Classes resume
The next day, I listened to Deri describe her scouting adventures and sleepover, and told her about dinner and the movie. Mom and Dad had fun at their party, and as was their custom, gave us each new books to celebrate the new year. That kept us occupied for the rest of the weekend. Mine included a book on photography techniques that my teacher had recommended, so I also spent some time stumping around the estate, trying out a few new things. We went back to school on Monday, and after the adventures of the winter break, I was glad to do so.
Obviously I was going to have a new lab partner in Chemistry, and of course I was a little concerned. Nobody wants to have a partner who slacks off and makes you do the work to avoid tanking your grade. Or is just no good. Imogen had been a great lab partner. But it turned out that I knew my new partner, who was Rain Nelson. And it turned out that Rob Murdock had been placed in the class as well by the upheaval in course schedules. He was partnered with another student new to the class. And, just as he'd warned me, he pressed me to join the Red Cross club. Rob was perfectly nice about it, and I finally agreed just to shut him up. And he was right, it would look good on college applications and wouldn't take much time; the club ran the first aid class in the fall and the lifeguarding class in the spring, since a lot of kids lifeguarded for summer jobs. If there was a disaster somewhere, there might be a drive for donations and if local, supplies to help victims.
My friends had goofed off a bit after I left, ending with hot chocolate before disbanding on New Years Eve. I was glad that I hadn't missed much. "How much longer are you going to be on crutches?" Ari asked.
"Four to six more weeks," I said with a sigh. "There's also rehab and PT to get my muscles and ligaments, tendons, all that back in working order and strong again. I have a suspicion that's not going to be fun either, but it'll be better than being on crutches all the time." Everybody agreed. We started talking about our plans for the week, now that things were more back to normal. I had work, as did everybody else, and everybody had various clubs and activities, and Justine asked Imogen if she wanted to hang out Wednesday after school.
"Can't," she said, flushing a bit. "My father set me up with a counselor to help me deal with everything." She toyed with her fork.
"That sounds like a good idea," Mark said. "Big changes, short time to deal with them. But at least you have a family now."
"You should have told me first, not your uncle," Imogen said to me. There was real venom in her tone. "You promised that I could make my own decisions."
"I'm sorry," I said. "I lost control of the process. I didn't think that anybody else would be notified. It shouldn't have happened like that."
"You don't think," she said angrily. "Now everybody knows what my mom did. He's got another kid now, and they're on a cop's and librarian's pay, two kids in college. I wanted to decide whether to contact my father or not, and I didn't even have that level of control. You rich people. You're used to being able to get out of the consequences with money or influence. But you can't buy your way out of this one, 'Anna'." I was taken aback.
"That's not fair, Imogen," Ari said. "She did you a favor, it wasn't her fault that somebody intervened. She did the best she could, and it was more than anything we could have done."
"The facts are the facts," Jinx said mildly. "Your mom took advantage of your dad. It's pretty admirable, from my standpoint, that he's taken you in, whole family welcoming. It can't be easy for them either. You wanted answers, you got them. He's a decorated and well-respected cop, I looked him up online. You wanted some control over your life, I get that. But what would you have done if Anna hadn't volunteered to help? You were fine staying in their house. Frankly, you should be more grateful."
"I get that you're upset and resentful," I said. "And I can only apologize so much for the way things turned out. I was just trying to help out. But you might want to get off your high horse. Uncle Richard is one of Grandpa Bruce's adopted kids, as you know. That means that he got his share of the family trust when he was Returned." He and my dad had battled back and forth about it, Uncle Richard didn't feel entitled to it because Dad's not his descendant, but Dad was firm, and in the end they compromised on about half a full share, which came out to $250 000 000, really good money even today. I didn't say that, though. "So even though college or university has free tuition, each student is responsible for room and board and expenses, but they're not hurting for money. Joy and Ethan get their share of the Wayne educational trust. You're a Wayne too. That'll be open to you as well. Get used to it, cousin." I reined in my own temper as she had another forced change to her world view. I'd have felt bad for her, and I did, some, but I wasn't going to keep apologizing for the rest of my life. And now that we knew we were cousins, she needed to think about that too, and what acknowledging her parentage meant. "I don't understand why you think I'm going to need to buy my way out of this. I don't know why you think a payoff is necessary." Imogen flushed, grabbed her tray and stomped off.
"I didn't expect that," Justine said. "I mean, some anger, upset, because of her foster father and the whole situation, sure. But I didn't expect her to come after you like that, Anna," she said. Nix patted my shoulder.
"She's got some points. I did promise that she could do what she wanted with the information. She's probably still upset about having her foster father attack her, let alone everything else. But I can't spend the rest of my life apologizing, and I'm not going to feel indefinitely guilty, either. I did the best I could. But she's been your friend a lot longer than I have. I can distance myself if you'd like," I offered, wanting to be fair.
"I can only deal with one friend having intellectual constipation at a time," Ari said. "So don't you be dumb too, Anna. I'm sure that Imogen has stuff to work out, but she's still our friend, you're our friend. You're going to hurt my feelings if you dump us."
"Well, we can't have that," I said, smiling a little.
"Damn right," Jinx said briskly.
"She'll come around," Mark said with a sigh. "It's just more than she can really deal with right now and you're an easy target, Anna. Please don't take it personally, it's a lot to ask, I know. But in a way it's kind of a compliment. She feels on some level that it's safe to take out her mood on you." We stared at him and he blushed. "I took psych last year, remember? Or not, Anna, but we all are kind of interested in the psychology of criminals, so why not? Either that or she's just taking her anger and emotions out on the easy target. She doesn't have a long history with you, it would be easier to lose you than one of us. Either way, you should expect an apology from you after she calms down. I get why she's upset, but she shouldn't be taking it out on you."
"Awesome," I said after a moment, and there were chuckles. I was glad to end my day in photography, where our teacher had cookies as a treat while we discussed the competition, giving our opinions on the images which were still on display, and he explained why ones we liked weren't the most successful. There was one I'd really liked, St Patrick's cathedral at dusk, with snow falling, but it was slightly blurry and the contrast wasn't as good as it might have been, too much negative space.
"Well, I really like it anyway," I said stubbornly. "It seems to draw the viewer in, maybe to explore all that negative space." There was applause and other people started saying why they liked other photographs despite their defects. We still didn't know whose was whose, but that made it easier to critique and admire. Some students had dropped the course, reducing our number to nine, but I liked the feeling of more cohesion. Then we reviewed the syllabus and got our first assignments.
"Donations have been made to the school," our teacher said, looking happy. "So our program gets to share in the bounty. We have funds that enabled the purchase of more film cameras and some additional film, so we have almost enough for everyone."
I raised my hand. "I can borrow a film camera," I said.
"Excellent," he said. "I'll bring in my camera as well, so everyone will be able to have one, and everyone will have one roll of film, 32 exposures. If I were you, what I would do when possible with landscapes and portraits, still lifes, is take a shot with a digital camera, see if you like it, before using an exposure. We won't know what you've managed to capture until we develop it, and we want to use our resources wisely." We'd be shooting on black and white film, learning darkroom techniques as well, and we were given two weeks to complete the assignment of 32 pictures. "Now, during the semester, we're also going to have some guest speakers. Some will be professional photographers, a few will be representatives from colleges and university programs that have photography programs. You might have the interest and ambition needed for a career as a photographer, and these speakers will expand your horizons. Some schools additionally have summer programs, and a few have programs for students who aren't college age, so that might be something to consider. In fact, our first speaker next week comes from an institution that has those programs."
Sounded interesting. After class, I went to work and learned how to check deliveries against the orders and enter the new items into inventory. That was a fun new thing. I loved seeing the new things that we had coming in.
The next couple of weeks passed in comparative calm. Our gallery photographs were bundled up and returned to us by the teacher, so nobody still knew what anybody had done, with the ribbons that had been awarded in the envelopes with the pictures. I put my second-prize photo in the frame I'd gotten for Christmas and hung the ribbons by my desk. Rain wasn't the best chemist, it turned out. There was nothing wrong with his mind, he was quite smart, but he just... I don't know. Wasn't sufficiently dexterous? He wasn't clumsy, though. Whatever, we quickly arranged it so that I would perform the actual experiment, he would record the data as I generated it, and he would do the lion's share of the report although I helped. The lab reports weren't very detailed or long, so it was a good division of labor.
Rob's lab partner wasn't outgoing, spoke little, and kept his focus on the classwork, but on the few occasions when he said anything non-chemistry-related, seemed nice enough. I enjoyed getting to know Rain and Rob better; they were nice, friendly, and fun to talk to. Their dads were both lawyers; after they were Returned, they reupped their bar memberships and took jobs at big law firms to earn the money they needed, then opened their own practice to serve normal people with problems. Rob's dad did the criminal matters, and Rain's dad did the civil side, and everybody was happy. Rob's mom was an ER nurse and Rain's was an office manager. They knew Arch Palmer, it turned out; Arch's mom was an ER surgeon in the same hospital as Rob's mom. Arch had also been looped into the Red Cross club too and they talked about a surgery that had been a spectacular success before our first meeting began. We started planning the lifeguard training; it would be at the school pool and we needed people to run the registration and check-in but we could also take the class if we wanted. I volunteered to help with the check-in since even if my cast was off, my leg wasn't going to be strong enough to do anything.
Somebody'd had a talk with Imogen; she apologized for yelling at me--although not for the sentiments behind the yelling, I noted--and things were patched up on the surface. I'd talked to Dr Lance about the whole thing, and she said that while teenagers don't always think things through all the way, I'd have done what I'd promised if Grandpa Bruce hadn't shown up. And that just went to show that grown-ups aren't perfect either. My urge was to apologize to Imogen again, but Dr Lance reminded me that I couldn't, in fact, apologize indefinitely and that Imogen had to deal with things constructively too. We agreed that it was fine to give her time to get things figured out, though. I was willing to be patient.
Over the weekend, I had my friends out to the house to hang out. We took over the game room and had a lot of fun. Imogen didn't come--she was doing something with her family and Ari had to work, but everybody else came and we had a lot of fun. Well, I did, anyway, and everybody else seemed to too. In fact, I couldn't remember having had so much fun at home with any friends before. Mom and Dad had lunch for us, met my friends, but otherwise stayed out of the way. Deri popped in, cleverly helping with the lunch, because she was curious too, but didn't hang around.
I had a checkup with my doctor and had the exciting news that it was looking very likely that the cast could come off in the first week or two of February. The nerves, so mangled, had fully healed, the tissues were healed and correctly attached, and the bone was fusing really well. We discussed how I'd still have to use the crutches, but he explained the physical therapy that I'd have to do so I could get used to the ideas and know what was in store. Like how much it was going to hurt and how discouraging rehabilitation could be. So just like therapy. I was making progress there, but it was a real struggle to get through the void left by the loss of dance, and I suspected it would be even worse when the cast came off, when I'd really have to deal with regular life without ballet. Right now the cast represented a buffer; nobody could dance with a cast, but when the cast came off, I'd really have to face facts. Intellectual knowledge isn't the same as emotional acceptance.
We had a couple of speakers in photography class, and I was so excited by what they had to say that Mom directed me to the website for the University of the Arts London to check out their short summer courses. The university was composed of six smaller colleges with degrees and programs in everything artistic, and there were university residences for out-of-town students. There wasn't much time before the application deadline, so after negotiation with my parents and consulting my boss, I received permission for a three-week stay, and applied for a three day course in photojournalism, a week long fashion photography course, a week-long course in level one interior design, a three-day course in patternmaking, and a three-day course in set design basics. There were so many possibilities, the six colleges ran so many courses, that it was difficult to narrow anything down. I ended up with quite a bit of overlap on the days; some days there would be classes in the morning and afternoon, some only in morning or afternoon, and several days with no class at all that I could use for exploring. Deri was pretty green with envy, but this was one of the perks of age. I had my boss, my photography teacher, and Uncle Steve send in recommendations to boost my chances of acceptance.