Chapter 71: Old Acquaintances

Saturday, December 31, 1983

Since we were getting together with Jas and Paige in the evening, Angie and I spent the day hanging out with Mom and Dad. We could all hear the clock ticking away in the back of our minds, and the time when we’d move out drawing inexorably closer.

We would never truly be ‘gone,’ but the nest would be empty. Everyone knew that. Unlike most teenagers, I knew what that felt like, and both Angie and I wanted a graceful transition.

Overplaying things wouldn’t be good, but we wanted to have some ‘family days’ that brought everyone together with no agenda (and no rolling teenage eyeballs, either!)

Just that would probably be enough to say something was different about us. Teenage rebellion is perfectly natural. In that sense, we were perhaps no longer ‘teenagers.’ Jas was, but she had little to rebel against, and she’d been influenced by us. Paige was, but she’d been influenced by us, too.

I had no idea where Jas and Paige might have gone had our paths never intersected theirs. Most likely theirs would’ve eventually led to good places, but trying to figure out even the vaguest outlines of the ripples there was beyond me. We had nothing to go on at all.

Still, I was pretty sure that, somewhere, there were two people who’d lost their future partners, likely without even knowing they’d ever existed.

Three people, counting my wife. Four, counting Carrie.

Old acquaintances can’t be forgotten if they’re never made, after all, and we can’t live for what never was. Not in this world. Not in this life.

I took a few breaks from family time to make some calls. The first was to Laura, who was very happy to hear from me. She’d had a good Christmas and was looking forward to the spring semester. We caught up a bit. It seemed likely that we wouldn’t see each other in person until at least Tournament of Champions (if she qualified) and possibly not until much later. We wanted to get together over the summer, though, if not before.

The second call was to Michael. I hadn’t expected to get him, but I did. He sounded like he was doing pretty well, but griped at some length about one of his biology classes. I kidded him about HAAUG being more fun, which got a comment about his ‘being over Apple’ and about ten minutes of discussion of the PC architecture and how easy it was to implement (as well as how ugly it was in many places).

So far, so good.

The third call was to Candice. I got Erwin instead. He took a message and promised to pass it along. He also again let me know how very grateful he was that Candice and I had been so close at just the right time. The holidays would have been a very hard time for Erwin and Sandy if things hadn’t worked out. To him — to all of them — it was their very own Christmas and New Year’s miracle.

My fourth call was to Lizzie and Janet. I didn’t get them, but left a message on their machine wishing them a Happy New Year and promising we’d catch up soon. Hopefully I’d keep that promise.

The last call was to Mikayla, and it was along the lines of the one to Lizzie and Janet. I was much less certain that Mikayla and I would actually catch up, though, or at least for a while. Perhaps much later, but then again, perhaps not.

We headed over to Jasmine’s around six, stopping at Pho King to pick up soup for everyone. It wasn’t exactly New Year’s Eve party food, but it was something we’d all enjoy. I imagined we’d be throwing some nice (if likely understated) parties in college, but who knew?

The evening went about as you’d expect, at least until nine. We talked, played games, talked, sang, talked, and then talked some more. It’s pretty much what we do, after all.

Everyone made their guesses for 1984 about things none of us could know. What parts we’d play in ‘Bye Bye Birdie’, for instance. What our class rank would be. When we’d find out which college we would be attending. Whether we’d do well at State, Tournament of Champions, and Nationals.

Either by accident or by design, we avoided topics like ‘Who will win the Presidential election?’ Angie and I wound up safe from having to dodge use of the knowledge we had. Jas, too, for that matter.

At nine, though, we got a surprise phone call. Or, more precisely, I did.

Jas answered, then said, “Yes, he’s here. Do you want me to put him on?”

I did, to hear Susan’s voice. “I’m so disappointed that you’re not here!”

“Me, too,” I said, “especially considering why I’m not.”

“I am pissed at my idiot brother. Oh, my God!”

“It was a truly boneheaded move. Don’t tell him I said that, though.”

She chuckled softly, then said, “I won’t. He’s still deeply infatuated. Fine, she’s cute enough, but ... what the hell?”

“We’ve all asked ourselves that.”

“Kimmie and I had been meaning to give you hugs for what you did. We actually met Lizzie and Janet, and they’re the coolest ever. They totally deserved to have that moment of happiness. I know you didn’t cause it, but they’re clear that you made a huge difference.”

I’d almost forgotten that they’d picked Stanford for law school. That must have been how they’d met Lizzie and Janet.

“Everyone made a huge difference. I just put myself out front because I knew I could handle it. Without them putting themselves out there first, though, nothing would’ve happened.”

“Still! It’s totally cool, and there are a bunch of girls at Stanford who mostly do not make a point of hugging guys who will make a point of hugging you if you visit. Speaking of which, when are you coming to visit?” she asked.

“Actually, we’re all thinking of heading out there over the summer. Really, we’re thinking of heading everywhere, but California — and the Bay Area in particular — is definitely included.”

“We’ll look forward to it! I’m really sorry you’re not over here. There are a lot of really awful people here instead of the people we loved. Kimmie’s already gone upstairs. There were too many people making faces.”

“That sucks,” I said.

“Honestly, Rita warned us. It’s still ... well, we came to see Dad and Rita, mostly, and we’re accomplishing that just fine. Mike’s taking after Brian, but worse and faster. Hopefully, he’ll learn his lesson when she screws him over.”

“That’s my hope, too. It’s too late for a lot of things, but he really does have potential. He’s just one of those people who has to put both hands on the hot stove before he learns not to do that.”

“Indeed!” she said, laughing a little.

Angie was waving her hand, so I said, “Hang on. Angie wants to talk.”

I passed the phone over and Angie was quickly talking about college life and how lesbians were treated and a bunch of other topics.

Jas said, “Mike’s sister, right?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Sucks. Mike screwed things up for everyone.”

I shrugged. “That’s giving him too much power. He only screwed up what we let him screw up. Sometimes people suck. You can’t live your life thinking everyone is going to screw you one day, but you have to expect that some people will make boneheaded decisions sometimes, and some will just plain be jerks. We built Study Group around the idea that someone would make a boneheaded decision, after all. That’s what all of the rules were about.”

“And then the rules didn’t matter.”

“They mattered, I think. We’d have been worse off without them.”

“Still ... he ran everyone else out,” she said.

“And because of that, we’re closer with Curtis and Marsha than we ever would’ve been, while still friendly with Anderson and Rita. Bad things, good things. Now, if Trish went after you...”

“Which I think she did.”

I nodded. “Most likely she did, but we can’t prove it. If she did, she lost thoroughly. You got a few weeks of stress and then a triumph.”

“It did work out well,” she said, giggling a bit.

“We’ll cross other bridges when we get there. I don’t know what her endgame is, and she probably doesn’t know, either. What’s the point of being lousy to people who you’ll never see again in five months?”

“Because you’re a lousy person who delights in causing misery?”

“Well...” I said. “Fine! You have a point.”

Angie wrapped up the call and hung up.

“That was cool,” she said. “And Mike’s a total bonehead.”

“I knew that,” I said.

“No. No, you really didn’t.”

“Huh?”

“She didn’t tell you what she told me, I think. You know Anderson and Rita are out, right?”

“They always are.”

“Mike’s brought in two kegs of beer, and there’s other ... stuff ... going on, too. Stuff that will cause a lot of trouble if anyone finds out, not that the alcohol won’t.”

“We should report them!” Paige said.

“Nah,” Angie said. “We need to take the high road on this one, just like Kimmie and Susan are. Mike’s playing with fire, and he’s going to get himself burned, but he can accomplish that without our help. Unless he’s really good at hiding the evidence, he’s going to manage that tonight. Neither Anderson or Rita are anywhere near as clueless as Mike still thinks they are.”

Paige nodded after a second. “See, this is one of the many reasons I love you. You temper my tendencies to charge off and do something before thinking it through.”

“I think we’re all going to do that for each other,” Angie said. “None of us are passive, quiet people. Not anymore, anyway. We’ll all need to be reined in occasionally.”

“And, once in a while, we’ll have to ignore the reins,” Jas said.

“That, too,” Angie said, grinning.

Midnight Eastern time found us watching the ball drop in Times Square, then hugging and kissing and wishing each other a happy new year. An hour later, we repeated it with a ball drop in Dallas.

As before, Angie got her kiss just after Jasmine’s second New Year’s kiss, just after midnight. I sometimes remembered those first confused moments in the hospital when I’d found out Angie was there, and my fears that Angie would be the Angie I’d only slightly known in my first life. Perhaps in some ways she was, but in so many ways she wasn’t, and she never would have been, not in light of who she had been in her first life.

Four years, four New Year’s parties. Angie and I were the constant, but Jas and I had been together for three, and Paige and Angie had been together for two. Even given Angie’s and my unique perspectives, it was likely a fair statement that this would be the biggest year of our lives thus far. The past, in the end, is prologue. While Angie and I had more past, this was going to be a big leap into the future.

We called it a night around one, hoping that we’d gotten past the worst of the first set of crazies and would be ahead of the much larger group of crazies that would hit the roads later tonight. In fact, we barely saw any other cars while taking Paige home or going home ourselves. All of them kept their distance and we kept ours.

Angie made no pretense of heading to her own bed. She visited the bathroom, then came in wearing just her underwear, changing into her PJs in my bedroom.

We snuggled right up, rubbing noses.

“You felt it, too, right?” she said.

“That we’re on the cusp of something big?”