Chapter 22: Digging Out

Sunday, August 22, 1982

Jasmine and I walked into Study Group holding hands. It’s not like we hadn’t been — we’d been putting on an act that at least some of them bought. Somewhat. I think.

Rita was not one of those people. No surprise there. I was amused again at our belief, way back when, that we were putting one over on her. She wasn’t Jessica, but she missed very little.

She bustled right over when she spotted us and hugged us both. Together, at the same time.

“Aren’t y’all just darling? I’m tickled pink!”

“Thanks, Rita,” Jasmine said, blushing.

“Thanks,” I echoed.

“You’re some of my favorite people. Now that Emily has her boys settled, and you two are settled, I don’t have to worry about so much for a while.”

“I’m sorry to have worried you,” Jasmine said, still a bit pink.

“Nah. You did what you had to do, I’m sure,” Rita said. “And Steve did what he had to do, and then ... you two figured it out. Which is what you both had to do.”

“Can’t argue with you on that at all,” I said.

“Me, neither,” Jasmine added.

“Go on in. I’m sure they’re expecting you.”

Walking in ... well, yeah. Probably no one had been fooled. No one made a big deal of anything, but I knew these people. If I’d thought they’d been fooled, most likely it was because I wasn’t paying much attention to anyone but Jasmine.

We settled in and got started. It was obvious that I wasn’t badly behind, but still needed work. It was also obvious that Jasmine needed more work, and needed it more desperately, too.

By the end of study group I thought we had a handle on our Monday and Tuesday tests, anyway. It was only three weeks in, so these shouldn’t be that bad. Get past those and we had Tuesday’s group for the rest, and we’d be back in the swing of things going forward.

I hoped that was right, anyway.

Monday, August 23, 1982

School returned to normal right off the bat, with Jasmine leaping into my arms and giving me a kiss that resulted in two cleared throats and a “break it up, now” from the teacher (a guy I didn’t know) watching the parking lot today. We broke it up and gave him a half-hearted ‘sorry.’ I, for one, wasn’t sorry. A trip to the office was a small price to pay for things being right with Jasmine.

Besides, I needed to keep my count of PDA warnings up. Not something I really wanted to slack off on.

I felt like my World Lit test (the only one I had today) went well. I had a few gaps, but nothing likely to be serious.

When we arrived at lunch, Jasmine was a bit more pessimistic. “World Lit sucked,” she said, after giving me a quick kiss. “How was yours?”

I shrugged. “It was okay. Not great, but not terrible.”

“I think I bombed it,” she said, sighing.

I hugged her tight. “I’m sure you didn’t...”

“I did,” she said. “Really. It’ll be okay, but ... that wasn’t good.”

“Worst case, it’s less than half of your first six weeks’ grade, honey. Plenty of time to make up for it.”

“You think so?”

“I’m sure of it.”

“Okay,” she said, smiling, and taking my hand. “Hungry! Let’s eat!”

I caught up to Jessica briefly between fifth and sixth periods, greeting her with a hug.

“Hey! Long time no see!” she said, smiling.

“Friday, if I recall correctly,” I said.

“Well, yes, but that’s three whole days. You seem happier.”

“I am. Things are ... much better.”

“Good,” she said, sighing. “I still think I was involved.”

“Let’s not talk about it here.”

She looked around. “Good idea!”

“We have something else to talk about, anyway.”

“Yeah. Um...”

“I’m free for dinner Thursday. Or Friday, if Thursday doesn’t work.” I’d already checked with Jasmine, who was back to work as my social calendar.

“Thursday should be good for me.”

“Thursday it is. Lobster?”

She giggled. “People would talk about that! Whatever works for you.”

“I’ll figure something out.”

Word had clearly gotten out. All of the usual suspects — Mikayla, Paige, Lexi, and (still slightly surprisingly) Carole — were a little warmer with their hugs today. And kisses, in Paige and Lexi’s cases. In another surprise, Penny got in on it, too.

Now that I wasn’t totally consumed with Jasmine, I realized I was screwing up my plan to compete in Humorous Interp. Specifically: I needed a cutting. After kicking myself several times for blowing ‘Argument Clinic’ on a one-tournament lark — I could’ve used it this whole year! — I’d settled on ‘The Parrot Sketch’. I’d planned on using something from ‘Holy Grail’, but I knew ‘The Parrot Sketch’ nearly well enough and it felt to me like it might play better to judges. Maybe? ‘Argument Clinic’ trumped them, but it was off the table now.

Angie was already well into memorizing the piece she’d picked. She’d opted for a cutting from ‘Alice in Wonderland’. As she’d said, it’s rich with opportunities and, if the first cutting didn’t work, she could easily pivot to something else.

Debate surprised me with greetings less restrained than I would’ve guessed. Of course, Jasmine, Mikayla, and Lexi had to greet me again, but that seemed to cue Linda and Darla to get in on the act. I was still a bit skittish about Darla, but trying my best to hide it. It was hardly Darla’s fault that I’d known a guy named Dave in another life and, since I could never explain it to her without a lot more trust than I was likely to ever have, much less a good reason to do so, I had to let myself accept Darla for herself.

Cammie whispered to me halfway through, “I’m glad you’re back. Like, really back. Now, kick it into gear, mister. We only have three weeks until we have to compete!”

“Yes, Ma’am,” I whispered back.

“Good boy.”

As class ended, Meg had a brief announcement. “Everyone! We are still waiting to finalize things with two tournaments, so the whole schedule will be out in a week — I hope! Our first tournament is set, and I’ll let you know that it’s Alief Elsik, September 10-11. I’d say to consider it a warm-up, but y’all demolished Clear Lake last year, so ... just keep up what you’re doing, my returning kids, and new kids — it’s a warm-up!”

Everyone chuckled at that. I was looking forward to seeing how we’d do this year. Elsik was pretty much the opposite of new and exotic. While I’d never been there for a tournament, it would be the same-old, same-old.

It was a bit odd that I’d never been there, thinking about it. In theory, this should be a repeat. I wondered how much this year would deviate from my first go-round, even in the basics, such as which tournaments we attended.

After seventh period I headed to the library. The school really didn’t have anything that was a great meeting room for Student Council, so they made do with the library. The school closed it for Council meetings, and we just spread out at the big round tables. In some ways, I thought it was better than having some big conference table with the President at the obvious head of the table or something. Seating like this made us more of a group of people working together.

That said: the meeting itself had some similarities to watching paint dry. Even with our group, there’s only so much that can be done to liven up the nuts and bolts of running an assembly. We skimped on Robert’s Rules (which is perfectly fine — they’re supposed to make life easier, not harder) and handled a lot of things by acclamation, but we had the committee reports, the class reports, reports on how the school was doing ... on and on. Lizzie smiled to herself a few times when someone said something particularly clunky. I figured the minutes would be all business, though.

There were highlights. Mel reported on the new Social Committee. True to form, she’d put some fairly conservative students on the committee and solicited input from some of the more ... challenging ... teachers. Mr. Hannity, for instance, was a reviewer. Mel simply had more students who weren’t conservative and more teachers willing to try new things. The deck was stacked, but we’d have the advantage of having seen the counter-arguments in advance and having some idea where we’d get rebuffed if we pushed too hard.

So far, she’d been able to tweak the rules a bit for the fall dances, clarifying that tickets were for one or two people, but that didn’t imply dating was limited to two people. I wasn’t sure what she was going to do with this. Hopefully, Lizzie and Janet would be able to go to prom. The rules, as they stood now, would support it. But, would Principal Riggs prevent it? If he didn’t, and some teacher did, would he back the students or the teacher? We might never know until — or if — it actually happened.

Barring a big change, Cammie and Mel wouldn’t be able to do the same. Cammie’s secret would have to be out — and her parents neutralized — for that to happen. Maybe possible, but I think everyone was hoping to stay under the radar. And while we might have a guy or two who’d take advantage, or girls I didn’t know, it seemed unlikely. And, Emily and the Wonder Twins were officially okay now, so keeping them within the rules seemed easy enough.

Dress code? Mel hinted at some changes to come. The bigger fight on dress code wasn’t going to be within the Social Committee, it’d be Rules Review fighting for things like colored hair being allowed. Cammie was all over that, of course. I wondered just how many people in this room knew Cammie and Mel were a couple. I was guessing a bit over half, and that was mostly because of our having so many Debate kids. Megan might not know, though. Maybe.

After all these months, I finally put a face to a name when Gina Baker, head of Fundraising, stood to give her report. She was a few inches shorter than me, with dark hair, dark eyes, and glasses. She was one of our seniors and apparently incredibly busy with ... something. I wasn’t sure anyone had ever said what else she was busy with, and it didn’t come up during her report, which involved bake sales, school spirit items, and things of that sort.