Chapter 6

Someone was knocking on the door. Lisa went to answer.

"Oh, hi, Annabelle ... Come on in. Harold's getting ready ... I swear ... I think that now that he's spending more time here at the resort, he's forgotten how to dress himself."

Annabelle laughed. "I know what you mean. It was so stuffy at Harriman and Nichols; I never realized how liberating it was to be able to walk around in skin. I almost hated to get dressed this morning."

"Speaking of getting dressed," commented Lisa, "I like your outfit."

Annabelle was wearing a leather bomber's helmet, complete with goggles, a six-foot long knitted scarf, an open brown leather, sheep–fur lined, B3 bomber jacket with a black 'Jenny Everywhere' themed tee-shirt underneath, skin-tight black jeans and laced, calf-high boots. ^‡

"Yes ... well ... Since I had to get dressed anyway, I thought I'd do it in style."

"Excuse me..." Lisa turned and yelled over her shoulder "Come ON. Harold ... you're going to be late. Annabelle is here."

Harold came out of the bedroom to join them; he was wearing a pair of jeans and safari jacket. He and Annabelle were taking the nine high school kids (two more had joined the group since the beginning of November) to the State Capital for a visit of the parliament building as part of his ethics course.

"What will you be doing while we're gone?" he asked.

"I'll be working on my thesis; I want to be able to hand it in at the beginning of next week. Then I'll be able to relax a little; it will be one less thing on my mind."

"If you like, Lisa, I can take some time to type it up for you; things are a bit slow at the moment, with Christmas coming up."

"Would you... ? That would be great."

"No problem at all; at the same time, it would permit me to learn a bit more about your school. I find it fascinating."

"OK; we're off ... We should be back at around six or seven this evening," said Harold.

"All right. Good luck."

As soon as they were out of sight, Lisa drew a pashmina cape over her naked shoulders and walked over to the empty high school. Entering her office, she tossed her cape onto an easy chair, loaded the espresso machine with coffee beans and fresh water and started it up; she figured on needing it a lot that day.

With her first cup of espresso sweetened to her liking, she started by sorting all her reference documents on the boardroom table; the State's requirements for teacher certification in on pile, the State's Charter School Oversight committee' Sunny Acres documents in another, the State high school syllabus and the Montessori high school program in yet another.

Then, picking up her cup of espresso, she stepped back and just stared at the different piles, letting her mind go blank. After about ten, fifteen minutes, she started to see a glowing line connecting all of the piles of documents. Swallowing the last of her now-cold coffee, she went to her desk, opened her laptop and started typing furiously.

Three hours later, she stopped and stretched, then glanced at her word count; she had typed some eight thousand words. She got up and punched the coffee maker for another espresso. She felt quite happy with what she had put down; it was a good lead-in for the main part of her thesis.

Now ... how was she going to attack the next part; proving that both a naturist environment and the Montessori Method, together, were the ideal way of nurturing a teen's potential while, at the same time, avoiding any threat to his fragile ego. She thought of Roy, her latest student.

Here was a boy, living in a happy household with kind-hearted parents who had had the child's welfare at heart. He had gone to a Montessori day-care upstate and then had followed up with a Montessori grade school. Because of his father's job, the family had been obliged to move to a town where there was no Montessori school at all, much less a Montessori high school. After one month in a conventional high school, Roy had run away from home and had made his way more than two hundred and fifty miles, alone, to Sunny Acres, asking to be admitted.