AN: I'm not sure how accurate this is. I was able to find a list of courses for various auto mechanic programs, but they didn't have a lot of detail and I have trouble finding sources, so a lot of detail is what I could find mix with my experience at community collage. (I know they at least had a metalworking program.) I apologize for any inaccuracies, as I'm sure they're there.
Sam pulled up to into a parking space in front of the building, Reason in the passenger seat, Maudie in the back. The young mom stared out at the building, looking completely cowed. "Reason?" Sam asked, "Hey, you okay?"
"Yeah," Reason answered, trying to shake it off, "Just a little—nervous I guess."
"You're going to do fine." Sam assured her, "You made it this, far didn't you?"
Reason took a deep breath.
"So, uh, you got two classes today, right?" Sam asked.
"Three." Reason corrected him, "General mechanics, automotive breaks, and steering and suspension."
"And, ah, you need to be at work at two?" Sam asked.
"Don't worry, Rawls said he'd come get me to save time." Reason told him.
"Okay, but do you have a ride back for your last class?" Sam asked.
"I'll-cross that bridge when I come to it." Reason assured her.
"Just—call me if you need another ride." Sam requested.
Her stomach too much in knots to argue, Reason nodded, before getting into the back. "Okay, baby, Mommy has to go, but she will be back to get you tonight, okay?"
"Okay," Maudie agreed, as Reason pulled her into a side hug.
"Love you, Baby Girl." Reason told her.
"Love, Mommy." Maudie replied as Reason got out.
Reason walked into the white-walled lobby of the Community Collage, tears in her eyes. She covered her face and took a deep breath. Come on, Reason. She told herself, this is for Maudie. Calming down, she walked over to an elderly woman behind a glass window. "Excuse me," She began, "Do you know where room 610 is?"
Reason walked into a sterile white classroom lined with tables, she sat down looking around. "Ah, excuse me, "She whispered over to the boy next to her, "This is 610, general mechanics?"
"Yeah," The boy, a boy with a slender build but large frame with smooth brown hair, confirmed.
"But—shouldn't be in a garage or something?" Reason asked.
"It's across the way." The boy told her.
Reason looked around again. There were about ten other people in the class, not counting her and the boy next to her, and she suddenly realized that with the except of maybe two other girls, they were all boys. She swallowed thickly.
"I'm Vinny, by the way." The boy told her, extending his hand.
Reason took. "Reason." She introduced herself as they did firm pump.
"Reason?' Vinny repeated as they pulled away, "Seriously?"
"I don't know where it came from." Reason told him.
Just then an elderly man dressed in jeans that looked like he ironed them and checkered shirt walked in and up to the front of the class, causing everyone to quiet. "Good morning," He began, "I'm Mr. Scott, and for the first few weeks here, I'll be taking roll until I can remember your names. Now, Andrews, Giovanni…."
"Here," Vinny raised his hand apprehensively, causing Reason to give him a look that said, And you commented on MY name?
"I know, glass houses." Vinny conceded.
It wasn't so much different from what Reason remembered from high school. The first day was mostly for going over expectations, the syllabus. They already had homework thought. The whole first chapter of the text book.
Checking her schedule and seeing Automotive Breaks was in the same room, Reason began to reading the chapter then noticed she wasn't alone. "Automotive Breaks?" She asked Matthew.
"Yeah," Matthew nodded, taking a cue from Reason and picking up his own book.
As promised, Rawls was there to pick Reason up right after class went out. "So, how'd it go?"
"Good." Reason answered, more focus on her text book than conversation.
"So, ah, you've already got homework, huh?" Rawls still tried to hold a conversation.
"Yeah," Reason responded, still not looking up.
Okay, fair enough. Rawls thought, Kid's clearly got a lot on her plate right now.
Five minutes later, Reason stood buy the car, waiting as Rawls went and knock once, paused, knocked twice, paused, and knocked one more time on a tie-died Winnebago. Not for the first time, Reason wondered if she should be here.
The door opened up by woman dressed like she stepped out of the counter cultural movement. She motioned with her head and Rawls stepped inside, then a few minutes later, walked back out, calling, "Come in."
"Please Lord, I just want to see my daughter again." Reason silently prayed before walking in.
Reason survived the Winnebago and spent the rest of the afternoon moving organic vitamins and medicinal teas back and forth, and had enough time to do the one thing she wanted to do.
"Mommy!" Maudie squealed excitedly, crawling up the stairs to get to her as her sitter called out, "Careful, careful."
Reasoned picked Maudie up and squeezed her. "There's my baby girl."
"But I thought you had to go to school." Maudie noted. Her mother had explained serval times that with school there could be a lot of more latter days and today was going to stay with the Winchesters for just a little later.
"I had enough time to come see you." Reason explained, "So, are you having a good day?"
"Huh-huh." Maudie confirmed nodded, "Dinosaurs took Dana, and…."
And so, throughout the week, things started to fall into a rhythm. Reason had the three classes on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and in between Automotive Breaks and Steering Suspension she worked for Rawls. Tuesday and Thursday, she worked seven to three shift at the diner and then Automotive Engines Services from three thirty to five and then Professional Automotive Writing from five to six, retrieving Maudie just in time to put her to bed.
On the second days of classes, they were already in the garage. "Okay," The teacher from 'Automotive Breaks and Steering Suspension' a man with thick black hair, by the name of Mr. Phelps, began, sliding out from under the hood of a car, "Can I get a volunteer?"
A girl with a dirty blonde bob haircut raised her hand.
"Yes, um, Allie, right?" Mr. Phelps guessed.
"Yes, sir." Allie confirmed.
"Okay, Allie, what I need you to do, is get in the car, and when I tell you, too, hit the break as hard as you can." Mr. Phelps instructed.
Allie went to the car and got in.
"Alright, Allie, not." Mr. Phelps instructed.
Allie hit the breaks as hard as she could and the car started making noise.
"Now, can anybody tell me what I did?" Mr. Phelps asked.
Serval hands shot up, including Reason, who, for a few moments, felt that she could actually pull this off.
And then Saturday happened.
Reason walked into the dinner a bit before open and saw Serena Joy at the counter, adjusting a pie topped with whipped cream and strawberries.
"Daiquiri mouse pie?" Reason asked, walking up, "Okay, what happened?" Usually when she made that particularly confection, she was upset about something.
"It's my mom." Serena Joy explained, "She keeps trying to make me have an engagement party."
"And you don't want one?" Reason guessed, going to clock in.
"No." Serena Joy confirmed, "Rawls doesn't have a lot of close realities and I don't want to make them uncomfortable, and I don't want a lot of my extended family standing around with cocktails silently judging us."
"Don't you think you're exaggerating a bit?" Reason responded, "I mean I've met your family. As long as you don't invite your Aunt Sarah, you'll be fine."
"You met my imitate family." Serena Joy pointed out, "There are at least a few that are going to be concerned about the age difference, and then there's my cusion who nearly ruined Eliza Jane's engagement party by going on and on about marriage was an antiquated concept and we all eating animal fear and poison—seriously, the whole time we lived together she didn't even bat an eye at the crap our meth-head roommate would get up to, but I bake sugar cookies and she'd have category 5 conniption, not to mention having absolutely no concept of bounties. The woman was a fanatic, and she hasn't changed a bit."
"Wait, meth-head roommate?" Reason repeated.
"Remember that—" Serena Joy began lowering her voice, "That fun fact about me about a year after we became friends? Well, I might have left a lot of details including both my roommates' contributions to my mental state. For the record, I did not about my roommate's problem until after I moved in, nor did I realize how much of a fanatic my cusion was. I'll—I'll tell you later, okay?" With that she walked off.
Shortly after that the dinner opened and people starting sprinkling for breakfast and the dinner became a bustle of activity Serena Joy and Edith running back and forth with people's orders and people inevitably spilling syrup.
Reason had just finished cleaning up the sweet brown mess when she heard the sound of something being knocked over. She turned to turned to see dark blue syrup trickling down the table.
"Who knew we even had blue berry syrup?" Reason whispered to herself a few minutes later as she worked at the blue stain that wasn't coming out.
Reason tried everything. Vinegar, peroxide bleach, but nothing would get the blue stain up. The lunch rush started coming in and she was still working on the stain. She stubbing at it with an SOS pad, of all things, when brown shoes stopped in right in front of her.
"Reason?" Vinny asked, as his classmate look, "What are you doing here?"
"Right now, trying to get the world's most suborn stain out of the floor." Reason responded, "I work here. By the way, don't order the Alfredo, just a tip."
"I'll remember that." Vinny. smiled, then concerned, asked, "Hey, how long have you been scrubbing that."
"Since, ah, the breakfast rush." Reason admitted sheepishly, "Does it look like it's coming out?"
"Maybe a little?" Vinny replied, "Hey, when do you get off?"
"Ah, eleven PM." Reason responded awkwardly, "I'm working double shifts on the weekends to make up for what I'm missing during the week." Realizing what he was getting at, she whispered, "But I should be able to take lunch after the rush dies down, assuming I'm not still working on this."
Eventually, the stain came out, and Reason was able to sit down with Vinney, offering her half of the loaf of bread made with oat and almonds, seasoned with apple cider, Serena Joy had given her.
"Wow." Vinny annoced after taking a bite of the rich, favorable bread.
"I told you." Reason declared, "I don't know how she does it."
"So how long have you been working here?" Vinny asked.
"Give me a minute." Reason began, doing match in her head, "A bit over four years."
"Four years?" Vinny repeated, "So you would've been…"
"Seventeen." Reason cut him off, "Just turned Seventeen. Vinny, I'm twenty. I'll be twenty-one in March."
"Wait, it's a one a year program." Vinny began, bewildered.
"Oh, it is," Reason assured him quickly, realizing he wasn't understanding her, "Matthew, I had drop out of high school because I got pregnant. I started working here, because—well, this is where my water broke." After a beat she added, pointing, "Actually more accurately, right over there, by the pin ball machine. "After another beat, she added, "Serena Joy got me the job. After a frankly, half-baked attempt to move up in the world, I got my GED last year, and got into the program before the spring session started. "
"Okay," Matthew began, "Sorry, I'm not—I'm not always the most observant person. I've always been better with machines, I guess." After a beat, he asked, "So when you say you got pregnant…"
"He name's Maud, she'll be four and March and I have friend who watches her while I'm at school or work." Reason explained, "And yes, I have pictures."
Just then one of the only customers currently in the diner knocked over their ice tea.
"That's my cue." Reason said, getting up, "Sorry." She snuck another bite of bread before running off.
"Thanks." Reason replied, running for the door.
For the rest of the day, Reason didn't have on break. She was running from one mess to the other or cleaning the bathrooms, and once making a run when they ran out of seasoning salt. It wasn't until roughly ten thirty, that she got sit down.
She was sitting there, eating the now slightly stale bread, reading a text book, when she felt a hand on her shoulder, startling her.
"Relax, it's just me." John told her as she spun around to see the other bus boy, "I'm here for my shift. You can go."
When Reason stumbled into the parking lot, she was surprised to see a by now familiar Impala waiting for her.
"You don't have to do this, you know." Reason told him getting in the car, "You didn't take me to raise."
"Well, I had to get out anyway, if it helps." Sam told her, "We were out of pomegranates."
"Pomegranates?" Reason repeated confused.
"Cravings." Sam explained, "Also, oddly, Hannah will crave—something salty at the same time a lot, she'll actually salt the seeds."
Reason nodded her understanding. "With me it was just the salty and sweet craving I didn't really even care what it was. Every gas station that had the salty sweet Combos, you know, those little filled pretzels, I would by them out of those suckers." After a beat she added, "Also soybeans? Yeah, soybeans were my big thing. I don't even like soybeans but when I was pregnant, I couldn't get enough of them." She laughed a bit at the memory, he eyes feeling heavy.
When Reason got up that morning she groaned, forcing herself out of the bed. Her body ached, and even though she had fallen asleep, she felt like she hadn't slept at all. "Maudie," She called out softly, nudging her gently, "Time to get up, baby girl."
Reason managed to get Maudie dropped off at the Winchesters and made it into work an time, chugging an extra can of café mocha—the self heating cans in her cellar didn't have just plain coffee—trying to get herself awake.
"Oh, good you're here." Karine announced as she clocked. "We already got a mess on the floor."
Sure enough, in the middle of the dinning room floor, there was big, red splash of sauce on the floor.
"What the-" Reason began, running for the cleaning closet, "How—"
"Never mind how, just clean it up!" Karine snapped.
"Karine," Jerry began sticking the upper half of his body out the kitchen window, "Can you not be yourself this early in the morning?"
In spite of herself, Reason couldn't help but giggle as she began to mop up the sauce.
The sauce wasn't the only mess left over from the night before. Reason spent the majority of the morning scrapping gum from underneath the tables, running back and forth between that task and cleaning up various spills, and cleaning the tops of tables. She was going to one of those tables when slid on something slick, lost her footing, and fell, hard.
She made so much noise when she fell that Jerry and Logan came running from the kitchen, Lucy, the other waitress on duty and even Karine came running over to her. "You okay, kid?" Lucy asked, helping her up.
"How many fingers am I holding up?" Jerry asked, holding out a accidently peace sign.
"Ah, two?" Reason answered hopefully.
"She's good." Jerry declared.
Satisfied that she was okay, they all split up, going back to their work.
Finally around the shift change, Reason got a chance to sit down. Pulling out her day planner, she looked at her assignments, the ones she had completed, checked off. Most of them were checked off, but then she noticed there was one big assignment she hadn't checked off.
The reading for general mechanics. The reading that they were suppose to have their first quiz over Monday. Which was the next day.
"No, no, no, no, no, no!" Reason lamented aloud, panicked, pulling out the text book. Maybe just maybe, she could get most of it read before the dinner rush.
However, Reason just couldn't focus. She read the same passage three times without even meaning to. And nothing was getting through.
She was still struggling, when Serena Joy clocked in, and after sitting the desserts on the cake plates, walked over to Reason and sild into the booth. "Okay, so, Melissa was daughter of friend of a friend of my Mom's. When the friend of my Mom's heard that I was looking for a place to rent near the campus…"
"Ughhh!" Reason exclaimed, unaware if Serena Joy's presence.
Immediately Serena Joy recognized something was wrong. "Hey, you okay there, kid?" Serena Joy asked, lifting up Reason's face.
"No," Reason responded, "I just realized I nearly missed this massive reading assignment, but I'm so tired I can't see straight, and there's gonna be an mess any minute and I—I—" After a minute, she got herself enough together to say, "I was stupid to think I can do this, wasn't I?"
"No, no, no, no." Serena Joy responded, "Okay, here's what we're gonna do first. We're gonna take a deep breath in."
Reason followed the instructions, inhaling.
"And a deep breath out." Serena Joy instructed
Reason obeyed, exhaling.
"Now," Serena Joy began, "Repeat after me. God, give me…"
"God, give me the Serenity to accept the things I can't change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." Reason recited, actually feeling a little better.
"Now," Serena Joy began, "Let's see if we can tackle this."
Serena Joy spent the next hour or so helping Reason study, before the dinner rush came in. Reason sent most of the time after that at the kitchen washing dishes.
Placing the final dish on the dry rack, roughly about nine PM, Reason let took out the plug with a since of satisfaction, before stepping outside of the kitchen.
The next day, Reason circled parts on cars, and letters just to multiple choice answered. To her surprised, she found herself actually able to recall most of the information.
"So, how do you think you did?" Vinny said, sitting next to Reason again as they waited for their next class.
"I think I actually did fine." Reason answered, then I occurred to her, "That reminds me, someone wanted to know when the quiz was done." She pulled out her phone and dialed a familiar number. "Hey, Hannah, the kids are you right? Would you mind putting Maudie on? I told her I would call her."
Hannah handed the phone down to Maudie. "Hey, Maudie, it's Mommy. "
Maudie took the phone and somewhat awkwardly held it to the side of her. "Hi, Mommy!"
"Hey, baby girl." Reason smiled.