Chapter 95: Winding Down

Monday, May 17, 1982

Angie’s stretch woke me. She groaned. “Too early! Way too early!”

“I hear you, Sis. Just think of it as one of those bad tournaments.”

“Ugh! Can we skip jogging?”

“I was planning to. We both moved an awful lot this weekend.”

“That we did! I’m sore in places I didn’t know I had!” She looked at me. “Don’t you say it!”

“Wasn’t going to.”

“Well ... good. I think.” She giggled. “And that’s not true, either. Dance and Movement has me very familiar with those places. If we hadn’t taken that...”

“ ... we’d have crashed into the other dancers and wound up in a heap.”

“And if we hadn’t, sore and awkward.”

“That, too.”

She stared at me just a second. “This does not mean that I’m automatically in for your next crazy scheme.”

“I know. It’s because you’re my sister and best friend that you’re automatically in.”

“Fine,” she said, harrumphing. “You have a point.”

We went to get cleaned up, and Angie went to get dressed. In deference to Mom, we didn’t do either of those things in the same room while at home.

Mom smiled at me when I got to the kitchen. “How was the party?”

“Really good. It was at Alan Sanders’ house. I hadn’t met the Sanderses before; they’re nice. Steffie was there and enlisted Meg for backup, but pretty much we just sang show-tunes and ate snacks and talked and talked and talked.”

She chuckled. “I can’t imagine. You and Angie, talking? And those other kids? Who could believe it?”

“It is hard to imagine.”

“It was so nice meeting people I’d only heard about. We talked to Jessica a bit. I can see why it riled everyone up that you turned her down! My goodness! She seems like a nice girl, though.”

“She is,” I smiled. “She’s becoming a good friend.”

“I’m glad to hear it. As Sam says, you can never have too many friends.”

“One of the lessons I’m very glad he taught us.”

Angie popped in. “What lesson? Who taught us?”

“Dad. That you can never have too many friends.”

“That’s true!” she said, nodding.

“You all put so much work into that!” Mom said. “I hope you all loved it. We did, and everyone we’ve talked to did.”

“It’s funny. From where we are, it’s hard to see how it’s going. I thought it went great, but we’re so into things, who knows?”

Angie nodded. “I just tried to block out everything but who I was right at the moment and what I was doing next.”

“Well, it was great! It’s too bad there’s not a movie of it. Someone should have brought a camera or something.”

“It’d be nice. Maybe someday.”

Angie gave me a curious look. I nodded back, just slightly, when Mom wouldn’t see.

“I’ll let you two eat.” Mom got back to working on her grocery list. Angie and I headed out shortly afterwards.

“What were you thinking about at breakfast? About the cameras?”

“In 1997, cell phones were still pretty basic, and most people didn’t bother with video cameras all that much. Some, but it’d be just a few, off to the sides. A decade later, and then much more two decades later, cell phones worked as video cameras. So, imagine dozens of people holding up cell phones, all recording away, and everyone else trying to see around all the phones. It’s nice to have a recording, but...”

“ ... but it kinda sucks for the audience.”

“That it does. Very much.”

Jasmine met me with a hug and a kiss. “Morning, boyfriend!”

“Morning, girlfriend!”

The parking lot monitors left us alone, which is good, because the kiss broke the rules.

“Sleep well?” she grinned.

“We did. Very.”

“Jealous! So jealous!”

“One day. Hopefully sooner rather than later.”

“I’d love that!”

We headed for our lockers hand-in-hand, getting interrupted by well-wishes from friends and acquaintances along the way. As before, there was a suspiciously large number of cheerleaders amongst the well-wishers, but they did hug Jasmine as well as me, which had Jasmine quite pleased with the whole thing.

One particular cheerleader met me at my locker with a hug and a kiss. “That was great! I loved it!” She winked at Jasmine. “Also, apologies for being all over your boyfriend.”

Jasmine grinned. “No offense taken!”

She dropped the hug, but then grinned and hugged Jasmine. “Thanks, and you, too. You were amazing!”

“Thanks!”

“I gotta run. See you...?”

I looked at Jasmine. “Calendar?”

She growled and playfully bopped my shoulder. “Friday, I think. We’ll do dinner, and ... something ... Saturday.”

“Friday.”

“Friday is good! I’m sure I’ll see you before then, too!”

She bounced off. I was pretty sure the wiggle of her ass was intentional.

Jasmine grinned, then leaned in and whispered, “I’m almost as surprised about Jessica hugging me as you are, I think.”

“Hard to be more surprised, though I’m much more used to it by now.”

“Go Steve!”

We parted to head to our classes with a hug and a kiss.

School was pretty much like that all day. Of course, only a few hundred students out of over sixteen hundred had seen any of the three performances. This wasn’t like the Council race. But there were enough who had that we got a lot of attention.

Debate, however, was interesting. All the Debaters had gone, except Ryan, Henry, and Doug. Ryan was obvious; the other two had begged off with various excuses. So, we started out with hugs and well-wishes from everyone. And kisses. A kiss on the cheek from Lizzie now seemed ... normal. That pointed out just how much things had changed.

Meg excused Angie and me after maybe 5 minutes, telling us Steffie wanted us. We headed over to the Drama room and were met with some cheers and hugs. It somewhat amused me that now we had two ‘families’ separated by a wall. Not quite the Berlin wall, but still...

“And here are our cross-overs, now!” Steffie said with a laugh. “Thanks for joining us!”

“Happy to!”

“Yes!”

“Before everyone gets back to doing nothing,” Steffie said, “I’ve got something serious for you. Several of you did crossover events at Northbrook.” Those of us who had, nodded.

“How many of you are planning on doing that next year?”

The six of us immediately raised our hands. Very much surprising me, so did Carole. She’d been a dilettante in Debate and now ... she was going to do Debate events? Interesting. I’d be the first to welcome her if she was. Mikayla’s hand was a bit less of a surprise; I could see her wanting to build speaking skills. Charles hesitated, then raised his hand. Shortly after he did, Bob added his.

“This is more than I expected! I think it’s a good thing; speaking skills are speaking skills. Now ... let’s suppose, for a second, you could take the competition-focused Debate class and the performance-oriented Drama class. How many of you would?”

Angie’s hand shot up. Mine followed; Jasmine’s matched mine. Of the others, Lexi, Mikayla, Sheila and Bob were in. Then Paige joined, and Sara followed right after.

“That’s nine crossovers. That’s ... a lot. More than I expected. Here’s the situation. Meg and I have been talking about it. We’d hate to make many kids pick which class they’re ‘insiders’ for. We’d been talking for a while about shifting, but ... why upset the apple cart? Everyone’s used to having these classes seventh period. But if there’s that much interest, we’re going to poll the other students and see if moving one or the other to sixth period would hurt anyone, and, if so, which class would be more affected. Don’t speak up now; we want those answers to be private.”

“Woo!” Paige exclaimed.

“Steve and Angie, would one of you head over and tell Meg the plan is a go? Then come back, please?”

“I’ll go,” Angie said.

Jasmine latched onto me as Angie was going. “Thanks!”

“Don’t mention it!” Angie said, giggling.

She was back a couple of minutes later. Minutes that Jasmine had spent smooching me. Thanks, Angie! And Steffie!

“Now that you’re back, it’s a tradition to vote on next year’s musical right away. This won’t be the final vote — we’ll want to include students who join in the fall — but it’s an important one. I’ve prepared a sheet with some suggestions; there’s a place to write in others. Since both of you are in for next year...” There was just enough of a question in her voice that Angie and I nodded quickly. “ ... you should get a vote.”

We passed them around. Then I looked down at mine. The list was about what you’d expect, if you were following musical theater. ‘Bye Bye Birdie’, ‘Guys And Dolls’, ‘Grease’, ‘The Music Man’, ‘The Sound of Music’, and a few others.

I pondered, then gave ‘The Sound of Music’ my top vote, followed by ‘Bye Bye Birdie’, then ‘Grease’, then ‘The Music Man’. Why? They’re all based around kids, more or less. And each of them has more female than male roles. I didn’t expect our gender imbalance would change all that much going into next year.

Personally, I thought ‘The Sound of Music’ had the best songs of the top few. I’d be happy with any of them, though. Next year I’d be in the mix for a lead role, after all.

The musicals I’d most like to do didn’t exist yet. No ‘Into The Woods’, no ‘Phantom of the Opera’, no ‘Cats’, no ‘Beauty And The Beast’. No ‘Chess’, one of my personal favorites, though I couldn’t see a high school attempting it. No ‘Little Shop of Horrors’, even, nor ‘The Addams Family’. Oh well; perhaps my kids would be into acting, this time. The bug had bitten my first go-round kids in elementary school, but they were over it before high school.

It’d have been awesome to suggest Gilbert & Sullivan, but I didn’t think Steffie would go for it.

Steffie collected the sheets. “Results tomorrow, about shifting times! Drop by, Angie and Steve. For now, you can hang out here or go back.”

We hung out for about five minutes. That meant me smooching Jasmine some more and Angie smooching ... Jasmine. And Lexi. And Paige. Okay, well, Lexi might have gotten me. And Paige. And Mikayla. And Sara.

We went back across to Debate before things could get out of hand, and got some stares when we appeared. Janet bounced to her feet. “Like, you totally got seven potential cross over? Dude and dudette! Righteous!”

I looked at Angie. She shrugged. “Meg asked.” Then I looked over at Janet. “We didn’t, exactly. We might have gotten three or four. The rest are from watching the first set, or because it’ll be a boost for later.”

“Still! Righteous!”

Meg chuckled. “The class vote was strongly in favor of shuffling periods if that’s what’s best. I’m not sure which of us will move, really.”

“Either way, Meg!” Cammie said. Gene and Amit were nodding along. They had the most interest in certain people being able to attend both classes.

“I’m, like, already totally dramatic, but I love it anyway,” Janet said, grinning.

We got back to ... well, okay, not work, exactly. We were pondering options for next year’s topic, but, of course, we were all going to summer programs, and that would cause things to change no matter what we did now.

Sue gave me a little smile and wave, but shook her head when I started to go over. I guessed she was still thinking about things. If it were me, I’d be doing a lot of thinking.