Title: Apples and Trees

Description: Ryan is in danger of following in his brother's footsteps.

Disclaimer: I own nothing related to The O.C.. Not for profit.

Chapter 4

Ryan arrived back at the Cohens' just before midnight. He put it off as late as possible, while still doing as Kirsten requested and coming home before curfew. He was hoping that everyone would have gone to bed by the time he got home, but he didn't really expect that to happen. He expected that at least Sandy would be waiting up. He could imagine that Sandy probably had a few more choice words for him.

To Ryan's surprise, however, it wasn't Sandy who was waiting up for him, but Kirsten. She was at the kitchen table, sipping something hot out of a mug, and looking over some paperwork when Ryan walked into the kitchen.

"Hey."

Kirsten looked up and broke into a grin. She immediately got up and went over to Ryan and gave him a quick hug. "Thank you for coming home on time."

Ryan nodded.

"Are you all right?"

"Fine."

Kirsten nodded, although she looked skeptical. "Sandy wanted to wait up and talk to you tonight, but I figured we could all use a good night's sleep and a chance to calm down and reflect before –"

"Before we go at it again?"

Kirsten looked at him indulgently. "Before we continue our discussion."

Ryan gave Kirsten a half-smile.

Kirsten walked back over to the table and started gathering up her stuff. She turned halfway to look at him.

"Sandy and I have to go to the Newport Group early tomorrow to work on some stuff about the liquidation. But tomorrow night, after dinner, we are going to continue this discussion. You, me, and Sandy."

Ryan looked away and nodded, resigned.

Kirsten smiled reassuringly. "Don't worry, there isn't going to be any yelling. Sandy promised me. We're going to have a calm discussion about all the issues. Everyone is going to have his or her say, and we'll make the decisions together, as a family. How does that sound?"

This time Ryan gave her a full smile. "Sounds like somebody's been in therapy recently."

Kirsten laughed. "What can I say?"

Ryan chuckled also. And then he nodded at Kirsten and started to head out to the pool house.

"Good night, Ryan."

"Night."

After getting ready for bed, Ryan lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling. He knew he wouldn't be getting to sleep for a while yet. He had too much on his mind. And he had a lot of preparation to do. He needed to have a game plan in place before tomorrow night's "discussion". He knew if he didn't, then somehow Sandy would convince him to do what he wanted instead of what Ryan wanted, all the while being very reasonable and open-minded. Ryan smiled to himself. That was always the way it happened.

But Ryan was determined not to let it happen that way this time. Now that he was calm and refreshed from his evening at the beach, he was ready to get to work, mentally that is. He needed a plan for his future, and he needed it in place by tomorrow so that he could argue for it at the family meeting after dinner. Of course, winning an argument against a lawyer was going to be tricky, so that's why he needed to know what he was going to say ahead of time, anticipate Sandy's objections and come up with counters for them.

Like Sandy semi-jokingly asked him for after he got expelled from Harbor, he needed to bring to the table "a 3-point plan on how he was going to keep up his studies, graduate on time, and get into a great college". Although since the graduate on time part was already in jeopardy, Ryan replaced it with graduate at all.

Okay, so, Ryan figured he should approach this logically, like a physics problem. Deal with one thing at a time, one step at a time.

First issue: school

First of all, Ryan knew now that he definitely didn't want to drop out of school. He figured that out at the beach. He didn't want to follow in his brother's footsteps that way and be a dropout. He wanted to at least graduate from high school, and maybe even go to college, if the finances could be worked out. Second, he didn't want to home school any more. He hated the home schooling. He'd rather drop out than do the home schooling. Third, it was too late in the year to enroll in regular school now and be able to finish the work to graduate this year.

So logically, that all added up to is that he was not going to graduate this year. The only way he could would be to do home schooling, which he wasn't willing to do. Or alternatively, he could forgo a normal diploma and get his GED instead. Ryan knew that his junior year classes at Harbor were way harder than the senior year classes at Chino Hills, so he would probably have no trouble passing the GED exam right away.

But Ryan didn't want to do that, either. He knew kids from back home that got their GEDs and it just wasn't given much respect, by employers or colleges. Ryan wanted a real diploma. So again, using logic, that meant he had to enroll in some regular high school as a senior next year. Which led to:

Second issue: next year

Next year Ryan would be 18. That meant that the Cohens wouldn't be his legal guardians any more. Technically, they would no longer be required to support him financially, or give him a place to live, or any of it. But – they'd already told him that they considered him a member of the family, and reassured him that wasn't going to change when he turned 18. They had even already offered to pay for college, although Ryan hadn't accepted, not yet anyway.

Given that, Ryan felt comfortable asking them if they would let him live with them next year. He was reasonably confident that they would say yes. Being able to live here would allow him to enroll in Newport Union for the year, getting his high school diploma at the end of it. Okay, yeah, a year late, but at least he'd have it.

Ryan sat up and turned on the light beside the bed. He now had the basics of a plan. He got up and grabbed a pen and notebook to write it down so he wouldn't forget everything by tomorrow. As he wrote, he figured that the trickiest bit would be to convince Sandy to stop the home schooling. He didn't have a logical argument against it that he could use, he just hated it. Sandy would just have to accept that.

Now that he had a plan, Ryan realized that he was really tired and figured that now he could sleep. He'd worry about figuring out the rest of the details tomorrow, such as what he was going to do with himself for the next nine months.

To be continued.