Chapter 24: Homeward Bound

Monday, August 1, 1983

We all slept late since the plan was to stay up all night. That was fine since we had little structure today.

I wound up spending much of my day in the Affirmative Design workshop, polishing two of our small arsenal of cases. Cammie and I were considering polishing four total: the Exclusionary Rule, eyewitness testimony, polygraphs, and statutory rape. I felt the strongest about the last one, but it was the least clearly topical, and that might mean we’d have to give up on it.

Cammie and I handed over all of our evidence around four-thirty, then went to find Jas, Angie, and Paige. We headed downtown and met Mikayla at Giordano’s. She’d never had Chicago-style deep dish pizza before and was an immediate convert, though she followed that by saying that she’d gain fifty pounds instead of fifteen if she ate here very often.

As with the other night, the spark was pretty much gone. I didn’t think it was any pronounced ‘I’m a grownup, while you’re still a kid’ thing. It was just that she had moved on, and it was too soon to reopen things. In a year or two, we might have a casual fling, but today it wouldn’t be casual. That was true for any of us, not just me.

In the end, while I’d cared about Mikayla, and actually moving on had been tough, she might not be someone I’d expend a lot of effort trying to maintain a friendship with. She’d be on the Christmas Card list and maybe a bit more, but Janet and Lizzie might be the only friends who’d already graduated that we’d really try to keep close ties with.

Well, them and Michael Dell, but that was different.

I checked in with Professor Berman about dinner. We planned to get together on Thursday night at their retirement community cafeteria. It sounded like fun to me.

After dinner, we walked back to campus and raided our dorms for towels, blankets, snacks, water bottles, and such. Then we headed to the beach.

There were several groups of kids already established. There was no set day for the tradition, but I knew many kids waited until the last week. Some, of course, wouldn’t do it at all. Some would be here multiple nights.

I knew I’d been out here all night one night during the last week in my first go-round. I couldn’t remember which it was. Gene would’ve been here with me, and then a bunch of random people. I could remember very little of it, just that it’d happened.

We talked, told stories and jokes, sang, and just enjoyed the night. Groups merged and shifted, and before long, we had perhaps twenty Drama kids and ten Debaters or so besides us. If we’d done things like this early in the summer, a lot of things might have been different, perhaps, though not so much for us.

I think everyone dozed at least a bit at one point or another, even with the singing and storytelling and whatnot. We didn’t have a campfire, so it was dark and easy to just drift.

When the first rays of true sunlight crossed over the horizon, we all gave a loud cheer. Someone belted out the start of the Beatles’ ‘Here Comes the Sun’, and everyone joined in, even the poor folks who couldn’t carry a tune. We continued through at least a dozen songs that referenced the sun in one way or another.

We ended in a dispute when half of the group sang ‘Fortunate Son’ and half of them tried to shout them down. I was on the side of the singers, and so were Jas, Angie, and Paige. Puns are completely fair game!

Cammie, however, gave us some sour looks. I think she was playing it up just to play it up.

Tuesday, August 2, 1983

We finally left the beach around eight, going straight to breakfast with our towels and blankets and everything else. After that, we went back to our dorms, showered, and took naps.

I was very careful to set my alarm. Wouldn’t do to miss the group picture.

I’d really had to think about the group picture. A copy of it — about three feet long and a foot tall — had hung in Angie’s bedroom (aka Mom’s junk room) from the day Mom received the photo until well after she’d died. It certainly wouldn’t go up in that room as quickly, but it would be up somewhere in the house. So would Angie’s group picture, of course.

Would Mom want flashy gold-lamé, red-tie, trilby-hat Steve up there for decades, or would she prefer toned-down (but still individual) Steve? In the end, I decided she’d want the first one, because that was who I was, now. And, while ordinarily I might annoy the Northwestern people who cared (although some of them definitely would approve, too), now I was larger-than-life, the first High School Institute kid to make national news while at their summer program. If I was larger-than-life, I could dress like it.

Appropriately (or, perhaps, inappropriately) dressed, I headed to the photo. Cammie met me, wearing an outfit I’d never seen before: red jacket, black skirt, and cream blouse. It matched well with mine.

“Looking good,” I said, smiling.

“You as well!” she said, grinning. “I bought this for this photo.”

“I guessed maybe you had.”

“Thrift store!” she said. “Mom would never have spent money on this jacket.”

“Lucky find!” I said.

“I know!” she said. “I’m wearing it to Homecoming, at least!”

Jas, Angie, and Paige came along and watched all of this. Why not? There was nothing particularly important going on in Drama, either. Their group photo would be taken tomorrow in a different location, though probably by the same photographer.

Dr. Danforth was front and center welcoming kids and helping get us organized. Several of the grad students were helping, too. They had a camera set up on a high ladder. The photographer was occasionally shouting directions to one assistant or another. She had a voice that carried, but then she’d have to in order to be able to do this job.

It took about fifteen minutes to get everyone settled. In the end, they decided to put Cammie and me in the front row, over near Dr. Danforth. I wasn’t sure if it was the flashy outfits or winning the tournament or something else, but ... well. Mom would have a far easier time finding me in this picture than in the one from my first life.

Once they’d finished, everyone dispersed. Cammie and I decided to go help with the evidence sorting effort. That was likely to need everyone’s help.

During dinner, I got the feeling that Angie had something to tell me. It was subtle, but I’d been learning to read her over the last three years.

After dinner, she stepped aside and said, “Jane left me a message, and I called her back this afternoon. Sharon sent another note.”

Just hearing her say ‘Sharon’, and not ‘the FW’ or worse, told me something about where Angie’s heart was. She hadn’t even rolled her eyes or sighed or said it in a sarcastic tone.

“What’d she say?”

“I can’t repeat the whole thing, but it was good. Jane and I are still cautious, but we believe she means what she says. Of course, I’ve been there, and meant what I said, and still backslid, but it’s progress. I think.”

“Going to write back?”

“Not until we’re home. I need time to think, and I want to talk to you about it. It’ll wait for a few weeks. This is going to be a long, slow process.”

“That works for me,” I said. “I’m happy to help. You knew that, though.”

“I did,” she said, hugging me. “There’s no way I could’ve gotten through this without you. My first reaction would’ve been to burn that first note, if it’d just been me.”

“I’m happy I’ve already helped, too,” I said, grinning.

She giggled, then hugged me again. “Okay! You’ve got enough ego.”

I just chuckled.

“I’m going to talk to Jas, too,” she said. “Now that I can, it’ll be nice to get her thoughts on things. Not that she has the experience, but — in this case — that’s an advantage. I need to do what’s right for me — the me that I am — but hearing how someone without our, or Jane’s, perspective feels might be helpful.”

“She’ll be happy to help, I’m sure,” I said.

“Me, too.”

“Love you, little sis.”

“Love you, too!”

Wednesday, August 3, 1983

Cammie and I spent most of the day sorting and filing. Boring, but we both enjoyed it, or at least being together and making progress towards the fall.

We joined the others for a movie. By a lucky coincidence, some cinema club at Northwestern was showing the movie ‘Laura’. We wound up seeing it with Laura, albeit not in the same row.

Ever since I’d first seen it (around 1990) the film had been linked with ‘Twin Peaks’ in my mind. Though, since David Lynch named Laura Palmer after the titular ‘Laura’ from the movie, it’s a reasonable link.

I hadn’t seen it in at least twenty years. It held up well, but I suspected it always would. Quality is quality.

On the way out, Laura stopped me.

“I was named after that movie,” she said.

“You might have mentioned that,” I said, which got a little grin. She’d picked up that I’d meant the other Laura might have mentioned it.

“I hadn’t seen it in ... a long time. It seemed oddly apt.”

I nodded, then said, “That ... makes sense. It’s an interesting twist.”

“That it is,” she said. “That it is, indeed.”

When I got back to the dorm, there was a note from Mom asking me to call tomorrow. It didn’t sound urgent.

There was a second note, too, from Professor Berman, canceling dinner tomorrow. Apparently one of his former students was visiting town, and it was their only chance to get together. He sounded pretty regretful about it. Friday was also out, so we’d have to see them on the next trip.

It was something of a lost opportunity. I hoped they would both be here on the next trip.

I headed off to bed. No David, but I thought he might be on the beach tonight.

Thursday, August 4, 1983

Cammie and I spent the day filing again. I called Mom during a break just before lunch.

“Hi, Steve!”

“Hi, Mom!”

“I’m looking forward to having you home,” she said. “This has been fine, maybe even good, but I’m ready for one more year.”

“We’ll be back soon.”

“I know! Anyway, you got a letter. I’m not even sure I should call this a letter. It’s a big ornate envelope with the White House logo and the Presidential Seal.”

“I have no idea.”

“Can I open it? We’re fine waiting, but it’s driving Sam crazy!”

“Please do,” I said.

I could hear the letter opener. She’d been prepared.

“There are a bunch of papers ... um ... let’s see...” she said, then went silent.