Chapter 14

Sheriff Ernie walked to the door of his SUV, got tagged with a 'thank you' and a kiss on the cheek from Nikki.

"Thanks, Ernie," I said. "We appreciate you taking care of us."

"Not at problem, buddy," he said. "I'd stay and chat but there's a lot of people that need me to see 'em today. Some of 'em I actually want to see." As he slid into the seat, he said, "We still need to get together, you an' Nikki, and my bunch."

"Well, If we both get back to sanity, we'll do that."

"Don't make me haul you to the duck camp one weekend," he laughed. "Me and the bunch go there before the season opens, clean up, straighten things, and have a family weekend. Might be fun for you an' Nikki."

Nikki smiled. "Just might be! Let me talk him into it, Mister Ernie."

"We'll be there if it's physically possible," I said.

"Good!" He laughed. "See y'all later!" He closed the door and kicked the SUV in reverse and backed out to the highway.

We turned to walk back into our house. I was still holding the boxes. She opened the front door for me. I walked through to my office and put the boxes on the desk. She was right behind me.

"That's Grandma's jewelry box. It's just costume jewelry, but it was hers, and it's a keepsake." She slid the latch to open it. The inside was in much better shape than the outside, but it was, as she said, costume jewelry, long out of style.

The metal can, though, she was struggling to pry the slip-on lid off. The humidity had generated enough rust on the mating surfaces to make removal difficult.

"Here," I said, "let me hold it down and you pry around it with both hands. That might work."

"Okay," she said.

We worked together. At first the lid stubbornly refused to move, but then one corner gave and I knew the battle was over. The lid popped off. Inside was a stack of pictures, a little diary, some old coins, a few other little bits of the kinds of things that young girls have collected forever.

"MY pictures," she said. "Grandma was going to help me put them in an album. I tried to get Mom to buy me one."

"Are they something you want to share with me?"

"I'd love to, baby," she said. "Let's go sit on the sofa."

We sat side by side and she showed me picture after picture, a chronology of a young girl from birth to about thirteen. Her mom, her grandmother, an uncle, a couple of men she couldn't remember, standing beside her mom and her when she was about eight. I was charmed by her even as a distant child now that I had her sitting beside me as my wife. I knew what those eyes and that smile and those dimples would turn into.

"You were a cute little girl," I said.

"Thank you. I was living with Grandma, mostly. This guy," she pointed to a picture, "I thought he was gonna marry Mom, and then I'd have a step-dad, but something happened. He left. Mom never talked about it."

"I was ten here." The picture was an almost shy-looking girl child. The haircut was different only in its length, the hair falling to her shoulders. She was wearing a blue dress, standing next to a fountain. "Grandma took me to Dallas to visit her cousin."

I noted that the pictures stopped when she was thirteen.

"Grandma died. Mom wasn't exactly the 'pictures of my daughter' type." She rifled through the stack. "Here's my school pictures, from the first grade to last year."

They started when she was six, smiling, a front tooth missing, and went a year at a step. I looked at the last two, Nikki at thirteen and fourteen. She still managed a smile in the pictures, and I knew the stories of what was going on at home.

"Look at my clothes, baby. Goodwill."

I pulled her gently closer and kissed her lightly. "Clothes aren't what make you beautiful, little one."

"Pictures are in two weeks, Dan. This is almost exactly a year ago." She looked at me, blue eyes pensive. "I never knew if Mom would be at home and if she'd be straight when she was there, or if I'd walk in on her and one of her 'boyfriends'." She looked at me, eyes sad. "I wasn't happy, baby. I was lost. I didn't know what was going to happen next."

"Found out, didn't you?"

She put the pictures down, turned and put her arms around my neck. "Sorry, babe. I was having a moment." A kiss landed on my lips. The twinkle came to life in those blue eyes. "Yes. I DID find out. And I love it." Kiss. "And you. And us."

"Yes. Us. Pretty good, don't you think?"

"Mmmm-hmmm ... Mildew got all the clothes," she said.

"You have new ones. And you know that anything you want, you can get."

"Tiara?" giggle.

"Only if you wear it naked for me."

She snorted and looked at me. "Serious? You want me in a tiara?"

"I want you naked. If you HAVE to wear something, a tiara works."

Giggle. "Didn't I read about some Amazon tribe where the women wore just a string around their waists?"

"Yeah, but I think they painted their tits red. You know how I hate make-up."

"You know, Mister Dan Granger, sometimes you're an absolute ASS!"

"Oh, I'm an ass? ME!?!?! I was trying to remember where I had a ball of string!"

I got pushed over on my back and straddled by a giggly girl and ended up nose to nose with her, with her legs twining around mine.

I'm sorry, Dan ... I guess I sound sort of bi-polar."

"No," I said. "You just looked back at your life, and you're thinking of the good and the bad, and that's a bit of a mental load."

"Just hold me."

"Forever. Always." I put my arms around her and hung on.

Time has a way of moving on. The first six weeks of school passed for Nikki. That was a milestone for her. My own contribution to that time was just finding that I had a very happy new life.

But six weeks. Nikki had friends. Maddie's friendship morphed into a study group that showed up at our house a couple of nights a week, giving me up at half-dozen teens in the house, including my wife, but it wasn't a bad thing because these were, like Nikki, serious students. I'd get caught up in the maelstrom from time to time when some particularly sticky point showed up in algebra, but for the most part, Nikki stayed ahead of the game. I also found myself setting up an impromptu chemistry lab to demonstrate some things that were no longer possible to do in the 'kinder, gentler' classroom atmosphere.

And we, Nikki and I, got called into the counselor's office on the day report cards came out.

Nikki was already there. I joined her in the little waiting room before the guidance counselor came out to greet us.

"Hi, Mister Garrod," Nikki said. "You wanted to talk to us? This is Dan Granger, my husband. Dan, this is Mister Garrod. He's my guidance counselor." We shook hands.

"Please, come in and sit down," he said. "Mister Granger, Miss ... uh, I guess that's MIZZ Nikki," he said with a hint of a smile, "we need to talk about Nikki's academic standing."

"Me?!?!?" Nikki blurted. "I've been getting all "A's" since school started."

"Exactly," he said. He picked up a sheaf of papers off his desk. "Mister Granger, how closely have you followed Nikki's academic progress?"

"We talk about it every night," I said.

"Over the last few years?"

Nikki interrupted. "Mister Garrod, I wasn't with Dan last year."

"Oh," he said. "So what does he know, Mizz Nikki?"

She sighed. "I explained to 'im about my "C" average."

His eyes shifted between the two of us. "Mister Granger..."

"Please, call me Dan," I said. I was kind of apprehensive over the conversation.

"Uh, okay, Dan," he continued, "you know that eight-graders take a progress test to make sure we're not doing that 'social promotion' thing, right?"

"I heard something about it. I assumed Nikki did okay, because she's a sophomore."

Nikki had a little smile, like she knew something. Mister Garrod noticed it. "Mizz Nikki, do you remember how you did on those tests?"

"Yessir."

"And you didn't share that with your husband?"

"That's a couple of years ago, sir."

"But you DO know..."

"Yessir."

"Nikki? Something I missed here?"

"Teachers made a big deal about it, Dan. Highest score you can get is 'Mastery' in each subject area. I did that. In all of 'em."

Mister Garrod picked up a page of the stack. "Mis ... uh, Dan, she aced most of it. Now I'm hearing from her teachers that she's leading study groups for algebra and chemistry?"

"I have a house-full of teens a couple of nights a week," I said. "Sometimes they drag me in to explain things, but mostly not."

"Mizz Nikki's study groups are all "A" students in her classes. Some of her teachers mentioned that we should take a look at her."

I looked at her. High school girl. Navy blue shirt and khaki slacks of the accepted uniform, a pair of mid-range athletic shoes on her feet, five and a half feet tall, hundred and fifteen pounds (memory on the bathroom scale), head of brown hair that seemed so right in that pageboy cut she liked. Blue eyes.

"Okay, what did you come up with?"

He smiled at Nikki. "Young lady, you've been sand-bagging."

"Sand-bagging?" she and I said, almost in unison.

"I don't know what made you cut loose this year, but I'm happy to see it, Mizz Nikki." He smiled. "Dan, do you have an idea of her capabilities?"

"Almost from Day One," I said. "She's smart. She learns fast. She's inquisitive."

"Sounds like what some of her teachers say," he said. "Mizz Nikki, do you sometimes feel like you're wasting time in class?"

"Oh, no, Mister Garrod! I love being in school."

"That's the politically correct answer. Let me rephrase the question. Do you feel challenged? Do you think you could sort of skip ahead and you'd be better off?"

"Huh?" I said.

Nikki's eyes sparkled. "I wondered about how that would happen. Is there a way?"

"Just might be," he smiled. "We have these assessment tests I'd like to set you and a couple of other students up to take. Basically what they do is test you in each of the disciplines to see what grade we'd put you into if you just dropped in from Timbukctu. You're in your sophomore year. Let's say we test you and you test to the senior year level in some areas. If you do three out of four, we promote you."

She gasped. "So I could be a SENIOR?" She looked at me. "Dan? What do you think?"

"Oh, you don't have to make a decision right now. Go home and talk about it. But if you decide you want to try it, Nikki will take the tests next week. Takes two weeks to get scores back. She could be moved up before Thanksgiving."

"Why are you doing this, Mister Garrod," I asked.

"It's my job. Sometimes I remember what I'm here for." He sighed. "With all the crap we have going with the crowding and everything, I just came to work one morning and decided to see if maybe I could do a little more than show up every day."

"Wow!" Nikki said. "I'm glad you did!" Her brow knit for a second, her 'I'm thinking' face. "Is Madison Reynolds one of the others on your list?"

"I'm not supposed to say, but I can suggest that you talk with her."

"She's in the group," Nikki smiled.

"So let's talk," I said. "Let's assume that my Nikki runs up into the senior level on these tests. Are you suggesting that she's in a position to graduate from high school in the spring?"

"Don't get your hopes up, Dan, because she HAS to get placed in the twelfth grade, and then take the state high school exit exams next spring, and if she does both of those, plus the grades in the classes she takes, then, yes..."

Squeal! And I got a very unrestrained hug.

"You've given my wife reason for rejoicing," I said.

He smiled. "Of course, the down side to this is that we lose what one of her teachers calls 'a heck of a teaching assistant' in some of her classes."

"Well, here's your report card. Might be your last one as a sophomore, Nikki." He passed her the print-out.

Nikki took it and handed it to me.

He shook his head. "Y'all didn't even open it."

"Straight 'A's'," she smiled.

"Why didn't you do this last year, Mizz Nikki?" he asked.

Her eyes went to mine, then she looked at him. "Didn't matter what I did last year. Wasn't gonna get any better or worse. This year, it matters."

"Long story," I said.

He stood up. "I hate to cut the meeting short, but I need to talk to another couple of students."

I stood and shook his hand. "We certainly thank you for the effort, Mister Garrod."

"Wayne," he said, "And it's my pleasure."

We opened the door to walk out and I recognized the people in the waiting room.

Squeal! "Hi, Maddie!"

"Hi, Sherry!" I said. "Where's Larry?"

"Forty miles out in the Gulf on a supply boat!"

"Bad luck!" I said.

"Yeah, I wish he was here for this. But this isn't the first time I'v had to do one of these things by myself." She touched Maddie's hair. "At least it's not 'Mizz Reynolds, do you wanna guess what Maddie's done THIS time?'"

"Moo-oommm!" Maddie said. "Not since the sixth grade!"

"Miss Madison, Mizz Reynolds?" Mister Garrod called them in.

"Seeya, Maddie!" Nikki said. "Later!"

I had to leave Nikki at school. I drove back to work. Steve was dying to know what the meeting was about.

"I married a high school sophomore. I have a very strong suspicion that in three weeks she'll be a senior."

"Nikki? Little brown-haired girl?"

"The one and only. I married 'er for her brains."

"B-but she's in the tenth grade..."

I recounted the conversation. "Buddy, if she wasn't in high school, she could be running this office. There's not a day that goes by that she doesn't amaze me."