Chapter 51: Passing a Test

Tuesday, November 16, 1982

We worked extra-hard all evening in Study Group to make up for Sunday.

Actually ... that’s not quite true. It’s mostly true, but not entirely. The big exception? Discussing Winter Formal. Everyone was going, and the girls decided it was time to talk dresses, plus what the guys should wear. And whether we’d try anything like getting hotel rooms (consensus: hell, no. Too soon!).

No one believed Lizzie and Janet would make this their big event. They’d wait until they were both eighteen, for one thing. Lizzie’s parents obviously wouldn’t care, and I didn’t think Janet’s would, either, but eighteen changed things. Of course, it changed things multiple ways — their physical relationship would be officially a violation of state law, after all, and since they’d no longer be juveniles, someone might actually charge them with something. Very unlikely, but technically possible. Even then, simply going to a dance isn’t ‘homosexual conduct’ under that law.

So, the question continued to be: would they go to Prom together? If so, would Riggs or anyone else try to block it? Would they let Riggs know in advance? Just how crazy would things get? Mel’s little rule changes made it so they could simply show up unannounced and let the explosions happen as they might.

For everyone but Angie and me, that was as far as it went. Only we knew that there had been multiple Memorials in multiple timelines where nothing like that ever happened, and Lizzie just graduated without the rest of the school (excepting Debate) becoming aware of Janet’s involvement with her. This had the potential of being as big a ripple as anything else, pushing Memorial to the forefront on an issue that was extremely unsettled in the 1980s (and where there was still controversy, off and on, throughout the 2010s).

Wednesday, November 17, 1982

When we got home, two long-awaited envelopes were waiting for us. I almost opened mine, then hesitated.

Angie looked at me curiously. Then she got it.

“Jasmine?”

“Yeah. I think maybe we should open ours together, if she hasn’t opened hers yet.”

“I’m in, if you want it to be all three of us.”

“I’ll give her a call.”

I headed into my room and dialed.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Camille. Did Jasmine get any mail from Educational Testing Services?”

“She did! I’m not sure if she’s looked. Want me to call her?”

“Please.”

I heard her call, “Jasmine!” Some muffled noises came back, and then a minute later the phone was handed over.

“Steve?”

“Hey, Jas. I hear you got your PSAT results.”

“I did. I ... haven’t looked yet. You got yours?”

“I did. And Angie’s got hers, too.”

She hesitated. “Thinking of opening them together?”

“If you’d like.”

“I’m really nervous, and that might make it worse, but ... yeah. I like that idea. But I can’t wait until tomorrow.”

“Nah. We’ll drive over.”

“I’ll be waiting!”

I hung up and came out, then told Mom and Dad we’d be late for dinner because we wanted to find out our PSAT results together. They liked the idea. Of course, they were probably dying of curiosity as well. I would’ve been, if it’d been my kids.

I drove us over to Jasmine’s, holding hands with Angie.

“You know she’s going to kick ass, right?” Angie said.

“I do. And I know you are. And I know I am. And I’m still worried that I didn’t.”

“Impostor syndrome. I’m worried, too, even though we did fine a year ago.”

“It’s not just impostor syndrome, but that’s not the worst name for it.”

“We’re all going to kick ass.”

“The funny thing is, I don’t even need the scholarship. You don’t. Jas doesn’t. It’s not huge. It’s nice, and it opens the doors to other scholarships which might be a lot bigger, but by itself ... eh. We have enough money to comfortably ignore financial aid.”

“Money ... huh. Well. Interesting question. If that happened, we’d have to admit we have enough money to fund ourselves. We might anyway, since we’ll start investing. Or we might have to fill out financial disclosure forms.”

“We were never applying for need-based scholarships. It won’t matter. It might’ve when my kids were going to college, but not us.”

“So it’s just prestige.”

“Yeah. Memorial always has a bunch. I want as many of our friends as possible to be on that list.”

“Me, too.”

We pulled up to Jasmine’s, parked, and headed in. She met me with a hug — a pretty tight one. Then Angie got one. Camille watched from the living room, smiling.

We settled at the dining room table.

“Okay,” Jasmine said. “One at a time? Or all together?”

“All together,” Angie said.

I nodded. “Sounds good.”

Jasmine took a deep breath. “Yeah. To me, too.”

I reached over and squeezed her hand. “First: you’re going to kick ass. Second: it’s a number, and you’re a lot more than a number.”

She smiled, if nervously. “Thanks! I mean it ... thanks. That means a lot.”

We each carefully tore open our envelopes, and slid the papers out. I spotted the number on mine and felt relieved. I’d done exactly what I did my first time through. Far more than enough.

Jasmine squeaked when she got a look at her number. “Holy shit!”

Angie let out a similar squeak. “Okay, we said it’d be good, but ... damn.”

We passed ours around. I’d gotten a 237, which means missing exactly one question on each section. Jas had a 232, and Ang had a 233, the difference being one math question.

We were all comfortably over the state National Merit cutoff (which had remained about the same for years). We were semi-finalists. Still a lot of ground to cover — applications, recommendations, a matching SAT score — but we were in the running. No surprise there, really. Memorial often had ten percent or more of a graduating class with National Merit Scholarships, and we were high achievers at Memorial.

I gave Jasmine a hug as she started to sniffle. “I ... I know ... you always believed in me. Just ... this is ... it’s...”

“It’s what I always knew you would do,” I said. “Now it’s there in black and white.”

She sniffled some more. “I can really do it. I can! I always thought I could ... and I always doubted it, like ... I’d stumble when it was time to show it.”

“Honey?”

She looked at me. “Steve?”

“Just score-wise, you’re easily in the top half-percent of Texas juniors. That’s not a fluke, or luck, or anything else. You did it, you earned it, and now everyone will know that.”

She hugged me tightly. “I love you! Just ... you never doubted, not for a minute.”

“You’re amazing. I know that. Everyone should know that.”

Angie hugged me from the other side. Her eyes weren’t dry, either, but I couldn’t acknowledge her feelings as easily as Jasmine’s.

“You, too, sis. You’re amazing, and everyone should know that.”

“T ... thanks, bro. It’s a little ... overwhelming. I knew I could. It’s still different, you know ... holding this piece of paper.”

Camille peeked around the corner.

“Good news, I hope?”

“We’re all semi-finalists, Mama!” Jasmine said, bouncing out of her chair and giving Camille a big hug. “Steve’s got the highest score, but...”

“But it means I got a couple more questions right, that’s it. It’s not a big difference. We’re all easily over the cut-off score.”

“Congratulations!” Camille said, grinning. “I knew you could all do it.”

“We’ll have to compare notes with all of our friends!” Jasmine said. “I bet a lot of them will be qualified, too!”

“I think so,” I said. “Memorial had, what ... fifty or more ... semi-finalists last year? And almost that many finalists. People don’t tend to drop off once they qualify, not at Memorial at least.”

“I’m so happy for all of you!” Camille went around, giving us hugs and kisses on the cheek. I hugged right back, of course.

“We’d love to stay...” Angie said.

“But you need to tell your parents the good news. I understand! Parents love that sort of thing,” Camille said, giving Jasmine a big grin. “Thank you for coming over here and sharing.”

“Wouldn’t have missed it,” I said. “One of those things that are better shared.”

I don’t think anyone missed that I meant ‘With those you love’ and the not-entirely-subtle implication that sharing it with Jasmine was bigger than sharing it with my parents. I didn’t know how much Camille knew about how much it mattered, what with Blue messing with Jasmine’s self-image.

Jasmine and I gave each other a very warm kiss. Then Angie gave Jasmine a not-much-less-warm kiss. Camille was obviously well aware of those, and not in the least surprised that I was, too.

“See you tomorrow, honey,” I said. “I love you very much.”

“Love you, too! Very much!”

Before more kissing broke out, we made our escape and headed home.

“I am so glad that turned out the way it did,” Angie said.

“Oh, me, too,” I said. “I knew she could do it. I was nearly certain that she would do it. And it’ll settle Blue’s argument once and for all.”

“Think Blue will concede?”

“Not sure she has any option, really. She’s clearly just wrong, plus she’s a thousand miles away. Jas can plot her own course.”

“She can, but you’ll plot your course together,” Angie said.

“Okay, fine, I agree. You know what I meant.”

“I do, and I’m glad you put it that way. I’m actually glad Blue stirred up the trouble, now that it’s hopefully over. Like you said, it’s better that things were tested and fixed. And now Jasmine can deal with her own issues. Her own non-solipsist non-time-traveler impostor syndrome.”

I nodded. “Which I should probably talk to her about, directly, now that we’re past the PSAT. If she’d somehow bombed on it, talking about impostor syndrome would’ve made things worse. The last thing you need is to be thinking ‘Sooner or later the universe is going to expose me as a fraud’ when you get some awful test score that looks like you’re a fraud.”

“Yeah, definitely.” She hesitated. “You do know that I was terrified of that? Of getting that signal that maybe I was a fraud?”

“You’re about the farthest thing from a fraud I can imagine,” I said.

“Nah. Connie is the farthest thing from a fraud. Or maybe Jessica. I’m not sure which of them is smarter. Connie will be valedictorian, but Jess might actually be smarter.”

“Yeah. I can see that. I mean, both sides. I can’t see Connie doing anything less. She’ll have to sweat it until the last second, because it’s Memorial and there’s always a kid a hundredth of a grade point behind, but she’s got the lead now, and she won’t let up.”