Chapter 39

The World According to Susan:

I am officially ready for a break. It's almost Christmas. I almost hide when I see my math professor. That's okay, though. He almost hides when he sees Cindy.

Jason's right there with me, though. He's tested out of some classes and he's gotten transferred credits for a lot of things he took for his technology degree and if he does a summer semester next summer, he just MIGHT squeeze his way onto stage with the rest of us. I hoping. He deserves it.

We work together, and despite the occasional bit of unprofessional behavior, we are very businesslike and we talk about what we're doing. He's good at it in a way that's different than two Dans and an Alan.

"I've watched Jason work," Dan 1.0 told me one day. "He's good. Really good. Never saw him wrong, and he's come in to run some idea by me to verify a solution to a problem he's found. Knows not only that something's wrong, but why it's wrong. He's a great tech. Gonna be a great engineer. Actually, he already is."

Makes me happy to hear people say good things about my Jason. It's not hard to find them, either.

Now about my sisters. Nikki made a splash at a client meeting. I laugh. I am the first one to be able to actually go to work with my husband. I'm actually getting very good at what we have to do at the substations, but any of us could do that. It's just that I was eighteen when Jason had to do the first ones and I was old enough to go with him. Now Tina's eighteen, and she's gone with Jason to see what his work is all about.

That leaves Nikki and Cindy. Cindy's got a project behind her as The Engineer's Apprentice but Nikki hadn't had an opportunity. Now she'd been inside a facility, even if it was only to a conference room. So in a way, we're even.

That's about the only way. Academically, those two are scary. Tina and I, we're in classes, regular classes, although it's a really heavy mix towards the junior and senior-level courses. It's nice, though, that when things make my head hurt, I can come back home and tap into active resources, you know, two Dans, an Alan, and Cindy and Nikki.

So I'm in class. Just turned in a paper. Guy in the seat next to me says, "Susan, you don't look stressed over this paper."

"I'm not."

"Why?"

"I had it checked last night."

"The professor checked your paper?" He sounded incredulous.

"No. I work with an engineering firm. That's three engineers right there. Three PROFESSIONAL engineers, I might add." (Okay, some days I get feisty.) "And you see that little redhead running around the Engineering Building?" (I wasn't dissing Nikki, not by any stretch of the imagination, but Nikki's one of a herd of dark brunettes. Redheads stick out.)

"Yeah. I asked about 'er. Thought she was somebody's daughter. Or grand-daughter. Cindy something, ain't it?"

"Yes. Cindy Richards. MY sister. Adopted. But my sister. And her friend Nikki, also my sister. Both of them are outside the class progression."

"Heard she's, like, a genius."

"Don't doubt it a bit, buddy boy."

"And they checked your paper."

"Yep. And if I'm wrong they teach me what I need to know. I wanna KNOW this stuff, not just make the grade."

"I do too, but our study group ... we all bog down the same way."

"Want some help?"

He looked at me. Eyes dipped down to my hand, the one with the gold wedding band, then back up. Okay, yeah, stopped for a bit at chest level. He IS a guy, after all. "They'd help me?"

"Here," I said, fishing a business card out of my bookbag. "This is us. Next door to this address is an empty unit we use for a study site. You're welcome to come visit. We do some pretty good stuff on Tuesdays and Thursdays." I watched his eyes again. "And you can meet my husband."

He deflated. I swear I heard the hiss of escaping air. Or ego. Might've been ego.

On the opposite side of me was a girl. "Susan," she hissed, "can I get in on that?"

"Sure," I said. "Here." I passed her a card, too. "Seriously, Tanny," I said, "it's a study place. Not a hook-up joint or anything like that. No alcohol, no drugs, no music. Wi-fi. Printer. Desks. Chairs."

"Good studying is hard to find," Tanny said. "Plenty of guys'll be happy to show me those other places."

"Well, we do study. And we have a safe environment." That was the truth. We did study. The two Dans, Cindy's and Nikki's, absolutely refused to install whiteboards in their apartments, so when one of those two were lecturing in math, we did that in the study space.

I remember the first time we brought in a few people from outside the community for some math help.

"Who did you say is helping?" one guy asked.

"Cindy and Nikki."

"Are they teaching assistants or what? What're their last names?"

"Cindy Richards and Nikki Granger."

"I don't know them."

"They're my sisters. Uh, adopted, but still..."

"So what makes you think THEY can help in this math stuff?"

Tina walked up in the middle of that conversation. "Trust me ... those two sidestepped ALL the engineering math. Cindy was helping teachers with master's level math before she came to Auburn." She got her 'serious Tina' face on. "You don't believe ME? Call Doctor Wilkins or Doctor Ramathani and ask about 'em. They're on a first name basis."

"The math dudes?"

"Yes," I said. "The math dudes. Cindy and Nikki interviewed with them."

"You're telling me that somebody from high school walked into the presence of two college math professors and went toe to toe with them?"

Tina was smirking. The truth of the matter is when it comes to Cindy and Nikki, we love 'em to death, but we're both in awe sometimes. Everybody is. She said, "you might want to know, too, that Cindy graduated high school at fourteen and Nikki was fifteen."

The other guy asking the questions was, "Duuuuude! I've heard about people like that."

"Well, if you actually want to meet one or two, show up on Tuesday evening for the math session."

We do get some activity in our study sessions. We have a few regulars. Jason's almost always there, and the rest of our husbands are quite often sitting in, if it's engineering classes, but they just back off when it's math. And the Desai kids (who are both older than me) come by, but usually we end up with one or the other of them at a table in the corner of the restaurant.

So that's school. I will, repeat, WILL, make an 'A' in every class, even if it means that Jason has to spend some evenings patting me on my head and kissing me and telling me it's all okay.

That's okay, though. I've done the same for him. Yes, the same Jason that's all competence and poise in a substation, in a classroom he sometimes struggles. Well, that is, if you define 'struggle' as 'needs to pay attention'. Yes, he can walk into a substation, hook up a hundred thousand dollars' worth of test equipment and test complex equipment like he was born to it, but the classwork... "Darn it, cutie," he told me on stressful day, "I just wish I could see where this is going to do me good going forward."

"You, husband of mine, will have a piece of paper that says 'Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering' and nobody will ever be able to look at you like you said you've had to put up with before."

"Of course you're right, Susie," he said. He calls me Susie. I let him. I'm 'Susan' to everybody else except my grandma.

"Yes, and you're my wonderfully intelligent and loving husband and we WILL get through this together." I giggled. I have a picture in my head of the two of us getting our diplomas together. He knows it. And we prop each other up. I know that my sisters have the support of their husbands. Well, I know Tina does. Sometimes she needs it.

Cindy and Nikki? Oh, come on. I told Jason one night when we were talking about things, "Those two are raw forces. All they need is direction."

And word of something unusual ALWAYS has a way of leaking out. I was on campus right before the end of the semester. It was my day to pick up Cindy, not that such a task was in any way onerous. She hopped into the front seat of my car, giggling.

"Okay, that's not the normal giggle," I said. "What sort of mayhem lies in your wake?"

"You know how me 'n' Nikki's been doing those math classes at the greenhouse?" 'Greenhouse' was the name we gave our off-campus study hole.

"Uh, yeah..."

"I got a call from Doctor Bren at the math department."

"Oh," I said, "And..."

Giggle. "He accused me of unfair competition."

"Noooo..."

"He was laughing," Cindy giggled. "I think it's funny! But he said that if Nikki and I were gonna do something like that off-campus, why didn't we ask him about how he could integrate us into the on-campus program."

"You're kidding. You're already scaring people at the Greenhouse." Now you need to know that I've known Cindy for almost a year now and I still have episodes where I think I have awakened in a warped episode of Alice in Wonderland and she lives in the same building as we do. I can just imagine how it looks to people who don't live with her.

"So what's he want you to do?"

She giggled again. "I really dunno. He laughed about me and Nikki being TA's. (Auth note: Teaching Assistants). Said he didn't quite have the guts to call us visiting lecturers."

Now it really gets surreal, because we round the corner to pick up Nikki. Nikki, who started giggling when she saw us. She jumped into the back seat.

"I don't wanna hear it," I squeaked, feigning disgust. She knows better. Anything that's good in the life of any one of us is cause for community celebration.

Squeal! "You told her, huh?" she asked Cindy.

Cindy nodded. "Doctor Bren? He called you?"

"No. Doctor Ram called me. So they're collaborating."

"Ram accused me of..."

"Unfair competition..." Cindy giggled.

"Yeah! His exact phrase. "They wanna talk to us before spring semester starts."

"Oh, come on, you two," I said. "What'd they really say?"

"I dunno," Cindy said. "Bren sounded happy, so I imagine it's good stuff."

"Of course it's good stuff," I told them. "How could it be bad? You already skipped all the math in your engineering curriculum."

"Maybe they're gonna take it all back," Nikki giggled.

"Yeah, right!" I answered. "You know, all my life I was used to bein', like, one of the smartest in the class. But y'all, you make me feel like I need a lined tablet and some fat pencils."