Chapter 7

Susan was feeling at least a little better when she drove the Cavalier back downtown. She really hadn't made up her mind about where she wanted to go to college, although she was pretty sure it wasn't going to be to Riverside, anyway. It was one of those things that she had to make up her mind on in the next few months, but for now her options were still pretty wide open.

She was aware of the fact that most kids spent a lot of time in their junior year working on that issue, at least investigating the options and narrowing the field down. That was one thing she hadn't been able to do in Germany, and she'd barely given any thought to the issue. Indeed, about the only thinking she'd done about this since she'd been home had come from meeting Dr. Hartwell-Harris at the open house on Saturday. From the little bit that she'd talked with the professor, Weatherford College seemed to be an option and might be interesting; she knew that several kids from Spearfish Lake had gone there over the years, and from that she knew a little about the place.

Weatherford College was a private school, and from what she knew a pretty good one with a good reputation, and that was good. However, it was also supposed to be pretty expensive, not exactly a Harvard or equivalent, but still not cheap.

One of the real downsides to Weatherford, at least as far as Susan was concerned, was that Weatherford wasn't very far from home – about seventy-five miles, about an hour and a half drive, a little too far for a daily commute. Even Dr. Hartwell-Harris didn't try to commute; Susan's mother had told her that Dr. Hartwell-Harris had concentrated her classes into three days a week, and stayed in a tiny apartment not far away for the two nights needed to limit the commuting. That probably wouldn't be an option for her; she'd be expected to stay in a dorm on campus.

In one sense of the word that sounded interesting – she'd be more on her own that way, although Henry's stories of his year of dorm life at Central Michigan University made the place sound something like an Animal House. That was something she wasn't really sure she wanted to deal with. On the other hand, dorm life sounded interesting in a way, and might have its points, but it might also make it more difficult to study. It needed some research.

Another downside to Weatherford being so close to home was that, well, it was too close to home. It would be easy for her parents to drop in on her, and Susan thought that would make it difficult to have a more active sex life than she was willing to allow herself in Spearfish Lake. If she wanted to have something on the order of what she'd enjoyed in Germany, it would be much too easy for the rumors about it to get back to her parents, especially if there were other Spearfish Lake kids going there. It was better to do something like that far from home.

At least it wasn't a decision that had to be made right away, she thought, dragging her mind back on track. First things first. If it hadn't been for the business about her year in Germany not counting toward her graduation, the idea of spending part of her senior year taking classes at Riverside would have been a good one. It was much better than the idea of having to sit around Spearfish Lake taking classes like Spanish I, art appreciation, and weight lifting. However, two years of that horseshit, and not being able to graduate with the kids she'd gone to school with all her life except for her year in Germany, well, that really sucked. Sucked big time! And to have it dumped on her because she was the daughter of a prominent citizen in the community just so that asshole Gingrich could make points, well, that was what really made it stink!

The more she thought about it, the madder she got, so by the time she reached the Record-Herald office she was seething. She walked in the front door, to find her father and mother waiting for her. "We know," her father said before she could open her mouth. "And we think it sucks just about as bad as you do."

"What really pisses me off," she announced, "is that he thinks that he can slap a kid down from an agreement that's already been made, just to prove he's the boss."

"Me, too," Mike said. "But let's not discuss his ancestry and habits out here in the front office. Let's go back to mine and close the door."

The three of them went back to his office. When Susan had been a little girl the office had been in a ramshackle building located at the corner of Central and Third, but they had not been utilizing all of the building, and it was difficult to heat and a firetrap besides. Several years before, the whole operation had been moved to the old Marlin Computer store on Lakeshore, which had been a pizza joint before that. Somehow, her father's office had wound up growing out of the deal, and there was plenty of room for the three of them to sit down, which there hadn't been in the old building.

It turned out that both Susan's father and mother were pretty much aware of the discussion Susan had with Mr. Hekkinan, who had apparently called them back after she'd left the office. There was no need to go over the points again, but they did anyway, and at least everyone agreed that the idea of her attending Riverside Community College at least took some of the sting out, even if it wasn't a perfect solution. "I suppose this isn't the best thing a parent could suggest," Mike grinned, "but if you managed to schedule your classes right, you might not have to spend much time at the high school, anyway."

"That thought had crossed my mind," Susan said. "I really haven't thought about it very much, but I might be able to get away with only spending a couple hours a day taking Hauptschule classes around that stupid Realschule. At least that would limit the amount of time I'd have to put up with getting my nose rubbed in the fact that I was a good student and worked very hard to do the exchange year, just to get shit on for doing it. I wish the hell now I'd never come up with the idea of doing a junior year abroad and just held off another year so this shit couldn't be used against me."

"I can't say as I disagree with you," Kirsten nodded. "And what really irritates me is that part of the reason the school agreed to your going your junior year is so you could bring some of your experiences back to the school. Well, a lot of thanks we got for that."

"No shit," Susan sneered. She usually didn't swear around her parents much, but this was a special situation; everybody was pissed and trying not to let it get too far. "I'll damn well tell you that, if there was a way I could avoid having to spend another minute in that stupid place again, I'd take it."

"I sure can't blame you on that," her father replied. "In fact, the first thing I thought about when I heard about this was to tell you to just not go back there, whether Hekkinan is a friend or not. Maybe explore the idea of sending you to Albany River, or maybe just get you into a home-school program. I think most of your credits would transfer there, and you could take a few tests and be done with the damn thing so you could go on to college."

"It sounds like a wonderful idea," Susan said. "Like I said, I don't care if I never walk in the place again."

"It sounded like a wonderful idea to me, too," Mike said. "And it may be something we have to do. But if the goal is to get you into college a year early, well, I think for practical purposes, we're too late. It would be very difficult to get you into a real college at this late notice. I don't think we could even pull off Weatherford, probably not even with Myleigh's help. It just takes too damn much time, and that's one thing we don't have. But Riverside, on a dual enrollment? There's plenty of time for that, and I like the idea that the school has to pick up at least part of the toll. Even if you're not taking a full load, you get a head start on getting some credits, and that could be useful on down the road."

"Well, yeah, I can see that," Susan said. "I mean, this was going to be a pretty much wasted year anyway. That gains back a little, but if we can't do anything about it that means I'll have to spend another year at Riverside or something just to get a goddamn piece of paper from Spearfish Lake. Somebody ought to kick that goddamn Gingrich's ass."

"I agree, somebody should," Mike said. "But I don't think I have to explain to you why it can't be us, at least not over this issue. That doesn't mean that I'm not going to keep a very close eye on him. And I would point out that if we file a lawsuit against him, it will limit the things we can say about him in the paper on other issues."

"I sure would like to know why Glenn Aho thinks this Gingrich joker is such a big deal," Kirsten said sarcastically. "I know Glenn sold him all around the school board like he was the Second Coming or something."

"I sure would, too," Mike said. "I didn't hear as much about it as I should have. The Lindemann kid we had in here as a junior reporter should have been telling me more about it, but as a junior reporter he was about as useless as any I've seen since I've been here, and that was pretty damn useless. I don't know if I mentioned him, Susan, but I canned him the first of the month after only three months on the job, so I'm back to doing both jobs again."

Susan was well aware of what that meant; it was a fact of life around her family and the Record-Herald. For as long as anyone could remember, the weekly newspaper had hired kids more or less straight out of journalism school, or occasionally elsewhere, to fill in the scut work of reporting around the place. Mike had started at the Record-Herald as a junior reporter thirty years before, and the guy who had hired him had started there as one twenty years before that; he hadn't been the first of the series, but that was as far as institutional memory went.

The problem came up when they hit periods between junior reporters. Usually that meant Mike himself had to fill in to get the work done, sometimes with a little help from Carrie, and in those periods he'd been spread pretty thin. While Tiffany had mostly escaped the duty – writing wasn't exactly her strong point – both Henry and Susan had pitched in during those times; indeed, Susan had covered her first fire for the paper when she'd been in the fifth grade. She knew she was going to miss the duty this week, especially with this Gingrich deal happening, but in another week she was likely to get pressed into service to help out, not that she particularly minded. Although the Record-Herald was employee-owned, it was still pretty much a family business, and her own family owned close to the majority of the stock, which was at least partly due to their combined high seniority.