Chapter 18: Halting Steps

Tuesday, August 17, 1982

Jasmine met me, as usual, with a hug and a kiss. If the hug was a little less close, the kiss a little less likely to get me sent to the office, well ... few people would notice that.

We held hands heading to class, sat together at lunch. It was all very normal, except that it wasn’t.

If you had to sum up what was different, it was three little words. She hadn’t said them and I was a bit afraid to. Once I realized what I was doing, I decided to change that.

On the way to Drama, I pulled Jasmine aside, into the little area where Angie had been assaulted long ago. She resisted, but it was too little, too late. She looked at me, obviously a bit aggrieved.

“I lo...”

She growled at me. “Don’t. Do not.”

“You know I mean it.”

She abruptly sighed. “I ... dammit ... I don’t...”

“I’ve been on eggshells for ... well, really, not that long, but it feels much too long. I’m done pretending I don’t care. That doesn’t mean I won’t give you time — of course I’ll give you time. But I care. We lost two weeks, and now some things I’d hoped to do just can’t happen. Others will have to wait a while.”

“What? We can get together anyti...”

“There was a show in Corpus that sounded good. There’s a play downtown that we’re running out of weekends to catch. There’s...”

She blinked. “You were ... planning...?”

“We talked about doing something like that.”

“We talked about a lot of things,” she said, almost growling. Then she looked at her watch. “We have to go. Steffie’s tolerant, but we could still get in trouble.”

“Fine. But we’ll talk...”

“Soon. I ... just ... soon. I can’t...”

“Fine. Soon.”

We made it to class just a minute late. Steffie gave us a look, but that was it. She went over our plans for fall. Quite a few play readings, but some musical work, too. And maybe some technical theater work for me. Who knows?

Meg had everyone cutting out articles to refresh our Extemp collections. Since that’s fairly mindless, of course people got to moving around and talking. Jaya seemed to be mixing well with the freshmen, who were in turn meshing with the sophomores. I was particularly pleased to see Bree working to mentor the new kids. She was the perfect turnaround story — dilettante to mentor in one semester.

Halfway through class, Darla came over and sat in the seat that Cammie had just vacated. She’d gone off to confer with Janet about something.

“Hey, Steve.”

“Hi, Darla.”

She smiled. “You remembered! It feels weird that we haven’t had any classes together, but I guess that’s how things work, fairly often.”

I nodded. “Over four hundred juniors. We have under two hundred in our classes in a year, and many of those are repeats.”

“Yeah. Still. Oh well — I don’t know many of the other juniors that well either. Amit, a bit, and Eric. And Linda, but most people know Linda. I mean, just by appearance. You probably know her better,” she said with a hint of a smirk.

I shook my head. “We’ve never really talked. There’s been a hug or two, but that’s about it.”

“That’s funny. Rumor has you very close with the cheerleaders,” she said, still smirking.

“I’m friends with Jessica Lively. Just friends. Oh, I suppose officially we were dating, but ... you know. Girlfriend.” I nodded towards Jasmine.

“Who doesn’t care, right?”

“As long as it’s casual dating, yes.”

“Must be interesting. I think I’d claw someone’s eyes out.”

“It’s not for everyone.”

“So ... I’m brand new. I think this sounds like fun, but I’m not sure what to try, or how.”

“Extemp or LD you just do. When Meg puts up the sign-up list in a week, just go over and put your name down. Obviously that’s not all the work,” I said with a wink, “but, in a way, it’s the hardest part. You know you’re committing yourself, but none of the fun has happened yet. For CX it’s more complicated because you have to find someone willing to put their name down with yours.”

“You waited, right?”

I nodded. “I came in mid-semester, though. That’s hard. Some people wait, some people dive in. Megan and Anne dove right in last year. Bree waited half a year, then dove into Extemp. Different strokes for different folks. Honestly, it’s not even about going out there and winning things and doing great. It’s high school, not life or death. What it’s really about is growing and learning and doing what’s right for you. None of the three might be, or one, or two, or I suppose all three, though it’s hard to split time between LD and CX. At worst, you’ll probably conquer any fears of public speaking, which will pay benefits your whole life.”

She grinned, nodding. “That’s why I signed up. I’m nervous about it. You and Cammie and Angie and some of the others were just so calm during that History exercise, buzzing around talking to everyone and rounding people up and so forth. I liked that. Plus, I love words and language, and I love to argue. My brother will tell you that, only you can’t talk to him because he’s off at UT.”

And that right there told me something. Brother, not brothers. I guess there’d never been a younger brother in the Winton family in this world.

“Meg will have us doing exhibitions and practice rounds. You’ll get a chance. Extemp is really the lowest hurdle to get started. If you can do five paragraph papers off the top of your head, and keep your outline in your head, you can Extemp enough to make it through a tournament. That’s really all there is to it — come up with a paper in thirty minutes and present it in seven. In the year and a half that I’ve been on the team, I’m certain not one person has been laughed at by their judge, so we’ve gotten rid of the worst outcome right there.”

She giggled. “That’s funny! Maybe they’re laughing inside, though.”

I shrugged. “Inside doesn’t count. You can laugh at the judge inside, too.”

“Oh! Huh! I guess I could.”

“One of the little coping mechanisms people suggest is to picture the judge in their underwear. Usually that’s silly enough to get your mind off them laughing at you.”

“At the possible cost of losing your lunch!”

“There is that.”

She spotted Cammie getting up. “Oops. I’ll give Cammie back her seat. Nice really meeting you, and not your character.”

“You, too!”

Cammie grinned as she sat down. “Another groupie.”

“Nah. She just wanted to talk to the best debater in class. Since they were all busy, she settled for me.”

Cammie giggled. “I was about to smack you! Okay, that was funny.”

“Seriously, she just has the new-student jitters. I should’ve told her we all had those, but I figure she knows it, and someone else would.”

“Eh. I’m not actually sure Angie ever had those. She’s just ... so... Angie. For that matter, Mister broke-at-his-first-tournament, you never looked jittery either.”

I shrugged. “Breaking at your first tournament isn’t unheard of. Amit qualified at his first tournament.”

“Amit is a special case, and we all know it.”

“True enough. He might give Ted a run for his money.”

“Might.”

She shifted, stretching. “Okay, back to work.”

“Sounds good to me. Only a month to go.”

“And it’ll feel like it was no time at all, when we get there.”

“Don’t I just know it.”

Jasmine gave me a hug and kiss and then left before I could even get my backpack. No surprise there. She wasn’t going to let me say anything more right now.

Angie walked out to the car with me. “So. Darla. Spill?”

“She just wanted to say hello and get to know me a little.”

“You have quite a few girls who want to ‘get to know you a little.’”

“I didn’t get the feeling that anything other than talking was on the table. Thankfully.”

“Any new dirt?”

“She has a brother. She said that he’s at UT. Timeline fits, assuming he’s been there a year. The singular was used all through there.”

“So, no little brother.”

“Doesn’t sound like it, no. I’m not surprised. I thought they’d wanted one of each. They got them, and that was that.”

Angie shrugged. “Maybe that’s the ‘right’ outcome. Maybe this is the world of right outcomes.”

“Candide again.”

“It’s always possible. We don’t have a seriously tragic counterexample. Even if we did, we could always assume that anything else would’ve been even worse.”

I nodded. “‘All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.’ Both totally valid and totally vapid.”

“As a real belief, yes. As a way of analyzing the world, not so much,” she said.

“Fine, true enough.”

“Subject switch. Jasmine.”

I shrugged. “I called her on things a bit. She wouldn’t let me say ‘I love you,’ but she didn’t try to claim I didn’t, either. I told her I wouldn’t be as passive, but wouldn’t rush her too much, either.”

“Progress, I think. I’m not sure, or I’d have pushed, but I think it’s better that you’re pushing some.”

“I surprised her. And ... that what I said was a surprise to her, surprised me.”

“Huh? That’s cryptic.”

I chuckled. “I told her — and it’s true — that I had had my eye on a show in Corpus a week ago. And that there’s a play I’d love to take her to at the Alley. I should’ve already pushed you to go. You should take Gene, maybe. Honestly, everyone in Drama should go, but I don’t have a way to push them to go see a play that I can’t have seen. Much less have seen three times on stage and twice on video.”

“What’s the play?”

“‘Greater Tuna’,” I said.

“I vaguely know that, I think. Small-town Texas, right?”

“Yeah. It’s not the best of the Tuna plays, but it is the first, and the two guys that wrote it and perform it, Joe Sears and Jaston Williams, are amazing. Seeing them this early will be wonderful. I first saw it in the late 90s.”

“Cool. Anyway, she was surprised? I thought that was always the plan.”

“Apparently, she’d convinced herself I was making it up or something. I don’t know what she was thinking.”

“Or if she was thinking,” Angie said.

“Funny, but Jasmine’s always thinking something. So’s Jessica, but ... differently.”

“Definitely. And speaking of her...?”

I shrugged. “All’s quiet. I have to schedule some time to talk to her. But I can’t do that if it’ll blow things up with Jasmine. And I’m not going to lie to Jasmine about who else I’m talking with.”

“Because that’d be the kiss of death.”

“Maybe. Possibly. And probably it should be.”

“I wonder if she’ll make it to study group.”

“Not holding my breath,” I said.

“I’m not, either. Something’s going to have to happen.”

“She almost got herself together. Whoever called — I have a guess — upset the apple cart.”

“Who’s your guess?”

“Blue.”

“Hmm. That was my guess, too.”

“I wish I knew her. Just ... correlation: Jasmine goes to California; Jasmine meets Blue; things go wrong.”

“Yeah.”

We called it. No Jasmine at Study Group. Mark and Morty were sitting with Emily between them, though, so things seemed closer to normal there.

We had classes again, so we needed to study, right? Not that we had a lot of work yet, but it’s the principle of the thing. We needed to shake the rust off and get going.

Cal and Andy were there, but towards the end of group, they both stood. Andy, who often spoke for both of them, did this time. “Y’all, we just wanted to say, this is our last regular study group for a while. We’ll drop by as much as we can, but coach wants Sunday film sessions and Tuesday practices. We’re ... look. We’re really good this year, I think.”

Cal nodded firmly. “We are. Damn good.”

“So, we’re committed until the season’s done. God help our grades,” he said, chuckling, “but this is a chance to really stand out. Coach says a bunch of us have a shot at playing in college. And, I mean, on good teams.” He nodded a little towards Cal when he said that.

Cal caught it and grinned. “Don’t let him snow you. He’s going to be really good this year. I’m very happy I don’t have to play defense against you.”

Andy grinned. “Yeah, and since I value my bones staying intact, I’m glad I don’t have to run into you.” He turned back to the group. “So, we’re sorry, and we’ll miss you, but...”

Mike grinned. “We’ll be at all the games.” He fixed a number of us with looks. “Except those of us who chose to be busy half the Fridays.”

Andy shrugged, grinning. “They’re winners, too. Can’t argue with that!”

After dinner, I remembered to check the answering machine. It’d come in handy a few times recently, after all.

When it announced that there was a message, I was hopeful. Then surprised. Then ... annoyed.