Chapter 14

The sun was low in the western sky as Susan headed for Spearfish Lake after her first day of college. It had been a long day, although hardly an impossible one, and her initial impression was that the classes were going to be easier than the ones she'd taken in Germany. The one class that seemed it might offer a challenge was the English 101e course, the Research and Design course, and right from the beginning, at least some of it seemed to be rote memorization of some pretty inflexible rules. College papers, she learned, needed to follow certain formats to be acceptable, and it was a format a little different than the newspaper writing she was accustomed to. However, it wouldn't be greatly different from what she already knew – at least part of the general thinking seemed to be mirrored in some of the things she had learned in Germany.

All in all, though, Susan's impression of Riverside Community College from the week before still held: it was a Hauptschule among colleges, maybe a Realschule in some ways, but probably not a Gymnasium in many respects. On the other hand, it was in several respects a step up from Spearfish Lake High School, so she had little reason to complain – at the present, anyway.

It felt good to turn in at her house and park the car in the driveway. There was only a two-car garage, so it meant that she was going to have to park her car outside, which she knew from Henry's experience years before would be a pain in the neck. Tiffany hadn't had that problem: she'd mostly driven a dogsled to school when there was snow on the ground, a legend that stuck to the family even though Susan barely remembered those days.

Susan carried her books inside; now that she had the syllabus for each of her classes except for the one she had to take on Thursday night, she figured she might as well get ahead on her reading, not that it seemed it would be terribly difficult. Her mother was waiting in the kitchen, working on dinner, which obviously wasn't ready yet; her father was sitting at the kitchen table going through the mail. "So," she asked, "how was your first day in college?"

"Alles ist in Ordnung," Susan shrugged. "I don't think I'm going to have any real problems. So did you get the paper out all right?"

"It went a little easier than normal, for some reason," her mother shrugged. "Of course, Anissa had the paper full of sports. You'd think that the football team struggling to edge the weakest team they'll play all season was about as big a news story as the World Trade Center going down."

Her father shook his head. "I don't think I'd mind wasting that much space on the football team if I actually thought they were going to do any better than, oh, two and seven, but the readers seem to insist on it, so I guess it doesn't matter."

"Well, if I get a vote, it's 'don't care, '" Susan shrugged. "Maybe less positive than that. I'm just glad to have put school sports behind me along with everything else from there."

"I can understand that," Mike told her. "Harold called today, and we had a little talk about your pulling out of school. No real news or anything, but he's sort of wondering what Gingrich will say when he finds out."

"You know, that doesn't really concern me," Susan nodded. "I wouldn't be surprised if he tries to make trouble, but I'm not sure there's any trouble he can make, now."

"You might lose the school's contribution to your tuition, but if it happens, it happens," he replied. "If Gingrich gets snotty about it and manages to get it taken away, then there might be some grounds for a lawsuit, but the amount would be so small that it doesn't seem like it would be worth it. Anyway, Harold said he hates to lose you as a student, but he thoroughly understands why you did what you did, and doesn't blame you in the slightest."

"I hate the idea of causing trouble for him, but I don't want to bring down more on me," Susan replied philosophically.

"Well, that's understandable. Sometimes the best thing you can know is when to run. I think you're going to come out ahead on this deal."

"I hope so," she replied. "So, just out of curiosity, did you find out any more about Gingrich?"

"Not really. I've been a little too busy concentrating on the regular stuff, but now that I have the paper out I'm going to look at it a little harder. I got to thinking about it, and I know George Battle never throws any of his board papers away. He wasn't one of those who supported Aho and Gingrich, so I wouldn't be surprised if he still has a copy of the resumé and maybe the investigation report on him."

"Sounds like it could be a lead."

"It could, but George has been out of town, some kind of business conference, I'm not clear on what, so I haven't been able to find out anything, and I may not until the weekend, maybe the first of the week." He pointedly changed the subject and asked, "So, do any of your classes look interesting?"

"More or less," she said, a little disappointed at the lack of progress. "The English 101e is probably going to be the most difficult since I'll have to learn to do a few things in a different way, but I don't see any real problem with it."

An hour or so later Susan was in her room, reading through her European history book. The content was considerably more detailed than had been discussed in class, although there was little there that she wasn't familiar with. She realized there was a subtle danger in that – she didn't dare take anything for granted. It seemed likely that the teacher was going for something in his own way, and she didn't want to miss that.

She was just getting into reading about Rome when the phone rang. Her mother beat her to it out in the living room, but in a moment she heard the call, "Susan! It's for you."

It proved to be Megan. "Hey," her friend said, "are you all right, or what? I haven't seen you in school at all!"

"I'm just fine," Susan said, thinking that it probably still wasn't a good idea to get into the problems with Gingrich, but figuring that she couldn't put off telling her friend the truth any longer. "But you're not going to be seeing me around school this fall. I'm taking a full load of classes down at Riverside Community College."

"College?" Megan said, clearly interested. "I didn't know you were thinking about that!"

"It happened pretty quickly," Susan explained. "There aren't many classes I could take over at the school that mean anything or that I hadn't already taken. I didn't feel like wasting the year, so I managed to get signed up for classes there."

"You mean you're not going to graduate from high school?"

"I already did," Susan smiled. "In Germany. When I understood a little of what that meant, it made a diploma from Spearfish Lake High School seem pretty pointless. I'm still registered at Spearfish Lake, but I'm going to have enough work with my college classes and working for my mom and dad that I don't expect to be around the school much."

"You mean you're going to be skipping school?"

"Pretty much," Susan grinned. "I only have one class at the school and I've already passed it, so there's no reason for me to hang around there when I have other things I can do. It doesn't count for much of anything anyway. Since I already have a high school diploma, what do I need another one for?"

"Wow," Megan said. "I sure never expected that!"

"Well, I didn't either, but it makes more sense to me than wasting a year. I'll almost certainly have to go to college somewhere else next year, but I haven't figured out where yet. It could be in Germany, I don't know yet." Susan didn't want to get into the details, especially about the trouble with the school superintendent, so she changed the subject. "So how did it go with you and Jimmy Friday night?"

"Not too bad," Megan replied. "You know, you were right that nobody goes out to that road end. We didn't see a soul. We had a pretty good time and it felt pretty good, too. We didn't, uh, get all the way, but pretty close, if you know what I mean. Maybe next time, maybe not, I don't know yet."

"Well, just have fun. If it's not fun, then it's not worth it."

They talked a while longer. Megan didn't say a great deal more about what had happened with Jimmy, but from what Susan could pick out it seemed as if things had gone reasonably well. Maybe Megan was getting that issue sorted out in her mind; if so, good.

Mostly they talked about people they both knew at the school. In the two days it had been in session, Megan had made contact with a most of her friends and had done a lot of catching up, and she passed a lot of her news on in the conversation. Susan was only half interested in the topic; for the most part she hadn't had much to do with those kids for a year, and probably wouldn't have much to do with them in the future. There was a lack of interest on her part although she tried to indicate to Megan that she really cared.

The conversation finally slowed to a halt, and they ended the call. Susan turned back to her European history book, but her mind really wasn't on it. Megan was a long-time friend and they shared a lot – but they were following different paths now, in fact had been doing it for a year and it seemed logical to think that they wouldn't get any closer in the future. While she hoped to keep Megan as a friend, they just didn't have as much in common as they had once had.

It was bound to happen, Susan thought, as she tried to get her mind back onto the textbook. It's just happening sooner than I expected. Spearfish Lake High School was behind her now, for good or bad, but Riverside Community College lay directly on her road to the future. She'd try to keep up her relationship with Megan because it was good to have a friend, but like a lot of things in Spearfish Lake, their friendship would probably wind up having to stay in Spearfish Lake.

It was back to the past on Wednesday morning, the familiar job of getting the papers mailed out, the usual addressing and bundling, and gossip among the Record-Herald staff. By now most of the staff knew that Susan was going to Riverside rather than the high school, and unlike many others, they had a pretty good idea of the reasons why. So, for at least a little while the conversation was about Susan's brief experiences there, and it morphed over into stories of other people's first days in college.

Susan was especially proud that morning, since her photo of the balloon lifting the sail at Windmill Island was on the front page – and in fact, big and prominent on the front page, the lead photo. What's more, her story and color photos on the lifting of the windmill components, and the windmill house in general took up all of the back of the "A" section. There was only one change that she could see that her father had made to the story: Susan hadn't bothered with a byline, but he'd somehow found the room to add By Susan Langenderfer-McMahon, Record-Herald Staff before the lead of the story. It wasn't the first time she'd had a bylined story in the paper, and she knew that some of her reports from Germany had eaten up a page – but this was honest reporting, and it was the first time she'd been referred to as a staff member. Somehow, that made it extra special.