Chapter 1: Blown Gasket

Savannah, GA August 1985

"Young man, now is not the time for games!" Mrs. Peterson picked up the instrument of power that was her phone and dialed a few numbers. "Could you come out please and deal with an unruly student, he's disrupting registration. Thank you," she said into the phone.

"Coach Nevill will deal with you! Now move away! Next please."

Tony, Cheri, and Tina moved out from in front of the counter. Anita was sitting in a nearby chair. Marj and Rebecca chuckled softly and took their places at the counter. It was time to register for school and this year's classes. They were going to the junior high afterwards to enroll Anita in eighth grade. That she was a bright little girl they all knew, but that she had skipped the fourth grade had never come up until it was time to register.

Tony mentally corrected himself, girl, not "little girl." The latter was a sure way to fire up Anita's temper. He did mutter under his breath to Tina, "I told you she'd blow a gasket".

Tina tittered but managed to control herself as Coach Nevill emerged from his office.

"Ah, Mister Smith, it seems you've managed to ruin Mrs. Peterson's carefully orchestrated registration. May I ask what the issue is? Oh, I'm sorry, I recognize Tina, who are these other two lovely young ladies?"

"Hey Coach!" Tony said, then indicated Cheri. "This is Cheri Harris, she's uhm, my charge, I guess is the best word. This young lady is Anita, she's my sister. Well that's not exactly right, yet, and all this is a bit of a legal mess. Can we talk?"

"Come into my office. Ladies if you will excuse us, we'll try to make this brief." Tony followed the man into his office.

"Sit Tony, this sounds rather intriguing. We normally require a parent or guardian to register a student."

"Uh, well, I'm acting as both today. I assume this conversation can be considered confidential? There are some personal issues about Cheri that I'd rather not be well known." Tony nodded toward the door and Coach Nevill understood he meant Mrs. Peterson, the town gossip.

Coach Nevill nodded.

"I'm actually Cheri Harris' legal guardian. I have a power of attorney for myself and my sisters."

"But your sister, you told me she was..."

"Yeah, that was Tammy. My family is adopting Anita. Currently they are court-appointed guardians pending the adoption process. But she's not the issue here. We're going over to the junior high to register her after we're done. She needs a family; I'd rather no one actually voice the fact that she isn't my sister by birth. She is my sister in every other way."

"OK, that makes sense. Now there is no way you are Cheri?" Tony nodded at him, "Cheri's guardian; you're a high school senior Tony."

Tony flicked through some papers, brought out the proper document, and handed it to Coach Nevill. He perused it for a minute with a furrowed brow.

"Captain Tony Smith?"

"Yes sir, it's a long story. Legally I'm the captain of a commercial vessel. It's the loophole they used so that Cheri didn't either get thrown into the New Jersey foster care system or put back into a very ugly situation at home. Do you remember Rebecca Harris?"

Coach Nevill nodded and smiled. "Of course, the girl who learned to walk, she was out in the office. I was so proud of her every time I saw her. You two are pretty close, it's easy to see."

Tony smiled. "Yes that's true. Cheri is Rebecca's cousin. She actually lives with them and they are suing for custody. Like I said, she had a bad life at home; abusive stepfather, you get the picture. So legally, I'm her guardian, but she lives with her aunt, uncle, and Rebecca. It will be a few more months before it's legal and all. Her aunt is outside and really was supervising the whole thing with me. She just can't legally register Cheri for school yet. Only I can."

"There has to be a good story behind that I'm sure. That's a big responsibility, you know that don't you?"

Tony laughed. "Yeah Coach. It's not something I did without talking to all the parents involved. Well not Cheri's parents, they're animals as far as I'm concerned. But yeah, I did talk with mine and certainly Mr. and Mrs. Harris. They will be her permanent guardians when the court thing is done. It still scared me to death until we got her back here safely."

Coach Nevill nodded. "You understand then I see."

"It's just legally I have to sign any papers. I didn't realize the number of important decisions one has to make concerning a child. Heck technically she lives on my boat and is just visiting her aunt. The legal stuff comes to Kalliste "care of" my home address. Uh Kalliste is the name of my boat."

"Extraordinary, OK I guess that's alright. It must be one heck of a boat to have its own address."

"Yeah, Rebecca insists on calling it a ship but she's only fifty-five feet."

"Yep, that's a big one alright. Now, about you and Tina, how come your parents aren't here?"

Tony dug out another paper. "I have power of attorney for me, Tina, and Anita. Mom's in court today and Dad is in Alabama on business. He works for National Pacific. Plus, well we are going to need this through the year from time to time. We're musicians and sometimes we need to go out of town to play. There will be some weeks that I'll need to sign us out of school to get to a performance in time. We have some booked for Statesboro already. I have one for Rebecca Harris as well so I can sign her in and out of school. Good thing Mom's a lawyer or all this would get expensive." Tony handed Coach Nevill another paper. "And hey, maybe if Rebecca isn't feeling so well we won't have to involve the police this time. It was a bit embarrassing last year."

"You know I'm going to check all this out don't you? I know about the music, it was all over the papers."

"Of course Coach, you certainly should. It's just a bad day for my parents so they just sent me along to deal with everything. Well I guess Cheri is mine to deal with, and we do talk all the time.

"Look, I'm not here to purposely rattle Mrs. Peterson's cage. I guess it could look that way. I'm just kind of playing with what I have Coach. Marjorie Harris is outside, Rebecca's mother. She knows the whole story."

Coach Nevill did talk with Marj outside. She must have convinced him that everything was on the up-and-up because he left the outer office and returned a couple of minutes later with Xerox copies of all the documents Tony gave him. He gave them to Mrs. Peterson then bent down and talked quietly in her ear. Then he escorted Tony and the girls back to the front of the line. Once the people who were currently at her desk were done she addressed Tony. "You know young man this is highly unusual."

"Mrs. Peterson I do know this is highly unusual. I'm absolutely positive that it's actually unique. It's the position we find ourselves in though. We have all the paperwork and class requests filled out. My mother actually signed the ones for Tina and I. I just have this paper in case there is a problem. I signed Cheri's Harris' admission request, but her aunt is right here." Tony pointed at Marj. "If there is a problem with her application we will consult her aunt just like Tina and I consulted with our parents on ours. Legally though, I'm still going to have to be the one to sign the admission papers. You remember Mrs. Harris right? She's Rebecca's mother, the girl I took to the hospital and who had to be admitted to intensive care while you refused to look up her contact number?"

"Yes young man, so I've been told. We will investigate this you know. Don't be surprised if you show up to school next week and your registration is invalid."

"Mrs. Peterson, do you know I actually have my very own lawyer on retainer? Well I actually have two lawyers on retainer. Only one is here in Savannah. Tina and I call her Mom. Believe me, if that happens I won't argue, but you can bet she will. I think I'll have her call Coach Nevill later today when she's done with her court case to make sure things go smoothly and there are no, um, errors."

Rebecca had moved to Tony's side at that point. She took his hand, pulled him down, and whispered in his ear, "Tony, you know what I told you once about that whole in-charge asshole thing being sexy for just a few minutes? Well it is now, give that bitch hell!"

Mrs. Peterson mumbled something under her breath and said, "I'm sure Mister Smith that there will be no problems."

"Nothing wrong with double-checking on that Mrs. Peterson so I'll make sure she makes that call. We'll see you next week."

Once they were done registering at the high school the kids were going to the junior high. Marj was going back to work and the rest were going back to the Smith house to continue their summer bliss by the pool after taking care of Anita.

Rebecca jumped into Tony's arms just outside the school doors. "Carry me!"

"OK, but don't make a habit of it, you still need to walk as much as you can." He picked her up as one would a child.

"Don't want to walk, that made me all squishy," she whispered in his ear.

"Squishy? Is my Rebecca thinking naughty thoughts?"

"Uhhm hmmm."

Tony gave her a sound smack on her bottom. He got an entirely unexpected result. As usual, when Rebecca got a particularly stimulating, but non-direct contact that excited her she slammed her thighs together. Then she moaned into his ear and trembled in his arms.

"You are an amazing girl Rebecca," Tony whispered.

Rebecca just groaned near-silently.

"Well I guess we know now what will happen the next time you're a naughty girl," he said.

The others noticed that Tony had whispered something in her ear. Why that caused her to practically purr they didn't know.

Anita's registration was not quite as hostile though still a bit arduous. The school really didn't mind an older brother bringing a student in to register. The problem was that the older brother didn't have the same last name. Once again documents had to be produced, but at least this time they were accepted without undue scrutiny. Of course, doing that upset Anita. It brought back to the forefront of her mind that this wasn't really her family and she had a minor breakdown during the process.

Tony and Tina put off the normal "meet the teacher" visit for a bit while they calmed Anita down. Once that was done they visited the music room that was located in a separate building with the gym.

Tony expected a battle here. The result was actually a comedy. Tony knew that anything that had to do with music was Tina's domain, but he never expected her old junior high music teacher to bow to her wishes quite so easily.

Guitar was most definitely not taught in junior high. If you took music you went into what amounted to a feeder system for the high school marching band. That was the only reason for the class in the first place, to prepare the next year's freshman band students. To talk to Mr. Givens, the music director, Tony had, of course, brought in the big guns. He brought the most amazing student the junior high music teacher had ever taught. He brought Tina. It took her less than five minutes to convince him to take on his first guitar student. His only caveat was that Anita had to audition after school on the first day. He knew she would pass the audition because Tina had recommended her. He did, however, have to have a plausible reason to keep every kid (meaning most of the boys) taking music from suddenly switching their instrument of choice to the guitar. Requiring an audition would prevent that. The band members knew that in the time they had Tony, Dewayne, and Tina could prepare Anita to knock his socks off.

By the time they got back to the main building Mrs. Robinson was nowhere to be found. A quick check of the clock showed that it was lunchtime. Instead of having lunch and returning, they decided to just go home and spend the day at the pool with Rebecca and Cheri like they had planned.