Variation on a Theme, Book 7
Copyright© 2026 by Grey Wolf
Chapter 32: Making Connections
Tuesday, September 23, 1986
Kip, not surprisingly, was in a great mood at Democratic Theory. He said the team was feeling great and thought they were on a roll. Still, it was one game at a time, of course. He was already good at ‘coachspeak.’
Lynn congratulated him, too. We didn’t talk much today, really. Tonight was the first meeting of this class’s version of the Privateers, and we would see how things went there.
As soon as we got home, we changed into the clothes we wanted for our yearbook photos, then took off for the photographer’s studio. We had to go in two cars, of course, but that was fine.
An hour and a half later, we were home, with just enough time to grab a quick dinner before study groups started meeting.
After we’d eaten, I checked with Angie.
“Ready, Sis?”
She smiled a bit.
“Yeah. I think so. Lynn isn’t going to throw me. And we’re agreed: she’s Lynn, right now.”
“Definitely.”
“It’ll be okay. The first time, it was just a shock.”
“I’m lucky I didn’t wind up under my desk in class. Mostly, it was because I heard it, rather than saw it. That, and we never dated,” I said.
“Yeah. Whereas, she ... she kinda left me with some unresolved issues for years.”
“But not Lynn.”
“Nope,” she said. “Lynn is innocent of that.”
I hugged her.
“Love you, little sis.”
“And I love you, big bro.”
As luck would have it, Lynn wound up being the first to arrive. ‘All is for the best,’ or was she playing a game of her own? A little paranoia was a good thing. Too much was not.
We met her at the door, since she was the first, and led her to the basement living room, allotted to the Privateers tonight. The Math Militia were meeting in the main living room, and Amy’s not-yet-named Electrical Engineering group had the second-floor sitting area. Bedrooms were always an option if we got more groups. That, or the backyard, as long as it wasn’t raining.
“Hey,” she said, sitting on the couch next to Jas. “So, what’s your story? Both of you, I mean. Why this class? Why Honors? All that.”
Jas smiled. “I’m easy. Steve showed me the class listing and I thought it looked cool. I’m hoping to get an Honors degree. Journalism isn’t the best for it, but it should work. This will help get me enough credits. Plus, it really is fun. If I do anything political, being able to speak to how and why democracies are supposed to work would be good.”
I said, “And, for me, I’m a Poly Sci minor. Business major. I’m through the required stuff, so this checks off an elective and also gets me another Honors class.”
She smiled and nodded.
“Poly Sci major here. I’m planning on law school. Hopefully, anyway! My adviser pushed me into Honors. Honestly, I didn’t even think of it. I had good grades in high school, but it’s not like my school was all that tough. It wasn’t until I got here that I realized I was actually pretty smart, just ... not challenged.”
“Whereas we went to one of the best schools in the state,” Jas said.
“That’s actually why we started the tradition of having study groups,” I said. “Memorial was tough! We needed it. After that ... well, it worked. So, now, we have a bunch of study groups, and sometimes have parties to let people mingle. Though we’re starting to get people who aren’t in any of the groups.”
“I’ve heard of Memorial, yeah,” she said.
Just then, Peter Blair arrived. We quickly found out he was from Westlake, in Austin, another very highly regarded high school, and had been going for an Honors degree from the start. Susanne Mitchell arrived next. She was from Beeville, and had been the valedictorian at her high school, narrowly avoiding a B in Calculus her last semester. That would have left her tied with the salutatorian.
Susanne and Lynn were surprised when Jas mentioned one could have straight A’s at Memorial and not be even remotely close to valedictorian. Peter just nodded, though. Westlake apparently had a similar grading system.
Kip arrived last, apologizing because practice had run long. We all forgave him, of course. He was a local kid, having gone to A&M Consolidated in College Station, and had excelled in high school. He was very modest about the whole thing, and it took some prying, plus a bit of confirmation that none of us were going to get weird about it. We all knew he had straight A’s thus far, though. That was public, as part of his being an Academic All-American last year.
Once we’d gotten to know each other better, we dug into classwork. About two hours later, as we were wrapping up, Kim asked about the study group’s name.
Jas said, “We just got in the habit of having alliterative, and often ... um... ‘combative?’ ... names over time. The Business Brigade, Engineering Ensemble, Math Militia, Journalism Jihad ... there are more. And we’re probably adding a different Engineering group, now that Amy’s moved in here. She doesn’t have a name for it yet, though.”
“Amy’s the sorta goth-looking one, right?” Susanne asked. “No offense intended! She just surprised me.”
“That’s her,” I said. “She’s not very goth, really, but that’s her look. Glad you didn’t go with the hair. Both of our engineer housemates have purple hair. Just happened that way.”
“That’s funny!” Kip said, grinning. “Which one started it?”
“Amy had hers first,” Jas said. “Mel saw it and it reminded her. She’d wanted it since... 1980?”
“1980, I think, yeah,” I said. “You couldn’t have colored hair at our high school until our senior year. It was a pretty conservative place.”
“I seem to recall you making the news for not very conservative things,” Kip said, chuckling.
“Oh, we did!” I said. “But we might have been newsworthy because it ran opposite the common perception.”
That led to a couple of ‘back in the day’ stories that didn’t surprise anyone. None of them had known Lizzie and Janet (a.k.a. ‘that couple from the prom in 1983’ to most of them) were now married, and I think all of them were glad to hear about their happy ending.
Or, at least, a happy beginning. As I’d noted back then, quoting Semisonic, ‘every new beginning is some other beginning’s end.’ Hopefully, that song would exist in this universe. It wouldn’t be devastating if it didn’t, but I would miss it.
Our first test wasn’t until next Tuesday, so we planned another meeting on Monday, September 29th.
After everyone had left, Jas said, “That was good.”
“It was.”
“What do we think about Lynn?”
“So far, so good?” I said. “It feels like things are going well, but not too well. I don’t know. My memory of how we became friends the first time is extremely hazy. I’m betting it would never have worked this time. This is working, so ... we’ll see. I have no feel at all for her relationship with Harry Thompson, but why would I? I know nearly nothing about Kip’s wife, either. She seems nice, but that’s it.”
“She does. And Harry doesn’t.”
“I think we’re all sure of that. How not-nice is a question. We’re all a little gunshy after Trish, but this is different. Or seems to be different.”
She nodded, and said, “Watch and wait. I think it might matter that she’s around more women. She might say things to me she won’t say to a guy. Or to Susan, who might tell me. And so forth.”
“It almost makes me worry. Not quite, but ... we’re pretty capable. ‘We only use our powers for good’ is the right answer, but we need to remember to watch out for our lying to ourselves about what ‘good’ is. Lynn is clearly ‘good,’ no question, if what we think is going to happen is in the cards. But ... we need to remember to watch the watchmen.”
“Definitely!”
“It’ll help when Amy’s in the loop, I think. One of the big pluses is her seeing things differently than any of us do,” I said.
“Yeah. I agree. We agree, for that matter. Amy’s unique, and that’s a good thing. It’s not like I’m not unique, or Paige. Angie and Jess are definitely unique in their own very different ways. Not to mention Cammie and Mel. But we’re all more similar to each other than we are to Amy.”
Jas clearly was seeing what I could see without the vocabulary I had. I would have relied on terms like ‘Asperger’s Syndrome’ (in use, at least) and ‘Autism Spectrum’ (not in common use yet). Temple Grandin’s book was finally out, but it wasn’t a huge bestseller and most people wouldn’t even know it existed.
Amy was likely not within what had been labeled ‘Asperger’s’, but she was clearly somewhere ‘on the spectrum.’ I remembered people wearing shirts with slogans like, ‘I’m Neurodivergent. What’s Your Superpower?’ years later. Amy’s way of looking at the world was different, and it definitely was a bit of a superpower for her. That’s what Jas was seeing, and I was sure she was right. Amy’s uniqueness would likely matter to all of us over time.
I smiled and got my thoughts back on track. “A week or two to go, probably.”
“It feels like the right time,” she said. “It wouldn’t have, but ... it’s like with me. Fate seems to have pushed us to the outcome we maybe needed all along.”
“That’s where I am right now.”
“‘All is for the best,’” she said, chuckling.
“As always!”
I finally caught up a bit with Marshall. We agreed to try for mid-week calls during the season. He confirmed my guess about the Vanderbilt game. He’d picked up a bunch of tackles, with two sacks and one forced fumble. Even though he hadn’t gotten to run with the fumble this time, it was still a big deal.
Things with Sandra were great, as expected, and the two of them were visiting Curtis and Marsha’s for dinner tomorrow. I wasn’t about to press him about things getting serious with her — for one thing, it was too early — but I was expecting it would happen. Neither of them felt like the sort of people to do something stupid and derail things.
Paige and I spent tonight together. It was good timing — we both felt like we could really use a night together — and I’d had a night with Amy much more recently than I had with Paige.
As almost always with Paige, sex came first, then talking and snuggling. That wasn’t a statement of priorities so much as focus. She was horny, I was horny, and we could do something about that. Talking was, really, the much more important part, but sex mattered. We had avoided the trap of building a relationship where sex was the thing that mattered, but it would probably always be a thing that mattered for us.
“So,” she said, once we were snuggled up and had kissed a bit. “Angie told me her version of the call with your dad. Might as well share yours.”
I chuckled, then did.
“Pretty close!” she said. “No significant differences. It’s ... I probably need a call like that with my parents, too. Just ... I mean ... I think they know that. But I’m not sure why I think they know that. Notwithstanding all of the well-known and long-acknowledged problems with ‘Old Paige,’ she was a pretty decent person. Still ... yeah. What are they going to think when my personal wealth exceeds theirs? And when that’s pretty clearly just a stepping-stone? I don’t want them worrying about me being lousy and awful, because Old Paige might have been ‘lousy and awful,’ given big money. And they might think she would have been, even more.”
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