Chapter 30

I would have loved to snuggle up with Jack on the ride to school but I had stuff to do and I was in enough trouble already. First off, I got out my Geometry book and did the final problem while chewing mouthfuls of oatmeal. Loads of fun trying to find enough hands to hold a bowl of oatmeal, a spoon, a book, pencil and paper. Having my book bag on the floor between my legs added to the fun. I started reading the chapter we'd been assigned in History next. It was just like Mrs. Jenkins to ensure we'd done the reading by starting the class off with a pop quiz.

Jack pulled into the drop-off area at school and I gave him a quick kiss and reached down to get my book bag. He grabbed my sleeve and pulled me back up.

"What about the pictures?"

"What about them?"

"Where do I meet you? When? Are they going to even let me on the campus?"

"Shoot. I didn't even think of that. You're going to have to park in that lot over there," I said, pointing to our left, then swung my arm to the right. "Just go to the office over there. The stairs from the visitor lot go right to the Administration Building and the office is the first room you'll get to. I'll either meet you there or someone will have a note and directions."

"OK. I know I can get out without doing any extra work after school but I don't feel right ditching my regular PE class. Since I'll just be swimming, I can skip my shower till I get you home. Figure sometime between 3:20 and 3:25." He pulled me closer and gave me a kiss that made me wish I didn't have to be at school for a couple of hours.

After assuring each other of our love, I got my rolling book bag out the door, got out of the car and went to my locker. Once I had everything redistributed between the locker and the bag, I found a tree near my first class, sat down and finished reading my History assignment. I was putting the book back in my bag when Beth detoured toward me.

"Good morning, Miss O'Hara."

"Hi, Coach. How are you this morning?"

"I'm OK. Did you let Jack get any sleep last night?"

I didn't know how to answer that. I know I blushed; I could feel the heat in my cheeks.

She sat down next to me a took my hand. "Jill, I didn't mean to embarrass you. The first thing Jack said last night was that if I didn't talk to you that you'd keep him awake all night. I was trying to make a joke."

"Oh, yeah. I forgot about that."

"I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess you kept him up late doing something else."

"Yeah, I guess you could say that. A big part of it was convincing him to take pictures for the web site."

"Convince him? I got the impression that Jack would do just about anything for you."

"That's true. The problem with Jack is that sometimes he doesn't give himself enough credit. He thought he wasn't that good and I should hire a professional."

"Is he? That good?"

"God, yes. Just ask the girls on the team. Most of them have seen his stuff. Half of them would take him to bed in a heartbeat for a set of glamor shots."

"After meeting Jack, I'd bet half of them would take him to bed without the pictures."

"Yeah, I know that. But you'll never convince him of that. Poor Jack is so naïve about some things. He could get into a lot of trouble if I wasn't around to look out for him."

"I see. This wouldn't have anything to do with you wanting to finish high school a couple of years early, would it?"

"A little, but not as much as you might think. I've had more than my share of worries in that area but I finally convinced myself he's worthy of my trust. No, my problem is, now that I've found him, I don't know if I could survive being apart from him for two years while he's away at college. Of course Jack would probably go to JC or flip burgers or something else just as stupid because he wouldn't want to be away from me, either. Neither of those is a good solution, especially when most of the time I'm bored to death with the way the classes are taught to the lowest common denominator in this school. In college, they push pretty hard and if you don't keep up, it's too bad."

"That they do. But you'll find a whole new set of problems in college. Just wait till you get some professor who believes the word 'American' is synonymous with 'demonic' and fails any papers that don't show that viewpoint."

"Well, most of my classes are going to have to do with computers."

"That's all well and good but you're going to have to take some liberal arts classes unless you plan on going to a tech school."

"Well, I guess I'll just have to BS some of my professors, then."

"You got that right. It's not all bad. It came in handy on a couple of my job interviews. Enough about that. What can I do to get you back on my team?"

"There are a couple of things I need help on."

"Shoot."

"Jack's going to come here this afternoon, sometime between a quarter and half past three. First, we need to get an OK for him to be on campus and then I want your OK for him to take pictures of the team. I know it's going to cause some disruption of our workout."

"I can handle both of those. I suppose you'd like to escort him to practice."

"Yeah..."

She laughed. "OK. Stop by my office at lunch and pick up a note. You can be a few minutes late to class. And don't forget to suit up. Can't have pictures of the team with our star player in civvies."

I was surprised to hear her call me the star player after all that had gone on the past couple of days.

"One of the things I want is a page with thumbnails of all the girls on it. Clicking on a thumbnail will take you to that girl's page. There will be some pictures and a description of her interests, what she plays on the team, that kind of thing. I was thinking of having a link on each girl's page if someone wants to send an email to her."

"Maybe you could let people leave comments on the individual pages."

"That could cause some problems. Any time you give people the chance to do something on the web without others knowing who they are, there's a small percentage that will try to ruin it for everybody else. We either need to screen all the comments before they go up or give each player the authority to delete comments on her page. All it takes is some idiot to make some accusation and a reputation could be trashed before anyone knows anything. At least emails won't be visible to everyone with Internet access. And we can always block people who abuse the email function or totally turn it off for any of the girls."

"I didn't think about negative comments. People won't be able to see the girls' email addresses, will they?"

"Nope. The girls can either call up the site and enter their own password to get their messages or set it up for their computer to automatically download messages if they want. It will be up to each girl. I'll help out anybody who needs it. As far as the sender is concerned, it's Jill@highpointvolleyball.com or whatever the girls name is. There will even be a page and email for you."

"So I guess you need all my secrets for my page?"

"Only those that you want a couple of zillion people to know about. I also need as much information about the playoffs as possible. I want a page that shows all the matchups that will be updated each week, showing who wins and loses. We'll have one of those tree thingees that show who's going to play who else and we'll list the scores for each match."

"I've got all that information somewhere in my office. If I don't have it when you come at lunchtime, I'll bring it with me to class. Jill, this is quite a job you're taking on here. Are you sure you can handle it?"

"I think so. I'm not sure it'll be web design but I want to do something with computers for a living. I'm using this project to see if I like it, whether I can meet a deadline and a bunch of other stuff."

"Would whether or not you can work with Jack be one of the things you need to find out?"

"Not at all. I have no doubt that we'd be happy doing just about anything together. No, there's another reason."

"What's that?"

"Beth, don't take this the wrong way. I don't know you well enough. Maybe later, but right now, this is my secret."

The warning bell went off and I got to my feet. "Gotta get to class. I appreciate this chance to get back on the team, Coach."

"It's OK. I'm glad you want to get back on."

I was right. The first thing Mrs. Jenkins did after we sat down in History was to pass out a quiz. It was no biggie but anyone who hadn't read the chapter would screw it up big time.

Most of my classes were boring but Geometry was the perfect example of what I'd been talking to Beth about earlier. It took me ten or fifteen minutes to do the five problems we had for homework. Mr. Sadler spent the whole hour showing three kids who didn't get it how to do the first problem. And when they left the classroom, they still didn't get it.

I went to the Phys. Ed. Building and saw that Beth's office door was open. I saw her back when I looked in and knocked on the doorjamb.

"Come on in, Jill."

"How did you know it was me?"

"I didn't. What's the worst that could happen? It could be somebody else and I'd tell them you were supposed to stop by at lunch. What's Jack's last name?"

"Hill."

She spun around so her back was to me again and typed his name in a couple of places, then hit the print icon.

"This will just take a minute or two. We gym teachers don't get the top of the line equipment."

"I guess not."

Beth tore the printed pages off the printer, folded it in half lengthwise and was tearing off the holes that matched the sprockets on her printer.

"They tried to get me to take one that used thermal paper but I put my foot down." She signed two sheets and handed them to me.

"This one goes to the office BEFORE you bring him on campus. They will give you a one day parking pass to put in his windshield if he needs it. Don't wait until that last minute because it takes some time for something like this to make its way to Fogart's brain and then she'll probably want to get an OK from her boss." Miss Fogart was the principal's secretary and was rumored to have been found sitting where her desk is before they cleared the lot to start building our school a half century ago.

"This one is for both you and Jack. It's a combination hall pass for you and a one-day visitor's pass for Jack. When you go into the gym to change, make sure he has it in case someone challenges him."

"Thanks. I'm going to go to the office now and get Miss Fogart working on this right away."

"Good. I'll have the playoff information at practice today."

"OK. I'll see you then."

"Wait a minute, Jill. I want to show you something."

She swiveled around and got on the web. A few seconds later she was on the Highpoint web site. She clicked on Sports and got to a page with big pictures of football, smaller ones of baseball, smaller track and field and a paragraph headed 'Other Sports" that mentioned Girls Volleyball.

"This is what we have to do better than."

"OK, Coach. I'll see you later."

I wasted the rest of my lunch period and about five minutes of the next one in the office. I almost didn't get the approval because our principal was at a district meeting and wasn't coming back for the rest of the day. Fortunately, after a call to Beth's office, she was able to convince Miss Fogart that letting Jack take the pictures would save the school a couple of thousand on the volleyball web page. Neither of us pointed out that the principal wouldn't approve an expense that large for the football team, much less girls volleyball. As Beth said, she learned some things in college.

Fifth period let out at 2:51. It took that long for what Jack had told me this morning to register. There's always been a rivalry between our two high schools. Fernmont was the first one and Highpoint was a sorry second place to handle the overflow as far as the original students at Jack's school were concerned. The upstart Highpointers knew that the truth was they waited for Fernmont to make all the mistakes before building the real school. This rivalry has been going on for almost fifty years.