Monday, 9 October 2102
“Hi Jenny.” I stood in front of her otherwise empty table, lunch bag in hand, hoping my intentions were clear. “Mind if I sit with you?”
Jenny looked hesitant for a microsecond, and then happy. “Okay.”
It wasn’t exactly a ringing invitation, but I sat across from her and opened my bag.
“Oh.” Tana Kalani’s squeak of surprise was understandable, given my own antisocial preferences.
I took it head-on. “Ever look at your life, see your mistakes, and try to make a change?”
Tana nodded hesitantly.
“She hasn’t bit me yet,” Jenny said with a hint of a smile. “We’ll outnumber her if she decides to start something.”
“She’s not much of a fighter, either.” Tana’s glare cracked at the edges as she settled beside me. “I guess I’ll take my chances.”
“Are either of you two having trouble in physics?” Jenny asked. “I’m having a terrible time with this stuff about air acting like a fluid.”
“It’s not water like water. I don’t care what Mr. Schmidt says,” Tana snapped.
I might have offered a silent word of thanks to the God of Lunch Table Conversation for deliverance from patter about farming, and, Dad, for helping me to see the world providing me an opening.
“It’s only like water in how it flows. I’m doing all right with it, myself. Maybe we could meet up and study sometime?” I know I sounded hesitant, but it wasn’t because the offer wasn’t genuine. It was because I was afraid of being turned down.
Jenny looked at Tana. “Tomorrow after school?”
Tana nodded. “Sounds cool to me.”
*****
Monday, 9 October 2102
“Dad?”
“Allison.”
“Is there any chance you’d pick me up from school tomorrow?”
“Why?” Dad asked. It was obvious he was curious, not unwilling.
“I’m going to study with Jenny and Tana. I heard they could use some help with Physics.”
Dad smiled. “I’d wait all day for you.”
I watched the stars gliding along their slow circle overhead, uninterested in the life of Allison Mackenzie. I thought about the way they always had and always would march on, regardless of any influence or uncertainty.
“You knew this was going to happen.”
“Absolutely not, Kid. I might have hoped, and I certainly wished for it, but I never know what’s going to happen when it comes to you.”
“I feel like I let you down by what I did. I know I let myself down.”
“Perhaps,” Dad admitted. “But you picked yourself back up again. The one outweighs the other.”
“Does it?”
“Allison, do you think I never made a mistake?”
“Honestly, I never really considered the possibility.”
I couldn’t see Dad’s smile in the black of night, but I felt it like sunlight on a warm day. “You’re too young and full of hope to hear all of the ways I’ve turned left when I should’ve turned right.”
“It looks like you did pretty well from where I sit.”
“Perhaps,” Dad said. “But it didn’t come without struggles. Mine might have been different than yours, and yours are different than everyone else’s, but we still find a way to get through them.”
“With style?”
“Not always, Kid. They don’t give any extra points for that. Integrity’s what matters.”