Chapter 7: Article of Faith

Having my bike made getting to school and back pretty easy. Except for those rare days when the weather was nasty, I had no problem. September in the high desert of Eastern Oregon was not exactly prone to bad weather, so I hadn't faced that dilemma yet.

Cross country practice proved to me that I was fast enough for the team, but I still had a few things to learn. The course we ran here ran through much of the artificial parks and green spaces that Hermiston had, but most of it was flat and brown, just like the rest of the countryside this time of year. Matt was a definite resource, explaining about route markers and picking routes.

"That's what makes cross country so interesting for me," Matt told me. "Nobody has to run exactly the same route in a race, and the route you wind up running can definitely make a difference."

Our course included a stretch that went down into a ravine and then back up and along it, and I could see we would have an advantage over visiting teams, once we were familiar with it. Just as they would have an advantage when we were running on their home course.

Steve Jackson was still going out of his way to be unpleasant to me, and he soon had an unexpected ally. On the first day of classes, I found Carrie cornered at the freshman lockers by Burt Thompson. I walked over quickly and stood beside her.

"Burt, you might want to get out of this girl's face before her boyfriend sees you."

"Really asshole, what are you going to do about it?" Burt said before turning my way. He'd recognized my voice, but I had the pleasure of seeing yet another reaction to my summertime metamorphosis. "Geez Kendall, what the hell happened to you?"

"Clean living," I told him, causing Carrie to giggle. Joe arrived about that time and slid up to Carrie on the other side and slid an arm around her shoulder.

Carrie dropped a brief kiss on his cheek and offered a soft '"hi sweetie."

"Who's this?" Joe asked.

"This sophomore is Burt Thompson. He seems to think that Carrie would make a good girlfriend," I answered, emphasizing the sophomore part.

"Ah, well too bad she's already got a boyfriend, huh?"

"Who the hell are you?" Burt said incredulously.

"He's my brother," came Greta's voice as she slid up beside me and slid an arm around my waist. "Joe Porter's his name. I'm his sister Greta. I believe you've met my boyfriend Sam?"

Greta's spiel was said with such an artificial air of elegance and 'high society' politeness that after a moment of stunned silence, the four of us all burst into laughter. As Burt stormed off, I spotted Steve Jackson in the crowd, glaring at me. I'd forgotten Burt, but I wasn't about to forget Steve. I had two enemies at Hermiston High, not one. Lovely. First day of school, with not so much as even a single class under out belts and we'd had an unpleasant run in.

We hardly had time to make anything of it, as we were all due in first period freshman English. It was one of the classes that the four of us shared, and it was the reason we were all collected together at the lockers first thing in the morning.

"We'd better get to class before the bell rings," Carrie suggested.

"Where's room 111?" Joe asked. Greta and I stared blankly in return, but Carrie 'harrumphed' at the three of us.

"Am I the only one who spent time making sure they knew where the classrooms were?"

We just nodded and followed Carrie to class.

Freshman English, it turned out was really 'English Composition', so we were instructed by Mrs. Irving, the teacher. Our seating assignments were alphabetical, and I was several chairs and several rows away from Greta, Joe and Carrie. Bennie, having the distinction of being the only student in the class with a last name starting with 'A', had the front left corner desk. Being from a publishing family, this seemed somehow appropriate.

The first thing Mrs. Irving wanted to do was get a sample of everyone's handwriting. In these days before the home computer, handwriting and penmanship were still an important thing.

I had already discovered that I still had the smooth and relaxed hand that I remembered from the end of my first life. Having never been much of a one for computers, I had stuck to pen and paper for most things, and I brought a lifetime's practice to class with me. My handwriting may not have been beautiful, as some of the girl's practiced scripts were, but it was clean and efficient.

To get a handwriting sample, Mrs. Irving asked us each to write a paragraph of whatever we wanted. It could be a poem, or a quote or from something we read. I wrote out the second paragraph of The Agony and the Ecstasy, which I had finished reading just the day before.

"I'm not well designed" thought the thirteen year old with serious
concentration. "My head is out of rule, with the fore
overweighing my mouth and chin. Someone should have used a plumb
line." Irving Stone, The Agony and the Ecstasy

That paragraph, peeking into the thoughts of Michaelangelo as a boy my own age, had pulled me in and captivated me.

We handed in our samples, and moved on to a discussion of Mrs. Irving's expectations. She expected each of us to be able to construct a sentence properly, to be able to critically deconstruct any sentence we were given, and to be able to discuss the parts of the sentence intelligently. This was our goal for the end of the year.

Unlike many of the classes we would take, this class would last the entire year, and we would get credit for each semester of it. I felt it would be good review for me, and I had every intention of paying far more attention this time through. I had fallen in love with reading the first time, but had barely paid attention to the rules of English, because of course, they were rules, and thus something to be ignored.

We were issued text books, and told that we would need a notebook, dedicated completely to this class. We would learn to build sentences by writing, we were told. Letters, articles and stories.

"You will not have to worry about being judged on the quality of the story," Mrs. Irving said. "You can worry about that if you wind up taking Creative Writing as an elective."

Freshman Math was next, and the class was on the other side of the school building. Carrie wasn't in this class with me, but Greta and Bennie were, and fortunately, Bennie had also had the sense to scout out the classrooms in advance.

This class was officially Algebra I. Greta was still grumbling about not getting into Algebra II.

Ten minutes into class, she stopped grumbling, or else I was too busy to hear it. Mr. Halsey, the teacher wasted no time and had us scrambling to solve an equation he had written on the board, telling us we were free to use our text books if we needed to. He let us founder for another ten minutes, and then began talking and writing on the chalk board. I was scribbling down everything he wrote like mad while trying to make sense of what he said at the same time.

I was just about to surrender when he stopped talking.

"Alright, let me repeat all that a little more slowly," he said, and he did, going over everything he'd just said, pointing at what he'd written as he got to it, and I began to see what he was talking about a little, and how it might apply to the equation we were first given. I was finally able to glance over at Greta and saw her grinning, so I knew she had it, and probably far better than I did.

We had not been given seating assignments in this class, so Benny, Greta and I were sitting together in the middle of the room, with Greta in between us. I glanced past Greta at Bennie, and he seemed to be concentrating pretty hard, but didn't look scared or lost, so I concentrated back on Mr. Halsey and the equation. I had a solution for it now, but I looked over everything on the board again and my notes to see if I could see something that looked wrong.

"How many of you think you have the answer?" he asked at last. I raised my hand along with Greta and a slightly hesitant Bennie. Four others had their hands raised as well.

"Everyone with their hand raised, write your answer in large letters in your notebook," he said, and then after a pause, "now, without looking around, hold them up in the air so I can see them."

I held my notebook up for what seemed to be quite a while until Mr. Halsey finally told us to lower them.

"Half of you got that right, and two of those who didn't probably made a common mistake."

He wrote the number 47 on the chalk board as he said this, and that was the answer I had written. I saw Greta's grin and knew she'd gotten it right as well.

For the rest of the class, Mr. Halsey talked about Algebra, and how we all used it in our day to day lives without realizing it. I got the impression he was really speaking to the rest of the class, the part that hadn't raised their hands. He talked about variables, and that they were really common and shouldn't be something to be feared.

"In the basic math that you've already learned, the answer was the only part of the question that was unknown," He said. "In algebra, we will learn how to answer questions when even some of the question is unknown."

He gave us examples from life of things we did every day like shopping or fixing things around the house, or even playing sports where we had to solve for an unknown, and had most of us shaking our heads at how familiar these examples of the dreaded algebra were.

"Most of what you will really learn in this class is logic, deduction and pattern recognition," Mr. Halsey said just as the bell was ringing to signal the end of class. "It is building new tools to let you use the math you already know."

All of us except Bennie had American History in room 115, back on the other side of the building, so we rushed to make class, but as we went, Greta said what I was thinking.

"I think we're going to consider ourselves lucky to have had this man for a teacher before we're done - he is going to be a great teacher."

We had Luther Harwell and Sissy Mitchell join us for American History, and as interesting and dynamic as Math promised to be, American History promised to be the antithesis. Mr. Spier spoke in a dull drone that was almost sleep-inducing. At the same time, he seemed interested in reciting dates and events, but left our textbooks and assigned reading to weave it all into some semblance of a narrative for us.

Lunch followed American History, and since the cafeteria was only a couple of doors away from our locker area, we dropped our books off first, collecting Carrie and Joe in the process, and then headed for the food!

Hermiston High wasn't so big that it needed to have staggered lunch hours, but it was big enough that the lunch room was packed. There were as many kids attending here from outside of Hermiston proper as there were from the city itself. Going home for lunch was not an option for most of them, and freshman and sophomores are pretty limited in their lunchtime transportation options.

The mix, from 14 year old freshman to seventeen and eighteen year old seniors made it interesting at lunch time. The seniors had their own section of tables, as did the lettermen and cheerleaders. I looked for, but didn't see Matt Thorson, the only upperclassman that I knew so far. I didn't see him, but I did see Dave Beauchamps, and gave him a nod. The freshman section of tables, or at least the unclaimed seating appeared to be in a far corner section, and we headed that way as a group, but I made sure we passed by Dave's table as we did.

"Hey Kendall, how's it going?" Dave said as we drew near.

"Pretty good so far, for the first day," I answered.

"These all your fellow — what do you call yourselves? Cold Lakians?"

"I don't think I've ever heard anyone ever refers to us collectively," Carrie said.

"I've heard the Mayor say 'Citizens of Cold Lake' once, when he was making a speech," Bennie said, "but I'm not sure either, and I should know if there was a collective term."

"Well, you Cold Lakers better just grab a table today, but we'll see if we can integrate you in with some of the cross country team tomorrow okay?" Dave said.

"Sounds good," I said with a smile.

We did find an empty table, and arranged ourselves at it. A few other Cold Lake kids spotted us as they came through the line, and we added them to the mix. I spotted Dale and Leo Carmody sitting at a table with some kids I didn't recognize, and asked Luther if he knew who they were.

"Not sure, but I think those are the infamous cousins that they're always hanging with."

Lunch was some sort of chicken casserole, some green beans, a slice of bread and some fruit cocktail, and it was all purchased with punches from a 'lunch ticket' that I'd had to buy before school started. Keeping a home made lunch from going bad had seemed like it would be an issue to me, so I hadn't thought of trying it, and Mom and Dad considered school lunches as a cost of doing business in the enterprise they called 'Raising Sammy', so I accepted it for what it was and hoped my teenage stomach could handle it.

Joe, Luther and I had had our schedules changed after we'd registered for classes, moving us into the 7th period Phys Ed class. This was something that was done for everyone who went out for football, and allowed football practice to start before the end of school so that we could actually get home at a reasonable hour.

I had registered for one of the few electives available to freshmen, but that had been axed as well in favor of 6th period study hall. It was felt that football players needed in-school time to complete their homework assignments, apparently. I only had one actual class after lunch and that was 5th period Earth Science with Mr. Akins in room 163. Carrie and Joe were in the class with me, but Greta was still in French I, the elective class that we'd both signed up for.

Earth Science looked like it was going to wind up being somewhere between interesting and boring. The teacher seemed capable of generating some interest, but I didn't expect to be taught anything in this class that I didn't already know. This was an area that had been a strength in my old life. Mr. Akins himself might be fun. He cranked out several truly atrocious puns in the first class, and if that was a sign of things to come, I would not be totally bored in class.