Chapter 24

Nikki's turn:

You know, when I saw Cindy in her graduation robes, at first I had a little pang of jealousy. A little pang. And it went away. Fast. Because first, you can't look at Cindy and be mad. She's like this little angel. Okay, cherub. Nope, cherub doesn't work. Every time you see a cherub, they're chubby, and Cindy is NOT chubby. I think I heard her Dan say 'pixie' and honestly, if she was dressed in a forest green outfit with pointy shoes and a hat, you could put 'er in the dictionary next to the definition of 'pixie'. That's if the definition of 'pixie' included world-class brains.

But you know, it's just a random event that she graduates first and I graduate last, with Tina and Susan in the middle. And Cindy has already gone to Auburn for interviews, and I'm supposed to go talk to the same people the first week of June. And I will be a high school graduate come Saturday night.

I was wowed by the house that Cindy's foster mom and dad live in. I think I could've come up with "Like Tara, with better plumbing" too. I could picture it as a fixture from before the Civil War. It wasn't, though, and instead of slaves, Mister Charlie's housekeeper was a marvelous black lady named Eletha who has a daughter in law school. I know this because I had to go visit the kitchen before dinner.

"Nikki, child, you don't have to help. This is what I do," Mizz Eletha said.

"Yes ma'am," I said. "But I learned to cook from my grandmother and she told me that helping in the kitchen was a good way to see how people do things."

She smiled at me. "Baby, it's a little late now, 'cuz everything's almost cooked." But that didn't stop her talking about how she did the roast.

"Sounds like my grandma," I said. "She never wrote down her recipes."

"I don't either, baby," she said. "But I could. They's gonna look like stories with food in them, though."

"I think that would be fun to do," I said. "You ... we oughtta try it."

"I just might. Want me to send you one?"

"I'd love it."

Mizz Eletha finished the platter with the roast on it. "You wanna grab a couple of pot-holders and bring that casserole in with me?"

I did that, and then I heard Cindy holler, "Nikki, come sit with us!"

I joined the bunch in the sitting room. Giggled. My 'room' to sit was Dan's knee. "I'm sorry. I smelled the kitchen. Had to go see how y'all do it here."

"Little girl," Mister Charlie said, "If you saw Eletha in the kitchen, you SAW how we do it. Or you could watch Helen. I have to put a rope on her leg to keep her out of there when Eletha's at work."

Mizz Helen sniffed. "I wasn't raised to let somebody else do my housework. No matter HOW nice they are. Or how good they cook."

That started another line of conversation. I guess that out of the sisterhood, I'm the most adept in the kitchen. Tina does some stuff, and Cindy giggles about peeling the plastic off of TV dinners. Susan says she's done stuff using a recipe book.

"Good cookies, too," Jason said.

Cindy leaned away from her Dan and whispered in my ear, "She's gonna kill 'im on their honeymoon."

I giggled.

"What's so funny?' Susan asked. I know the conversations we've had on Skype, the four of us, and I'm pretty sure Susan knows what Cindy whispered.

"We think you two are a cute couple," I said. Cindy's head bobbed in support of my fib. Susan twisted and gave Jason a little peck on the cheek.

"That's cute," Mizz Helen said. "And in a whole roomful of cute, that's cute!"

"Thank you, Mizz Helen," Susan said.

Susan's in love. She's had a whole lot different life than me and Cindy and Tina, and that's really interesting to think about. I have wondered what it would have been like to have a mom and dad and stable home life like Susan did. I talked to Dan about it.

"I understand how you feel, little one," he said in that gentle way he has when we talk about some of my feelings. "But you can't go back and change a single thing. All you can do is deal with your feelings and how they color what you are today and in the future."

"Philosopher. I fell in love with a philosopher," I told him that day. And then I kissed him silly.

But Susan, she's a product of that whole gristmill of high school love and dating and stuff. I know some of her story, about some of her dates, and I know that for Susan to still retain her virginity, there's character behind that cute, plump, bubbly exterior that is real strength. That she stepped out of the world of high school boys and saw what she thought was important in Jason, poor ol' funny Jason, that's some common sense, too. Because I've heard about Jason as well, and he's lucky. So's she.

Okay, I expected the actual graduation to be chaos, and it was. I mean, three hundred kids graduating, so there's three hundred families crammed into the civic center, actually the sports arena part, and it's loud and unruly and I'm not being snotty, you understand, because it's Alabama and a bunch of rednecks. Nope. I expect exactly the same thing on Saturday for my graduation. The rehearsal was bad enough. At least I get to sit on the stage with the VIP's because I'm considered sort of special.

Oh, this year IS special. First time I've made straight 'A's' in high school. And that's in six week as a sophomore and the rest of the year as sort of a senior.

But today is Cindy's day in the sun. Well, one of 'em, anyway. I suspect that Cindy will be in the spotlight plenty more times in the future.

Ding! Sometimes my mind does that to me. I'm in the middle of life, just rolling along, soaking up conversations and feelings and sights and sounds and my brain goes 'ding!' and I'm somewhere else. This time it's Dan's (MY Dan, not Cindy's. hee-hee) fault. He brought home an out of date bit of control technology from an upgrade project, and showed me how the software works and how to program it.

I told Cindy. She squealed, "I've done THAT!" and she launched into a story about a day she'd spent on her Dan's project and how one of the other engineers showed her how some of that control programming worked. "And you got a little one to play with at HOME? I'm jealous!"

She didn't stay jealous. I set up a port to put it on the internet so she could get to it from Alabama. When I showed Dan, his first comment was "How in HELL did you know how to do that?" I smiled.

"You told me I could do THIS. And THIS. And then it's a matter of setting up behind our firewall and there it is."

I just finished high school technology with a four point oh grade. I showed Coach Stanley my link to that controller at the house a month and a half ago and even HE was impressed. Coach Stanley is our number two football coach. He doubles as our school's technology teacher. He's not impressed by much geek stuff but when I pulled up the command line on the monitor at school and it looked like one of those scenes from a bad sci-fi movie, THAT impressed him. Since I was already using pivot tables in spreadsheets and was fluent in word-processing, he just threw up his hands. "I can't do a darned thing for you, Nikki Granger. Do what you want. Help the kids that need help, and we'll ALL be happy." I told Dan that I needed a few bits of hardware to connect that thing to the real world. He's working on it.

Okay, back to Cindy's graduation. She was actually BEAMING up there on stage. I saw her find her Dan in the VIP seating in the civic center and she smiled and gave him that little finger wave she does, and then she hugged this BIG black guy, I mean BIG!, before she sat down.

The ceremony was a blur. National Anthem, alma mater, speech one, speech two, introductions of academic scholarships, athletic scholarships and a special one for Cindy, "One WEEK in high school". Cute. And it was over.

After the exodus from the parking lot, we ended up back at Mizz Helen and Mister Charlie's house for cake and coffee. Mizz Eletha had done Cindy's favorite carrot cake and it went real good with coffee.

I had to ask Cindy. "Who's that huge black guy you hugged?"

Cindy smiled. "That's Demarcus James. He has a younger brother, JJ, that I rescued in math in middle school so he could play football and get through middle school. Demarcus is cool."

Her Dan laughed. "Yeah, first time I saw him he scared the crap out of me. Six feet seven and three hundred pounds. Told me he had a scholarship for poetry. We talked to them and their mother in the parking lot."

We had a room to ourselves that night at the hotel. Susan was staying in Tina and Alan's room and Jason was staying by himself in his own room, looking all sad and making puppy-dog eyes about it when we checked in. I was happy about that because I meant to abuse my husband. What's more, he was gonna LOVE it.

We got to that stage kind of late, though, because after the graduation and the coffee and cake at Mizz Helen and Mister Charlie's, the mob congregated in the lobby of the hotel for a little bit MORE talking.

Then it was time for a little fun in the hotel room. This wasn't something that Dan and I usually did because we have OUR house, but I listened to Cindy and Tina recount how wonderful it was to get out of those little trailers they live in and get to a place where there's a big shower. We have a big shower at home. The only perk to a hotel room is the unlimited hot water. I still like showering with Dan. We don't ALWAYS shower together, just most of the time.

And then it's bedtime. Lovely, loving bedtime. I remember laying awake some nights when I lived with Mom, listening to the noise from her and one of her men, and I used to wonder what it would be like when my time came. I was kind of scared because I didn't want what Mom had become to happen to me, but at the same time, I had the natural curiosity that goes with puberty. But I had Grandma's voice in my head, too, about chastity and proper behavior and I had the picture in my mind as she shed tears over her daughter who got pregnant by Lord only knows who, and dumped the baby (me) off on her mother (Grandma) to raise while she ran the roads and went through men like disposable napkins.

I think it screwed me up. I think that a hurricane, a collapsed building and a guy who was just decent and guileless unscrewed my head. Suddenly sex became making love and it was something that two people shared because they shared everything in their lives.

My very first sexual experience, the first time I touched or was touched since I was a toddler, that was with Dan. First real kiss. Dan. First everything. Dan. And since that first time, that first glorious night, that first wild week, it just gets better and better. I pay attention to him. I know that if I get to this little spot right under his left nipple, he loses control. And there are a dozen others, some obviously sexual, some that might be taken in a public setting as just an innocent caress, but I know that if I touch right THERE, he's gonna have to wait a bit to walk because he's HARD.

He knows the same things about me. I am susceptible to a gentle fingertip tracing from my hairline down the center of the back of my neck. And he knows it.

And when you take two people who KNOW each other, the results are fantastic.

Know what else? I have two sisters who feel the same way about their own relationships.

But tonight I'm in a hotel room with my Dan and we're both showered squeaky clean and we get out of the bathroom and we're still both completely naked and he takes me into his arms and while he's kissing me, a fingertip lightly touches the back of my neck, just below the hairline.

What a way to get ready for a night's sleep.

I think we were both fighting full bladders, lying in each other's arms, drifting on that sublime cusp between sleeping and waking, when my cellphone rang. Cindy.

"Hi, Cindy," I said.

"I'm not going to even ask what you're doing," she giggled.

"We're NOT," I giggled back.

"Well, wait'll after breakfast. Up the road from the hotel. In half an hour. Everybody!"

Dan was already in the bathroom by now. I heard the noise, then, "Cindy?"

"Uh-huh," I said, getting out of bed.

"Breakfast plan, no doubt."

"Uh-huh," I giggled. "She says wait'll after breakfast..." I pushed past him into the bathroom. "I'm about to POP!"

When I got finished, I met Dan back in the main room, one more nude kiss, and then we got dressed. When we got to the lobby, Susan and Jason were already there, and we arrived just moments before Tina and Terri and Alan,

"Everyone seems to take direction well," Alan said smiling.

Susan's head bobbed. "Cindy."

Breakfast with a bunch of tables pushed together, presided over by Cindy. Funny. Her Dan had been eating here longer than SHE had, but she's the one people remember. The waitresses all knew her. That started the breakfast off with happy noises. We ate good American food and drank good coffee (a little thin. I'm used to Louisiana coffee: (Thick and Strong) and laid out our plans for the trip to Tennessee today.

Eleven o'clock was checkout time at the hotel and we were walking out the door, headed to the airport.

The trip to Tennessee was fun. I'm not exactly an expert on flying, you know (but I'm working on it) so the idea of three planes flying together to Tennessee didn't sound that strange until Dan explained that it was unusual for civilian aircraft to fly in formation. I've seen formation flying, you know, like at air shows. We didn't do anything like that. We stayed in eyesight of one another. Of course that meant that we had to cut way back on the throttle. I giggled when I explained that to Cindy and Tina. "Our plane's a LOT faster."

Of course, both of them have a lot more time behind the controls. Tina has her license and Cindy, well, it's Cindy, you know. If she was old enough to GET a license, she'd HAVE a license.

We watched Cindy take off. Yes, she was in the pilot's seat. She told us to watch for a short-field take-off. She's practicing. And there were only the two of them, her and her Dan, in the plane and it just about JUMPED off the runway.

A bit over two hours after takeoff we landed in Tennessee. Hills! REAL hills. Sorry if I get all 'touristy' on you, but I'm from Louisiana and I have never seen many real hills so watching the terrain slide by five thousand feet below us, I was like a little kid, seeing hills and valleys for the first time in my life.

At Alan and Tina's home airfield, we tied planes down after topping off our tanks. Susan was loaning her car to the mutual transportation effort, so Cindy and I giggled at 'two Dans, a Cindy and a Nikki" in Susan's little car. Nice car, though. I couldn't imagine a home life that would provide a daughter with her own car, but Susan is an only child and her mom and dad both have careers.

I remember when I pointed out the 'only child' with her own car. Susan didn't exactly get upset about the comment, but she did patiently explain that she put in summers and Saturdays at either her mom's office or her dad's business and the car was payment for that. No, Susan doesn't act spoiled. She has that bubbly blonde airhead thing that I honestly think she throws up as camouflage sometimes, but when she's in the conversation about future plans and education and family, and yes, even her impending marriage to Jason, she does NOT sound like a blonde bimbo.

So we have the whole vehicle assignment thing figured out. Since it's the home field for Jason and Susan and Alan and Tina, they have Alan's truck and Jason's truck. We have Susan's car. And I note that Terri is leaving with Susan and Jason. Looks like Alan and Tina get some time to themselves. The plan is for us all to end up at a local restaurant for dinner tonight. Tomorrow night is graduation and we'll do a meal at Susan's house to avoid the madhouse of another high school graduation in another small town.