3809/2801: Drafts

2801
Drafted

Basic Addressing Modes for All

TOC

(You may find this chapter less dry than the previous few chapters. You may also find it a bit contrived -- and technical in a different sense. It's necessary for the plot.

I should point out that both Sapphire and Joe diverge even more significantly from the real world from this point.) 

When I entered the typing lab, Sapphire was sitting in the front row. The desk beside her had a book on it, and there was a pile of books on the next desk over. All the other desks nearby were occupied already. 

She looked up and waved her fingers, and said, "Hi, Joey."

I raised my hand in greeting and replied, "Hi, Sapphire," and turned my feet to the back.

But she was waving me over, pointing to the desk next to her, which was right in front of the teacher's desk where Ms. Wilson was working on something.

So I headed to the front row, after all. 

"But isn't Cyndy sitting here?" I asked.

"Those are her books," she said, indicating the pile of books on the next desk over, and I recognized Cyndy's notebook on the top. "She'll be back by the bell."

"Oh, well, thanks for saving me a place." I put my books down, feeling a little like the proverbial cat in the room full of rocking chairs, and picked up the book she had left on the desk to save my place.

The book cover looked a little old, but still clean. It was about as thick as two issues of Popular Science, but hardcover. Something about the book felt familiar. Curious, I opened it. 

And raised my eyebrows in surprise. "Your annual from our ninth grade year at Hood." I closed it, perhaps too quickly, and started to hand it to her.

"Do you remember what you wrote when you signed it?" 

"Yeah. I ... remember ..." I was stuck for words.

"Well, Mr. Reeves," Ms. Wilson interrupted. "Cyndy said you had something to use for typing practice today."

"Uh," I looked around. "Hi, Ms. Wilson." 

I looked back questioningly to Sapphire. She pulled her mouth to one side. "Hang onto that thought," she said. "And let's see your letter of inquiry."

"You know about that, too?"

"Cyndy had to drop her books off here, you know."

I set the annual down and dug it out of my notebook. "It's just a draft."

"Drafts often need to be typed up, too. Let's look at it," Ms. Wilson said.

I handed it to her and she started reading it.

Sapphire stood up and walked around Ms. Wilson's desk to read it over her shoulder. 

Ms. Wilson nodded. "Mmm. Uh, huh. Good. Mr. Mori knows what he's doing." She put the letter on her desk and get out her red pen. "But let's think about this. And this." She marked several points in red and wrote some comments. "These are other ways to word things. You can choose."

She handed it back to me. "It is a little advanced for your typing practice, but you can take time during the second half of class today to hunt and peck if you want."

"Thanks." 

"Cyndy and Sapphire seem to want to use it for practice, too," she added. "Do you think you'd mind? They'll see your phone number and address, of course."

"No problem. Cyndy's a friend of Hec's and she's already seen it anyway, and ..." Again, I was stuck for words.

"And it's not like it's something I don't know already," Sapphire smirked.

I swallowed.

Ms. Wilson smiled. "And if you wouldn't mind, I'd like to save it and maybe use it in a few weeks for the whole class," she suggested. "It'll be more interesting than the textbook examples. We'll leave a blank for name and address on the spirit master, of course."

I blinked at her. 

"You two could run down to the library and make me a copy."

"Sure. No problem. But," I looked at the clock.

"Hall passes," She grinned and pulled a couple of green cards from a drawer and held them out to me.

Sapphire picked up her annual. 

I said, "Thanks, Ms. Wilson," and grabbed the hall passes and the draft, and Sapphire and I headed for the door together.

"Don't dawdle, and if Cyndy is still in the library tell her to get back to class," Ms. Wilson called after us.

I turned and gave her a thumbs-up as we went through the door. 

"So," Sapphire said as we walked down the hall. "Look at what you wrote," She handed me the annual. "-- and let me see your draft."

I handed her the draft, but I hesitated at opening the annual. 

"I remember what I wrote." 

"Do you?" 

"I was a teenager."

"We are both still teenagers. I like this draft, by the way. Your writing has improved."

"Thanks. I had no idea what I was saying -- when I signed your annual, I mean."

"You had enough of an idea that you went to the trouble to write it in your code."

When I was in seventh grade, one of my older brother's buddies at church had been called to a mission in Japan. I had read his letters to the congregation and noticed the return address written in Kanji, and that had spurred an interest in ciphers, crypts, and scripts. i had turned that interest into a simple substitution cipher using non-alphabetic symbols I made up -- probably inspired by something I read somewhere. And, somehow, I had had the social creativity to give her a copy of the key.

"And you took the time to decipher it."

She poked me with her elbow. "Yes. Didn't you want me to?" 

"I wasn't sure I expected you not to have thrown the key table away." 

"Okay," and she sighed before continuing. "I understand that. I had trouble letting you know I was interested in you. Too. So, do you have any better idea about what you meant, now?"

"I think I understand a little better. My sister and I were talking once, and she explained about crushes."

"Did she now." Not a question. 

We turned a corner. 

"How it's okay to have crushes and it isn't the same thing as what people get married for."

"Which of your sisters was it? I think I'm going to have to have a talk with her." 

"Uhm, ..." 

We stopped outside the library door and she fixed me with her gaze.

"Joey, it's a simple four-letter word. It starts with "L". It's not profane."

I blinked. 

She sighed and tilted her head and gave me a wistful look. "Just please look at the page where you signed my annual."

I couldn't deny her that. 

I opened the back cover. The book cover covered the edge where I had signed it a bit over two years back. I lifted the book cover away.

Beneath the mandatory, almost meaningful message about the past and the future, I'd confessed my ninth-grade feelings for her in that script cipher:

 

Under my confession, there was a line in her handwriting: "When will you tell me this in person?"

"Just so you know," she said, "I did not write that yesterday. I wrote that a couple of nights after the signature party, after I decoded it."

The ink didn't look new, at any rate. 

"We need to see if Cyndy's still here," I said.

"You're stalling."

I swallowed and looked at the floor. "Yeah, I guess I still have that huge crush."

"Crush." She sighed. "You guess."

"I get crushes easy."

"I remember. You could be a little scary that way. That's probably part of why I couldn't quite open up." 

"But, for what it's worth, I've been nursing this one at least since you encouraged me to do my algebra homework in 8th grade."

We turned and entered the library in silence.

"It's enough, I guess," she said quietly. "Two years I've waited." 

She grabbed my hand and dragged me into the stacks.

"Cyndy," she whispered.

Hec's head poked around a stack, followed by Cyndy's.

I chuckled at their expressions. 

Sapphire whispered, "You both look like a couple of cats that have gotten into the catnip. It's time to get to class."

Hec tried to suppress the overly happy look on his face and give me a puzzled look. Tried to.

"We gotta make a copy of my draft for Ms. Wilson," I explained in a whisper.

He grinned. "How Sapphire worked that, you're going to have to tell me some time."

"Maybe, if she and Cyndy tell me. You guys don't have hall passes."

"True. We'd better go." They hurried out of the stacks, holding hands.

"See you guys. Don't take too long," they chorused in normal voices, breaking the stillness of the library. 

The librarian peered around the end of the stack after they were gone. 

I held up the hall passes. "Came to make copies." 

"Right," she said. "I'll go warm up the copier," and disappeared. "Don't be long!" There was amusement in her voice.

Sapphire grabbed my hands, and looked me in the eyes. "And I still have my huge crush on you."

"Even though I'm scary."

"Since the seventh grade. You backed off when you could tell we were feeling creeped out. A lot of guys don't know how to back off." 

I could only nod. 

"I didn't know how to get your attention. You know how guys just seem to like me, and how I had a hard time saying no to the wrong guys at Hood. Anyway, you helped me start saying no. I know I can be trouble, but we need to talk. I need to talk. Two years worth of talk, at least."  

"Five years worth."

She nodded.  

"I'm sorry I didn't follow up. I tried to, but cheerleaders are scary, and I kept hanging up the phone before it could ring on your end because I didn't have any idea what I'd say."

"Cheerleaders are scary." She smirked, then turned serious. "We're often scared to death. You hung up?" She giggled. "I remember getting a few prank calls ..."

"Maybe I wasn't fast enough every time."

"Or, maybe, too fast?" 

I looked down, embarrassed.

She giggled again. "Oh, I know, you were shy."

"Still am." 

"Me, too. I guess we just hide our shyness differently."

We stood, holding hands, gazing into each others' eyes like the teenagers we were. 

She asked, "Can we study together tonight and maybe talk a little? Or a lot?"

"We could do that. Oh, wait, It's family home evening tonight."

She looked puzzled. "What's that?"

"Weekly family time. It's nothing spectacular, but you'd be welcome." 

She grinned. "I'd like that. Let's make this copy and get back to class."

Making three copies of the draft letter didn't take long. We held hands on the way back. Didn't talk much, didn't walk too fast. I was overloaded, couldn't think of anything to say. But I wasn't complaining. And neither was she.

Just outside the door, she held me back and said, "By the way, there's something Cyndy and I would like some help with. I think Hec's going to help. It's entirely up to you, though."

"I can't agree or disagree if I don't know what it is."

She looked in the door. "Uh, oh, Ms. Wilson's starting timed practices."

We hurried in. 

After twenty minutes of timed practices, Ms. Wilson let us do free practice. Cyndy and Sapphire and I worked quickly through Cyndy's notes and Hec's draft letter to RCA, and Cyndy created her own draft to Intel.

Cyndy commented, casually, "Hec says he can do the cheer dance club after school." 

Sapphire replied, "That's great." She looked up from Cyndy's draft. "Isn't it."

I raised my eyebrows and looked back down at the draft. "Sure. Sounds fun."

"Good." 

Ms. Wilson gave us some pointers, and Cyndy started typing her draft. I started in, trying to touch-type instead of one-fingering. 

And Sapphire typed a copy of my draft. 

"Are you really okay with helping us with the cheer dance club?" she asked quietly.

"You never found out how much I like to dance."

"Oh. Nice." 

 "But I get kind of wild."

 She snickered. "Now I'm trying to imagine that."

"And I'm not that good at line dancing."

"That's okay, we can practice." 

"I'm driving today, and there are newspapers waiting to be delivered at my house. How long is your practice?

"We keep it under forty-five minutes. Will Rick mind waiting? Street clothes are okay today."

I nodded. "We'll ask him."

Sapphire borrowed Cyndy's draft to type for more practice while Cyndy typed a copy of Hec's, and I continued typing on mine.

We were done a little before the bell.

Cyndy said, "We don't want to put too much pressure on Rick to join." 

"Oh, yeah, he claims he doesn't dance," I replied. "But let's ask. If he doesn't want to help, he'll say so." 

At the bell, Cyndy left quickly.

Sapphire waited for me to collect my books and we left together. 

Rick saw us in the hall and waited. 

Sapphire seemed to pick up on his pensive mood. 

"Hi, Rick," she said, cheerfully.

He grinned a little darkly. "Well, hello you two love-birds."

She grinned back, then gripped his upper arm. "Hmm. Yep. I think we should recruit you, too."

"Recruit? Me?" Rick took a step back.

"We are being drafted for cheer dance." I raised my hand to slow down the response I saw coming. "Cyndy and Sapphire kept talking about needing guys all during typing class, in between working on the drafts."

Sapphire turned and wrinkled her nose. "All during class."

I grinned back. "Okay, we did talk about a few other things."

She laughed, and Rick chuckled darkly.

"I'm not going to guess what else you were talking about. Shoot. I should give you my draft to type up. Tomorrow?"

"We can ask Ms. Wilson if we can do it again," Sapphire suggested. 

"So what about your newspapers, Joe?"

"I'll can the paper route sit for an hour."

"Just an hour." Rick's mood shifted somewhat.

"Forty-five minutes," Sapphire said, and turned back to me. "And you are sure that's okay?" 

I shrugged and gave her a lopsided smile. "I can do the route faster when I'm motivated, and they give us until 5:30." 

I turned back to Rick and said, "Are you okay with this? Won't be late for work?"

He thought for a moment, and measured his words. "I've got a little time before work. You're driving today. I guess I have to tag along."

"I can drop in on their practice tomorrow to check it out, and walk home."

"Yeah. No. I'm going to see this. Tomorrow will be tomorrow." 

He raised his fist for a hesitant bump, and I returned it, not putting too much energy in it.

He grumbled, "We can call this an adventure." 

(You thought fist bumps were a recent thing, didn't you? I don't remember knowing who Fred Carter was, but Joe seems to have found time to watch a bit of basketball on the little black and white TV he bought with newspaper money at sixteen.) 

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