Chapter 55

Nikki's turn:

My phone played a sitar riff. I know ... The Desai daughter, Ananta, heard it a while back and laughed. "Whose tone is THAT?"

"Mizz ... Uh, Doctor Patel."

"Of the engineering department? You get calls from her often enough to assign her a ringtone?"

"Mizz Patel is a bright star in my universe," I had told her.

"None of my professors have their own ringtones," Ananta said.

"Mizz Aneeta's not really a professor to me. More like a handler."

"Oh..."

So I answer the phone. "Good morning, Mizz Aneeta."

"Good morning, dear Nikki. Can you come to a meeting with Doctor Stebbins this morning at ten?"

Okay, Cindy just got a call fifteen minutes earlier. Her meeting is at nine-thirty. Naturally I'm more than a bit curious. "Of course. Cindy's going in at nine-thirty. We'll ride together. Is this..."

"It is something good," Mizz Aneeta said, that sub-continent accent throwing me a happy lilt. "I think it's a happy bit of news."

"I'll be there."

"Very good, Nikki. I shall see you soon."

"Yes ma'am," I said. The phone clicked the end of the call. Push the button, hear Siri, say one word: 'Cindy'.

Another happy voice, but, hey, it's Cindy, and it's hard for me to remember her NOT having a happy voice. "Hello, my Cajun sister," she said.

"Your house or mine?"

"Mine! I have cookies!"

Three minutes later she's letting me in the front door.

Giggle. "Little batch. Baked 'em last night!"

I recognized them – Cindy's version of ginger snaps, with exotic spices from Chandra's Spice Box.

"So what's the phone call about?" I asked.

"I dunno," Cindy replied. "Something's afoot, don't'cha think? I think our professors are sort of doing things different lately."

"I noticed a change. Thought it was just me."

"No," said Cindy, pushing a glass of milk towards me. "It's like they just assume that if they give us a textbook, we KNOW it."

"I see that, too. So what are they going to do? You don't think they're changing their minds, do you?"

"Uh, no ... I have my transcript from the end of last semester. So do you. We already have all those credits." She smiled. "They can't take that stuff back. Besides, last week I saw Doctor Stebbins in the hall."

"And Mizz Aneeta said it's happy news."

"Then I think it's time to hang on for the ride," Cindy said. "She sounded happy, but didn't come right out and tell me that."

"Okay," I said. "Let's see ... Susan's got the early class today, so we need Tina." I woke Siri up again. "Call Tina." Then "Hi, Sis. Come over to Cindy's. She's got cookies. The door's open."

Two minutes later Tina's at the table and Cindy's pouring her a glass of milk to go with the cookies.

"Cindy, dahlin', you need to stop this. My jeans're getting tight."

"One cookie won't hurt."

"Four might," Tina said.

I giggled, shoving two more cookies at her. "You have one, here's two more. That's it. And treadmill tonight."

"Better ways to exercise than that stupid treadmill," Cindy laughed.

"Yeah..." Tina looked dreamy when she said it. "So what's up today? Besides me trying to figure out what to do besides treadmill."

"Both of us have been requested to meet with Doctor Stebbins and Mizz Aneeta," I said.

"Together?"

"No, me first," Cindy said. "They won't tell us why, but Mizz Aneeta told Nikki that it's good."

Tina shook her head. "You two are probably being selected for a space mission."

"Nope!" Cindy giggled. "I already told 'em that any space mission I do is gonna have to have Dan on it, too. Got some ideas..."

Okay, sometimes our conversations get a little explicit. That is, until the door opens and Terri and Rachel troop in.

"We thought we smelled you baking last night," Terri announced.

"And we know you saved us some," finished Rachel.

"I did," Cindy said. "You know where the glasses are. Pour yourself some milk."

"What are you two doing today," I asked Rachel.

"Mom's taking us to the library," she replied.

We munched cookies for a bit. Cindy prepared a little plate of them for Beck and another for the office, and then the group broke up. We ended up in the car with Tina and a short while later were walking towards the engineering building.

"Not fair," Tina whined, a feigned move. "I go to class. You two, though, there's no telling what adventures you're getting off into."

I left Cindy waiting in Doctor Stebbins' office and walked up the hall to see which of my professors might be free to talk with me. Doctor Simpson was in his office with his door open. I leaned in. He looked up.

"Oh, for heaven's sake, come in!" he laughed. "You, I don't mind. I just got through with a guy who should be a poetry major, but he's in my engineering classes. I need some relief."

"And I'm relief?"

"You know you are, Nikki. You're at the complete opposite end of the spectrum from that poor guy. You shouldn't be here. You should be out there with your name on your office, doing engineering things."

"We don't have enough offices, Doctor Ken," I said. "'Sides, I have a year to go."

"Little girl," he smiled, "you don't know what you have. You and Cindy, you're doing things, understanding things that I wish I saw in most of my students."

"Cindy's talking with Doctor Stebbins right now," I said. "I'm supposed to meet with him at ten."

Okay, that's a different smile on Doctor Ken's face. I remember Mizz Patel's statement, "It's a happy bit of news."

"Something's up, isn't it?" I blurted.

"I am not at liberty to say anything at this time, Nikki." He's still smiling. "So what's going on with your husband's business?"

We talked about the plans to build a larger office, the burgeoning workload, about the interface box that Cindy and I had sold to Gentech.

"What's the latest rumblings on Tina's daughter?"

"Terri? The pTerri-dactyl?"

"Now SHE is truly scary."

"She's the sweetest little girl imaginable," I said.

"Looks like a little Susan Ellerbee. Sounds like you and Cindy. And she's not even nine."

"Who's talking about her here?" I asked.

"Look, you can imagine the conversations we had when we saw what we had with you and Cindy. Can you imagine what the conversation might be about bringing Terri on campus?"

"We don't know what to do about Terri, and we're her family," I said. "Well, adopted family, but still ... you know. We just let her be herself and hope she uses her powers for good. You guys are educational professionals."

"She's got Doctor Stanton confused, and HE'S the professional here. He says 'prodigy' and I say 'like Cindy or Nikki?' and he shakes his head."

"Wow," I replied. "She IS something."

"What's Tina say about all this?"

"Her evil step-daughter ... Tina loves 'er to pieces," I said. "Terri's not one of those bratty little monsters you see running around everywhere. She's incredibly mature when it comes to dealing with others, but she still manages to be this happy little girl. It's difficult to explain how it works." I told him about the birthday cake and Terri's discussion of anthropomorphic characters in children's literature. From there we went into a discussion of my participation in power system studies.

"Not a lot of ground-breaking going on there," I said. "It pays the bills. You have to depend on the quality of the data collected for the quality of your final product."

"Life," he sighed. "Sometimes the things you do to pay the bills isn't as exciting as you might wish."

"True," I chuckled. "You're getting all metaphysical. Maybe they have an opening for a philosophy class instructor."

"You have a definite evil streak, Nikki," he laughed.

"So I've been told," I retorted.

Another student stuck his head in the door.

"What is it, Mister Bentley?" Doctor Ken asked him.

"Uh ... I'm having trouble understanding what you want with this assignment and the TA wasn't any help."

I stood up. "I'll let you get back to your real work," I said.

"Get me Terri! Fast!" he laughed.

"Be wary of what you wish for," I laughed over my shoulder to Doctor Ken. To Bentley I said, "He's yours." Yeah, Mister Bentley, Jeremy actually, knows me. A lot of people who're pursuing engineering degrees know me and the rest of the Community. We're notorious.

It was drawing up on my ten o'clock appointment anyway, so I walked over to Doctor Stebbins' office and presented myself to his receptionist. She knows me, too.

"He's still in the little conference room with your friend Cindy and Doctor Patel and a few others."

"They ganged up on her?" I questioned.

"Oh, yes, horribly so, I'm afraid. I hear laughter. Hers included. And a squeal. I do seem to remember a squeal. I suppose it's Cindy. I never heard any of the others squeal."

Okay, 'squeal' is a good sign. I've been told that an angry Cindy is ominously silent. I sit down, pull out my iPhone, check email, then immerse myself in a book.

Finally the door opens and a smiling Cindy walks out, followed by Mizz Aneeta, also smiling, and then the horde of old guys, nothing less than a doctorate among them, and they are doing as close to smiles as they can. And Doctor Embert. Not an engineer, rather a physicist. Smiling.

Cindy sees me sitting here and I raise an eyebrow in question.

"I am sworn to secrecy, Nikki." And she bounces, yes ... that 'almost a skip' gait that is signatory to a happy Cindy, and she's up the hall before I can reply.

Five minutes later I find myself seated at the conference table looking at faces I've become familiar with over the last year. Mizz Aneeta is sitting next to me.

"Protect me, Mizz Aneeta. I feel awfully vulnerable."

"You don't have to feel that way," Doctor Embert smiled. "Cindy has already beaten us into submission."

"Well, here I am," I said. "Bring it on."

Doctor Stebbins bridged his fingers, put a little smile on his face, surveyed the other faces at the table and asked, "Nikki Granger, why are you here at my college?"

Okay. Obviously a trap. Nikki, take the defensive approach. "Sir, because I want to be an engineer and you hold the power to confer that title upon me." And I did my bashful smile. Sometimes it works. Melts Dan into a puddle of slag.

Doctor Embert, the only non-engineer in the room sighed. "If only you wanted to be a physicist..."

"That. too," I said. "Kids who grow up in South Louisiana don't get a lot of exposure to whatever it is physicists do."

"You're doing it," she said.

"Engineering, too, I see," Doctor Stebbins said. He surveyed the table. "You see all these people, Nikki?"

"Yessir. I have had the shakes in the offices of every one of them." I got smiles in return for that comment.

"Let me summarize what's been streaming through my in-box and around the coffee machine," Mizz Patel said. "Nikki, we're mirroring Doctor Stebbins' question. Why are you here? Our conclusion is that we'd like you to stay here, but we feel almost silly denying you what you obviously possess, knowledge only slightly attributable to our input into your education."