Yes, they’ll be contacting you about supporting the robotics teams.”
“Let me give you my email address and phone number.” Ms. Wainwright’s phone rang. She looked at the caller ID. ‘Len Smith, CEO, MSI’ and a phone number showed on the display. “How did they get my phone number?”
“Denise Wainwright. Yes, Sarah said someone would be calling. You will cover the costs of the robotic teams. You mean what RUSTI was going to contribute as well as what MSI was going to contribute. More, we just have to have Ashley or Sarah sign off on it. What more do we need? Well, we always need advisors to help the students to understand the technology and how to utilize it. I’ll see that Ashley gets the information about the requirements for advisors. Thank you.” Ms. Wainwright turned to Sarah. “I didn’t expect such a quick response or such a generous one.”
“I am sorry about interrupting the class. I told them we were in class. Oh! No, I said we were in the middle of class when you mentioned Ashley’s Aunt Kathy. I guess they didn’t expect I was calling during class.” Sarah was embarrassed.
“You contacted the CEO of MSI directly? How did you get through?”
“MSI stands for Mark Sawyer Industries. It was founded by my grandfather. Our family owns it.” Ash realized she had to explain.
“Your family?”
“She means her and her grandfather.” One of the older girls spoke up. “Didn’t you see the reports about the plane crash and Ashley surviving? The rest of her family died. It was in all the papers and on all the news stories just over a week ago.”
“I was backpacking in Chile and just got back a few days ago.” Denise realized how her just mentioning Ashley’s Aunt must have affected her. “Ashley, I’m sorry. I forgot your connection with MSI and didn’t realize Mrs. Sumner was your Aunt.”
“That’s what I was hoping for this school year. I wanted to be just another student. I guess everyone will know about it now.”
“It’s been the talk all over the school,” John, one of the junior boys, said. “What I’m dying to find out is how you survived on the island for over a week.”
Ash laughed. “I’m not afraid to talk about that. I think you have lunch at the same time I do. Sit with me tomorrow, and I’ll tell you about it. Ms. Wainwright, I apologize for disrupting the class.”
Denise had her own questions she wanted to ask Ashley and Sarah, but she had a class to teach.
Ash, Sarah, and Cindy were warming up while Master Lee worked with a small group of black belts. They were practicing for the Chi Sao portion of the competition.
Master Lee was repeatedly correcting one of the two sparring about illegal moves. Suddenly, the guy’s opponent went down with a strike to the head.
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