Disclaimer: TC Williams High School and its environs belong to the City of Alexandria, VA. Yoko Ono and the original Titans belong to themselves, while the fictitious characters from the film Remember the Titans belong to Disney. The title of this chapter was taken from the 1972 Roberta Flack song, and again, I don't own NYU. I also don't own the books, publications and authors mentioned in this chapter. I only own Tamsin, Mr. Graham, and anyone else who doesn't sound familiar.
Technical Notes: Petey Jones appears in this story even though the real Petey graduated after the 1971 season. I'm also retaining certain events and character traits that are said not to have happened in real life. It makes me less guilty that I'm playing around with something based on a true story :D
Author's Notes: Thanks to JupiterHalo, Kim, Dearest, I Am Not a Freak and sharon for reviewing!
Chapter One – First Time I Ever Saw Your Face
School opened on September 4th that year. There was a small crowd of people waving picket signs, protesting the integration of the black and white school systems, but there were less of them. Within the TC Williams High School student body, some tensions remained, but both black and white students were more comfortable around each other after a full year together.
They cheered as one when Gerry Bertier rolled up the front walk in his wheelchair. Beside him walked Big Julius Campbell, his best friend. Gerry and Big Julius had formed the cornerstones of the of the TC Williams Titans defense until Gerry lost the use of his legs in a car accident. Nevertheless, the Titans had rallied and ended that season with a perfect 13-0 win-loss record and the 1971 Virginia State Championship.
Even a few of the protesters applauded grudgingly when Gerry and Big Julius passed by. The Titans' perfect season, solid evidence that black and white could successfully work together, had silenced many of the objections over the desegregation of the Alexandria school system.
Gerry gave the crowd a smile and a wave, then greeted his former coach, Bill Yoast. Yoast patted Gerry's back warmly, shook Big Julius' hand, and watched the two boys join some of the other Titans in one corner of the front lawn.
"'Morning, Herman," Yoast then greeted his fellow Titans coach as the formidable black man strode toward the steps leading into the school building.
"'Morning, Bill," Herman Boone replied. They shook hands and looked up at the red brick building, streaming with students returning for another year. "Good to be back, ain't it?"
"Sure is."
They walked up the steps, past the shady patch of grass where Titans quarterback Ronnie "Sunshine" Bass was doing his daily tai chi exercises, watched as usual by a gaggle of admiring TC Williams girls. "He is so cute," a junior sighed.
"I just love how the sun shines off his hair," her best friend breathed.
"Is he going with anyone?" a freshman asked timidly.
"I heard he dated Miranda Fleming over the summer, but that's all over now."
There was a collective sigh of relief.
"Aww, man!" a cocky male voice said loudly behind them. "Haven't I told y'all that y'all ain't got no chance with ol' Sunshine?" Petey Jones asked.
"Why is that?" the freshman wanted to know.
"'Cause Sunshine is from California!"
The group of girls shook their heads and began to walk to class. They still had no idea what Sunshine's being from California had to do with anything.
Ronnie Bass breathed deeply and changed position, carefully maintaining the precise balance of tension and fluidity in his movements. As the breathing and exercise cleared his head, he realized that the first bell was ringing. "Oh, shit!"
He lunged for his jacket and books and sprinted up the front steps, now empty of students. What a way to start off the year! Ronnie thought as he raced down the corridors to homeroom. He had old Mr. Magruder again this year, and he'd probably walk in right in the middle of the customary "tardiness" lecture. Life could get ironic that way.
He ran past a bank of lockers and rounded a corner, then skidded to a stop right inside Mr. Magruder's classroom just as the final bell rang. Almost immediately after that, something plowed into Ronnie's back. "Oof! Jeez—" someone said, and there was a terrific clatter behind him.
He spun around even as the class applauded his photo-finish entrance. Out in the hallway, a girl was crouched amid a mess of books. "Oh, my God, I'm so sorry," he said, reaching down to try and help her up. "Are you—" He stopped short when she threw back her long, dark hair and he found himself staring into a small, pale face. "—OK?"
She blinked at him for a moment, then resumed gathering up her things. "I'm fine," she said. At least she didn't sound like she was in pain — just slightly annoyed, and he couldn't blame her for that.
"I'm really sorry," he repeated, trying to help her pick up her books.
"Forget about it," she told him briskly, waving off his offer of help.
"Well, I could have hurt you or something. Is anything broken?"
"I'm fine," she said again, taking her last book and jumping to her feet. Ronnie stood and quickly got out of her way.
Mr. Magruder was regarding him sourly. "You narrowly escaped a tardy on the first day of school, Mr. Bass," he said in his flat, droning voice. "Take your seat."
Ronnie mumbled something and walked to his usual seat in the back row, exchanging a low five with Petey Jones before sitting down. By then, Mr. Magruder had started in on the girl who'd come in after him. "Unfortunately, thanks to Mr. Bass, you are tardy on the first day of school, Miss—"
"—Lee," she supplied, marching to the teacher's desk and thrusting a small orange card at him. "And I'm not late."
Mr. Magruder frowned as he looked at the card. "I stand corrected," he grumbled, "indeed you are not. Class, this is Tamsin Lee, a new student here at TC Williams High School." He glared at his students as they let out a collective Ooh. "I trust that you will all make her time with us as pleasant as possible," he told them acidly. "You may sit down, Miss Lee."
Her face was on fire with embarrassment, but Tamsin kept her head up as she smiled briefly at no one in particular and selected a seat in the front row.
She sat stiffly and stared fixedly at the blackboard as the homeroom teacher began a droning lecture on school rules and regulations. After a while, however, after her initial abject humiliation wore off, Tamsin relaxed in her seat and glanced surreptitiously around.
The classroom looked just like all the others she had ever been in (with the exception of Uncle Jon's huge amphitheater-type classrooms at NYU), but everything looked fairly new, which was only to be expected since TC Williams High School was just over a year old.
The green of the blackboard had dulled only slightly and her desk was still relatively free of graffiti. The large windows were open, but it was warmer than it would have been in New York at this time of year, and the musty smell of chalk dust still hung heavily in the air. Outside, however, instead of grim gray buildings, all Tamsin could see was an endless expanse of blue sky, flecked with fluffy white clouds.
The chairs to her left were all unoccupied, but to her right sat a slender blonde girl in a pink-flowered sundress. The girl turned to her before Tamsin could glance away, but she smiled and spoke to her in a friendly voice. "Hi. I love your earrings."
She smiled self-consciously, fingering the large gold hoops dangling from her earlobes. "Thanks."
"I wish my mom would let me wear earrings like those to school."
Tamsin grinned then. "These are my mom's."
The homeroom teacher cut short his lecture to look balefully at them through his large horn-rimmed glasses. "May I help you with anything, ladies?" he asked sharply. Some of the other students in the room tittered.
"No, Mr. Magruder," the blonde girl replied innocently.
"Hmph. If you're sure…"
"Oh, yes, we're sure," Tamsin muttered, just loud enough for her new friend to hear. They looked at each other and smiled as Mr. Magruder resumed his monologue.
Lunch period at TC Williams High School, just like lunch period in schools everywhere, was crowded, noisy, and rife with cooking smells. Tamsin tried scanning the sea of faces for Emma Hoyt, the blonde girl from homeroom, but eventually gave up and sat alone. It was a good thing that she brought a book to the cafeteria, she thought as she unpacked her bag lunch, flicked away a paper football that had landed on her table, and began to eat.
Tamsin was a few bites into her chicken stir-fry when someone snatched her book out of her hand. It was Emma. "There you are!" the blonde girl said. "We've been looking all over for you!"
"You were?" A few other girls stood behind Emma, holding lunch trays. Most of them were dressed much like Emma, but one or two wore cheerleaders' skirts and sweaters.
"Of course! I asked you to sit with us, didn't I? And I was telling everyone that they had to meet you. Everyone, this is Tamsin Lee; Tamsin, meet Sally Jane Parsons, Miranda Fleming, Robin Page, Jeannie Smith, and Lisa McAllister."
"I heard you put Magruder in his place today," Miranda, a tall, strikingly pretty redhead in a cheerleader's uniform, said to Tamsin with a brilliant smile. "I had him for homeroom last year. It's an honor to meet you."
"All I did was tell him I wasn't late," she admitted as the girls took places at her table.
Miranda giggled. "Well, you proved him wrong, didn't you?"
She shrugged as a tall blond boy in a TC Williams letter jacket walked by and nodded to them. Some of Emma's friends giggled and waved at him. "Hi, Sunshine," Lisa said archly.
To Tamsin's surprise, the boy smiled and nodded to her, too. "Do I know him?" she asked when he had gone.
"Sure you do," Emma said. "That's Ronnie Bass, the guy who knocked you over in homeroom."
Jeannie squealed in disbelief. "He knocked you over?"
"I walked into his back and I wasn't looking at his face," Tamsin told her. "I had my mind on other things — like trying to go through the rest of the day without making an even bigger fool of myself."
"It was nice of him to not ignore us," Sally Jane observed. "But then you and Sunshine stayed friends when you broke up, didn't you, Miranda?"
The redheaded girl nodded. "He was really nice about it when I broke things off."
Emma smiled then. "Um, speaking of breaking things off," she began, "Gerry and I kind of saw each other a few times over the summer and now we're thinking of giving our relationship a second try."
"You and Gerry?" Lisa blurted out. "But he's a cripple!"
Tamsin frowned. She assumed that they were talking about the boy in the wheelchair she had seen with the Titans — there seemed to be no other "cripple" at TC Williams — but even if they weren't, that was no way to talk to about a person. "That doesn't make him any less of a human being," she told the other girl sharply.
Lisa blushed. "Sorry, Emma," she said to her friend, whose face had fallen when she had called Gerry a cripple. "I'm glad you and Gerry are getting back together."
"We're only giving it another try," Emma said, venturing a smile again.
"Well, you and him were real happy when you were together," Robin piped up gamely. "I think it'll work out better, now that this whole race thing is resolved."
"'Race thing'?" Tamsin wanted to know.
"He hangs out with blacks," the other girl explained, gesturing toward where the boy in the wheelchair was eating with Ronnie Bass and several other letter-jacket-wearing boys. Some of them were indeed dark-skinned.
Emma's cheeks were pink. "I guess I didn't take to the idea of integration as easily as he did," she admitted. "Big Julius scared me, but then I saw that he was such a good friend to Gerry…"
"Well, it's very nice of you," Jeannie said, her tone rather patronizing.
"This has nothing to do with the accident," Emma told her. "I really do love him. I always have."
"Of course you did," Sally Jane said, sounding a lot like Jeannie.
Tamsin sighed and dug into her lunch. It was going to be one long lunch period.
"I thought this day would never end," Ronnie muttered as he made his way to English, his last period class. The first day of school was always hardest to get through. At least he wasn't a new student this year.
He located the right room, entered, and came face to face with a smiling, bearded man with granny glasses perched on his nose. If he hadn't been wearing a proper shirt and jacket, Ronnie would have mistaken him for the hippie custodian from his old school in Huntington Beach.
"May I help you?" the bearded guy asked cheerfully.
"Uh…" Ronnie glanced down at his schedule. "Is this Mr. Graham's English class?"
"It sure is. I'm Mr. Graham, and welcome. Have a seat." Mr. Graham grinned. "Some of your friends are already here. You can sit with them if you like."
Sure enough, Gerry Bertier, Jerry "the Rev" Harris and Alan Bosely were waving to him from the back row. Gerry and Alan were wearing their letter jackets, which was probably how Mr. Graham deduced that they were Ronnie's friends. "Thanks," he said, and went to join them.
Darryl "Blue" Stanton was just joining them when Tamsin Lee, the new girl from his homeroom, came in and was greeted by the teacher. "Man, y'all never told me Yoko Ono was in this class!" Gerry joked.
Ronnie snorted back a laugh and prodded his former teammate sharply as Tamsin and Mr. Graham turned in their direction. She looked somewhat annoyed. "Yoko Ono is Japanese. I'm Chinese," she informed him. "There's a difference."
"What difference?" scoffed Ray Budds. "Y'all look alike."
She turned to Ray. "Nevertheless, there is a difference," she said crisply, "and I suggest you learn it."
"Ooh," Alan and Blue chorused as she took a seat in the front row. "Someone got told!"
"Are you talkin' about me or Ray?" Gerry asked.
"Both of you," said Rev with a good-natured smile.
Ronnie chuckled. Gerry was a good guy, with a football brain that couldn't be beat, but he liked to mouth off sometimes. The day Ronnie had come to join the Titans, Gerry called him a fruitcake because of his then-long hair, but it was nothing a football between the shoulder blades couldn't fix. "Don't worry about it, bro," he told Gerry. "Budds put more of his foot in his mouth than you did."
"Thanks a lot, Sunshine," his friend grumbled, not in the least consoled.
"All right, that's enough; settle down, everyone," Mr. Graham said, moving to the front of the classroom. The last few stragglers came in and took their seats. "Shall we begin?" He smiled at the class and gestured to the words he had written on the blackboard. "Welcome to English Literature IV. I'm your teacher, Jonathan Graham. In this classroom, kindly address me as Mr. Graham; but outside, you may call me Jon."
The Titans looked at each other in surprise. They'd never been encouraged to call a teacher by his Christian name before; but if appearance was anything to go by, this Mr. Graham was decidedly unconventional.
"Now," Mr. Graham continued, "I'm new here at TC Williams; indeed, I've just moved here to Alexandria. Why don't we all get to know each other by introducing ourselves and telling each other what kind of book we're reading right now? I'll start. My name is Jonathan Graham, and I'm presently reading Eichmann in Jerusalem by Hannah Arendt." He smiled encouragingly. "Anyone willing to go next?" He nodded to Ray Budds. "How about you, sir?"
Ray looked around at his friends, then grinned. "I'm Ray Budds," he said, "and I'm presently reading MAD Magazine."
Mr. Graham nodded and chuckled good-naturedly while the rest of the class laughed. "An excellent choice, Mr. Budds; nevertheless, I hope that this class will encourage you to branch out. Who's up next?"
Gerry raised his hand. "Gerry Bertier," he announced, "and I'm reading the TC Williams Titans play-book." He grinned at the applause that followed his statement, then nudged Rev, who was sitting beside him. "You next, Rev."
Rev smiled and obliged. "Jerry Harris," he said. "The Bible."
"Don't you read anything else?" one of the other black boys in the class asked him. "Man, Rev, we ought to get you some Playboys!"
"Gentlemen, gentlemen, there are ladies present," Mr. Graham reminded them, as Rev and quite a few of the girls blushed. "Please save it for the locker room. Next!"
Still slightly embarrassed, Rev cleared his throat. "How 'bout you, Sunshine?"
Ronnie grinned at his friend, then turned to the teacher. "My name's Ronnie Bass. I'm reading Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse."
His friends whooped admiringly and Mr. Graham looked pleasantly surprised. Ronnie supposed he wasn't used to football players who read stuff like that.
He picked Alan to go next, and then Blue went, and so on around the room. Some of them said that they were reading the newspapers, while others cited children's classics like Tom Sawyer. Some people obviously just made up book titles and authors, but Mr. Graham smiled and let it slide.
Tamsin was last to speak because no one knew her enough to pick her to go next. "Tamsin Lee," she said, "and I just finished Siddhartha."
The teacher smiled and nodded at her. "Thank you, Tamsin. Well, I'm glad to know I have quite a few avid readers in this class," he continued, grinning at someone who had given him a bogus answer, "because this class will involve just as much reading as writing.
"Don't worry, though," Mr. Graham assured his groaning students, "you won't be going at it alone. Not only will you be doing group work during the semester, but I am also perfectly willing to lend a hand to anyone who needs it." He gave the students the times of the periods during which he was free, as well as his home address and phone number in case they couldn't reach him during the day. "Anytime any of you want to talk or need some advice, whether or not it's about class, I'm here to help you. All right?"
He then clapped his hands together briskly. "Well, that's enough information for one day, don't you think? We can begin the formal lessons on Wednesday." Mr. Graham grinned as most of his students applauded. "Now, I don't think I'm allowed to let you out early, but you can stay in here and do your own thing until the bell rings. Just keep it quiet, OK?"
"He's pretty cool," Alan murmured as everyone was left to his or her own devices. "He lets us call him 'Jon' outside of class, gives us his schedule and phone number in case we want to talk…who ever heard of a teacher like that?"
"I heard he taught college before he came here," Blue said. "I guess that's how they do things there."
When the last bell finally rang, Ronnie went for his locker. There wasn't any football practice after school that day, but he and a couple of others were going to the Burg to shoot some hoops. He dumped his books in his locker and picked up the gym bag he had left inside.
He shut the door with a clang and turned to see a frowning Tamsin struggling with a locker door that refused to close properly. "Need any help with that?" he asked when she yanked the door open again, muttering something that was most probably unladylike.
Her brow was still furrowed when she turned to look at him. "You think you can do anything with it?"
"I can try." Ronnie walked over, looked at the door, and lifted it slightly before closing it. It stayed closed this time. "One of the hinges is loose," he told her. "You'll need to have the custodian fix it."
"I will." Tamsin gave her locker a dirty look. "I thought this was a new building."
"It is, but there were a few bad fights in the halls last year, and some things got banged up."
"Ah." She nodded understandingly. "I see."
He looked down at her. Now that he was much closer, Ronnie could see that she was rather small for her age, probably only five feet tall if she wasn't wearing those high-heeled boots. "Hi, I'm Ronnie Bass. Some people call me Sunshine."
"Tamsin Lee." They shook hands briefly.
"Sorry I knocked you over this morning."
She waved away his apology. "I told you, forget about it. I'm trying to."
He smiled. "So…" Ronnie said after a short pause, "are you going to tell me how the book ends?"
Tamsin blinked. Her eyes were dark and just slightly almond-shaped. "What book?"
"Siddhartha."
"Oh." She smiled crookedly at him. "Of course not. You're going to have to find out the ending for yourself."