Chapter 7

We awoke to the alarm set a little earlier than normal. Morning ablutions out of the way, breakfast was a couple of bowls of cereal, then we both sipped a cup of coffee before I filled my travel mug and headed out the door with a kiss on my lips and adoration in my heart.

I had my day planned out. A stack of reports was sitting on my desk, important, to be sure, but nothing that I couldn't give up at the drop of a hat if I was needed at school with Nikki.

Made it all the way to eight-thirty when the cell phone rang. I looked at the display: Nikki.

"Hey, baby," I said. "Trouble?"

"A little. The office staff is confused. I need a parent's signature. I showed 'em my marriage license, and they still say they need an adult..."

"I'll be there in half an hour or so, baby," I said.

"I'm sorry, Dan," she said. "I hate to be trouble..."

"You're not trouble, cutie," I said. "Somebody THERE is trouble. See you in a bit."

"'Kay, babe! I love you!" she said, then the phone clicked.

I shut my laptop down and stuck it in the bag, shouldered it, and one the way out the door, I stuck my head in Steve's office. "Gotta go, Steve. School's givin' Nikki a hassle."

"You gave it a 50-50 chance when you walked in this morning, bud," he said. "Do what you gotta do. An' if she doesn't go back to school today, why don't you bring her by the office? I'd like to meet the girl that snagged you."

"I'll see what happens. Might be back with 'er for lunch." And I walked out the door.

That's the trouble with being an engineer. I mean, you go out there in the field and you deal with things that make sense. You don't have to worry about some committee rewriting Ohm's Law or re-defining the value of pi because they can gain some key votes by it. That's the engineering part. Nice. Logical. Then there's the other world, and it's all too real also: rules, procedures, laws, regulations, all rife with foibles and folly and ignorance and unintended consequences.

I walked into the high school, right into THAT world. First thing was getting past a phalanx of students trying to look as cool as they could while wearing the prescribed uniform. Snippets of conversation were full of "cool" and "yaknow" and "he's like..." and I didn't draw more than a passing glance. My work clothes, after all, in this blue collar town, were pretty standard: Khaki-colored pants, cotton shirt (ironed! Thanks, Nikki!) and normal-looking safety shoes.

Second hurdle: the 'safety resource officer', a policeman assigned to the school as a further sink of my tax dollars. "Excuse me, sir. Can I ask your business here?" he asked.

I wanted to say "I'm back because the first trip through school didn't take," but I didn't. I said, "I need to go to the office and straighten out some problems with my wife. She's student here." That 'wife' admission got an eyebrow raised.

He pointed up the hall. "First door on the right. Uh, you don't have any contraband on you, do you?"

"No drugs, no weapons," I said. "I do have an incredibly devious mind." I cracked a smile.

"You an' me is pikers compared to these kids," he laughed.

"I bet you're right," I retorted as I turned up the hall. I went into the office. There was Nikki, sitting in a chair, hugging the backpack in her lap. When our eyes connected, she stood up, smiling, and joined me at the counter.

"Mizz Nevils, this is Dan Granger, my husband. Dan, this is Mizz Nevils," Nikki said.

"Hello, Mister Granger, did you get a letter about registering Nikki for school after the storm?"

"Uh, no ... The address where Nikki WAS living is a pile of rubble, and we just got married a couple of weeks ago, so I wouldn't've been the one they sent it to, anyway. So, no letter ... what'd we miss?"

"A lot, I'm afraid," she said. "We have all the records from the old school, and we found Nikki's, under her maiden name." She looked at me when she said that. "And we found her schedule, the classes she would've been taking if she was going to THAT school. But I'm afraid we're going to have to change things around."

Nikki said, "I was takin' 'business math'..."

"Nope. You said you've had Algebra I?"

"Uh-huh."

"Mizz Nevils, can we swap business math for Algebra II?"

"I'm glad to hear that. Our business math classes are full. Mostly with kids who're dodging Algebra II because it's much more rigorous..."

"See, Nikki?" I said. "This is where you're supposed to be. What else?"

"Study hall's gonna be out. We converted most of the library to overflow classrooms. We have a couple of options," Mizz Nevils said, referring to a printed page. "Looks like about all we have left is music appreciation or chemistry."

I looked at Nikki.

"We have a library full of the best music in the world," she smiled at me. "Chemistry?"

I smiled back. "You betcha, babe!" I turned to Mizz Nevils. "Put Nikki down for chemistry."

"That gives me a full schedule, Dan," Nikki said.

"We can handle it, little one," I said.

"If this schedule is okay, then I can get you to sign right here, Mister Granger?" Mizz Nevils pointed to the bottom line of a form.

"Nikki can't sign? She's legally married..."

"Oh, I know, Mister Granger. She showed me the license and the court orders and everything. But the rules say an adult, parent or guardian."

"I'm neither parent OR guardian, I'm her husband, and I work with an office FULL of people who'll argue the 'adult' part," I said.

Mizz Nevils rolled her eyes. "Oh, gosh, Mister Granger ... It's been a long day..."

I whipped my pen out and scrawled a signature. "Somebody needs brownies..." I said, smiling.

"This hasn't been a 'brownie' day. This is the kind of day that the cafeteria needs a margarita machine," she said as she flipped through the rest of the forms. "Okay, you're the emergency contact, I have phone numbers, the new address ... I think that's it." She looked up at me, then to Nikki. "I'm sorry we had to call you off the job," she said.

"Let me ask you something, then, ' I said. "Looks like we shot this day. Is Nikki gonna lose anything by coming in tomorrow morning with a fresh start?"

"Oh, no..." Mizz Nevils said. "When you come in, Nikki, come by the office and get your class schedule, and you're good ... Mister Granger, that'll give us time to get it all printed up."

"Thank you, Mizz Nevils," I said. "I hope your day is a little better..."

She smiled wanly as Nikki and I walked out of the office. Walking out as a couple, heads turned. Of course, none of those kids were likely to be able to tell that this was husband and wife and not dad and daughter.

"It's a madhouse, Dan," Nikki said. "Place is full of kids and parenta ll trying to figure out what's going on. I saw Mizz Nevils in tears with one mom yellin'..."

"That's what I figured," I said. "I should've known better than to send you in here by yourself today. But we're straight now."

"Yeah," she said. "But I really strained to get business math instead of Algebra II."

"And where were you going with business math? Lingerie sales at Wal-Mart?"

She smirked. "no, one of those upscale shops at the mall!"

"Cute! Are your goals so low that you thought that was enough?"

"With Mom, I was just tryin' to stay out of the way..."

"You need the higher math for college..."

"College was a dream I didn't entertain," she said. "You're telling me I'm college material?"

"Since the first week we were together, I figured you for college material. The question is more of 'are you interested?"

Those blue eyes connected with mine. "Costs a lot of money, Dan..."

"Not a lot, actually, and I have this delightful wife to spend it on ... Nikki, do you WANT to go?"

We were standing by the truck by this time. And in the high school parking lot, she squealed and threw her arms around my neck and kissed me.

"Yesyesyes!"

"Good!" I said. "Let's go!" I opened the driver side door and she jumped up and scooted to the middle, buckling herself in. We drove out of the parking lot slowly. Two reasons: first, that security officer was staring at us and I darned sure wasn't going to speed, and second, I wanted EVERYBODY to see her sitting beside me.

"So where're we going, baby?" she asked.

"To the office. See if we can't beat Steve out of a free lunch. People wanna meet you, anyway!"

"Are you sure? I mean..."

"Don't be scared, baby. They're just people. I work with 'em every day. They know I'm married now. They just wanna meet my wife."

"How am I supposed to act?" she asked.

"Act like Nikki. Smart. Cute. Friendly."

We kept driving. I listened to her commentary on her first couple of hours in the new school.

"I don't think the regular kids like all us refugees," she said.

"I read where that school's student population took a thirty percent jump. And the school's old an' it was already full. You can imagine what that does to their nice, neat little world."

"I guess so," she admitted. "Still, they don't have to be jerks about it."

"It's gonna take a while, but it'll sort itself out in a while."

"'S gonna be a mess," she said.

"I'll be here for you, baby," I said.

"I hope so," she said. " I made a C in Algebra I last year."

"You're smarter than that."

"D'ya really believe that, Dan?"

"I do, sweetie. And I'll bet your grandma did, too..."

"I made good grades at Grandma's," Nikki admitted. "Wanted her to be proud of me." She ran her hand up the inside of my bicep. "I want you to be proud of me, too..."

"I am. Proud. Happy. Delighted." I smiled at the little dark-headed cutie beside me. She responded by clutching my arm tighter, rubbing her cheek against my shoulder.

"I was thinking about that at school," she said. "Seeing all those kids, it all comes flooding back, you know..." she sighed. "That whole boy-girl highschool mating ritual." She huffed audibly. "Heck, most of those kids are my age and they're so screwed up. Two girls I knew when school let out last spring are showin' ... pregnant..." Dan, she said, "I never wanted that."

"A lot them didn't, either, baby," I said. "So many people just go through life without giving a thought about consequences."

"Sometimes the pressure's too much to give it much thought," Nikki answered. "Like me with that business math. I knew that it was just to fill in a block to get a diploma, and that if I had any ambition, I needed to do the hard stuff, but all I could see was stayin' out of Momma's way and getting out of high school and after that..."

"I understand, sweetie," I said. "I really do."

"I never expected..."

"I never expected that the aftermath of a hurricane was gonna be my Nikki, either ... I ws kind of like what you said, baby, just going through life..."