The drive to Manitowoc Middle School wasn't very long, ten minutes at most. Phil had explained that he used to teach at the middle school before he moved over the high school five years ago, and he spent most of the ride talking about the teachers that he knew there and how much he liked them.
"If you get Mrs. Henry for social studies, you'll get to do this really cool project on the pyramids where you get to make your own mummy," he bubbled. "And Mr. DeRosa has some great experiments in science. Not just volcano stuff, you know?" Skye got the sense that maybe Phil was as nervous as she was, given how much he was chattering away. Somehow Phil seeming nervous made her feel slightly calmer, like it was okay to be a little jittery about something this new.
They pulled into the parking lot outside the school, and Skye did her best to take it all in so that she wouldn't look like a goldfish when she had to come for real the next day. Since it was the middle of the morning, there wasn't anybody outside, but the two-story brick building had a sprawling green lawn and a blacktop off to the side that Skye could imagine was normally teeming with kids. An American flag flapped atop a pole next to a big stone sign that announced that the building was, in fact, Manitowoc Middle School, in case anyone had any doubts. The inside of the building was pretty standard for a middle school, as far as Skye could tell. It had waxed hallways lined with lockers, a trophy case out front filled with dusty cups and medals, and heavy-looking doors every few feet that presumably harbored classrooms behind them. The whole place smelled like a combination of dry-erase marker, cafeteria pizza, and stale gym socks, but it didn't really bother Skye. It just smelled like school.
Phil steered them down the main hall and into what must have been the front office. An older woman sat behind a computer at a large desk, pecking away at her keyboard. Her face lit up when she saw them walk through the door.
"Phil, so good to see you!"
"Hi Nancy, good to see you too," Phil said warmly. "Girls, this is Mrs. Baumbach. She's a great person to know here." Dropping his voice low, he leaned in like he was sharing a secret. "Don't tell the principal I said this, but Mrs. Baumbach runs this place." Mrs. Baumbach laughed a twinkling kind of laugh, and made a shooing gesture at Phil.
"Same old Phil," she tittered. "Well, I can guess what's brought you in to see me today." She looked over her computer at Jemma and Skye and gave them a smile. "We're very excited that you'll be starting here at MMS." Skye offered a half-smile back, and Jemma stared at the floor. Her hands were buried in her jeans pockets, but Skye could see the outline of her finger tapping away at her leg inside her pocket.
"You two can have a seat, if you like," Mrs. Baumbach said, pointing to a row of chairs that looked like they had been from a doctor's office in a previous life. "Now, Phil, what have we got here?"
Phil produced his stacks of papers and set them on Mrs. Baumbach's desk. Skye watched as the two adults began sifting through the papers, which she learned included both her and Jemma's school records, transcripts, and registration information. Miss Hand must have brought them over along with their files that morning.
"So Jemma's… yes, that's right, 12. Mm-hmm. And then Skye here… precisely." The conversation between Phil and Mrs. Baumbach volleyed back and forth like a tennis match as they flipped through the documents. Mrs. Baumbach would occasionally pause to type something into her computer while Phil continued thumbing through page after page.
"Yes, and then the fifth school she has records from is—yep, Garden Grove Elementary, and then back to Our Lady of Mercy—" That was the school the nuns sent them to. Skye was sure that one popped up a lot on both their records.
Skye and Jemma sat patiently, or at least as patiently as they could. Jemma tapped softly on the arm of her chair, and Skye saw her mouth moving slightly as she counted under her breath. Skye wasn't sure what she was counting, maybe the squares in the carpet pattern or the ceiling tiles. There wasn't really much else besides those. Skye swung her legs back and forth absentmindedly, trying to think of something to do to entertain herself. She never understood how Jemma cold find counting so interesting. Skye had tried it a few times before, but she always got bored by the time she got to twenty of anything. She wished she had some of her computer parts here to tinker with. That would make the time go a whole lot faster.
A few more minutes ticked slowly by and Skye felt like her brain was about to leak out of her ears she was so bored. Fortunately, just then a boy walked into the office, a sour look on his face and a note clutched in his hand. He was around her and Jemma's age, with wiry brown hair and ears that stuck out a little bit. Mrs. Baumbach looked up from what she and Phil were working on to greet him.
"Leopold, good morning. What brings you down here today?" Her tone was friendly, but Skye got the impression that she and this boy saw each other often, and not always on the best of terms.
"I'm meant to see Mr. Hanes," the boy, Leopold, grumbled at the ground, holding the note out for Mrs. Baumbach. The way he talked struck Skye's ears as unusual, and it took her a second to realize that he had an accent that Skye couldn't place. Mrs. Baumbach scanned the note and set it to the side with a sigh.
"Have a seat, Leopold. I'll let Mr. Hanes know that you're here for being disruptive again." She excused herself and disappeared towards the back of the office. Leopold slumped into a chair next to Skye and crossed his arms with a huff. After a beat, he cocked his head and turned to look at Skye and Jemma. His gaze was unwavering, and Skye felt like she was being examined.
"Who're you?" he asked abruptly. "I've never seen you before. Are you new or in trouble, too?"
"We're new," Skye said, at the same time that Jemma spluttered "We're not in trouble!"
"You're together then?" he wondered. "Did you just move here?"
"Something like that," Skye mumbled.
"Are you from England?" Leopold asked, looking at Jemma specifically. "You talk like it."
"Well you talk like you're from Scotland," Jemma said, her tone a little defensive. Skye made a mental note about the Scottish accent.
"That's because I am," he replied, a look of confusion crossing his face. "Or I was. Look, I didn't mean to make you angry, it was just a question."
"You ask a lot of those," Skye remarked, trying to signal to him that they didn't appreciate the interrogation.
"I like to know things," he said, as if that explained everything. "You can ask me questions back, if you want. Then you'll know things, too. Like, you could ask me about monkeys, or how rockets work, and I could tell you a lot of—"
"Okay, what about the question of why you got sent to the office?" Skye asked, cutting him off before he started rambling about rockets to her. This boy was odd, but not necessarily in a bad way, more of a confusing way. He scowled and slumped back in his chair.
"Mr. DeRosa doesn't like it when I correct him in class. He says its disruptive, but I think it's more disruptive to tell people that Watson and Crick were the ones who discovered DNA when in reality they're only credited with discovering the structure, not to mention the fact that their work was entirely dependent on the research of Maurice Wilkins and—"
"—Rosalind Franklin," Jemma said, finishing his sentence for him. He looked started, and then immediately pleased.
"Yes, exactly. And then, to make matters worse, he wrote the wrong charge on the phosphate ion that helps comprise the nucleotides that make up nucleic acid, and even had the audacity to suggest that nucleic acid is only found in the cell nucleus, when research clearly suggests that—"
"—nucleic acid is found throughout the cell, in mitochondria, in chloroplasts, and even in non-nucleic cells like bacteria and viruses," Jemma said, as if this were obvious. Skye looked back and forth between the two, a little dumbfounded. She caught Phil's eye on the other side of the office, and he looked just as bemused as she felt. He saw her looking at him, and just shrugged with an amused grin. Skye wasn't surprised at Jemma's knowledge, necessarily. She knew Jemma was insanely smart and knew more about everything than Skye knew about anything, and there had been times when Skye had listened for hours on end as Jemma expounded on some obscure scientific topic that she had very little interest in, but Skye had never seen her jump so readily into conversation with a total stranger like this before.
"So you can see why I needed to point out his mistakes," Leopold explained, and Jemma nodded along with him. "But Mr. DeRosa doesn't really like it when I do that. He wants me to wait until the end of class to tell him privately, but I can't just let misinformation go like that. So I wound up here." The excitement that had bubbled up in him when he was talking about DNA and nuclear acid or whatever it was called had drained away and his sour expression returned. Skye offered him a sympathetic smile. She had never been sent to the office for correcting a teacher before, but she had been sent for plenty of other things, and she knew how it felt to be sent for something you thought was unfair. She had lost count of the number of times she had gotten in trouble for fighting when all she was really trying to do was defend herself or Jemma.
"I'm Skye," she said, trying to cheer him back up. "And this is Jemma."
"I'm Fitz," he offered.
Jemma looked confused. "I though Mrs. Baumbach called you Leopold?"
"Yeah, well, that's my real name," he sighed, running a hand through his scrubby hair. "But I like to be called Fitz better. Some people like my mum call me Leo, which is better than Leopold, but not as good as Fitz, I think." Skye nodded. She definitely understood wanting to shed a terrible real name. She didn't think Leopold was as bad as Mary Sue, but she agreed that Fitz had a much better sound to it. She was about to tell him that, when Mrs. Baumbach returned.
"Leopold, Mr. Hanes can't see you right away, but you'll be able to go back shortly. You can wait here for now." She turned her attention back to Phil. "All right, let's get this registration finished up, shall we? I think the only thing left to do is…" she trailed off, pecking away at the computer. A whirring sound shortly followed, and a few sheets of paper were spat out from a nearby printer. Briskly, she handed the papers over to Phil, who took them and gave them a quick look over.
"These are the girls' classroom assignments, rotation schedules, locker numbers and combinations, and so on. Everything they need should be there. I'll just finish processing some of these record transfers and run them by Mr. Hanes this afternoon, but everything seems to be in order. We'll give things a try, and if we decide we need to readjust after a few weeks, I'm sure Mr. Hanes can meet with you and your wife to discuss further options."
"Thanks, Nancy. We appreciate you working so quickly on all this. Things have been moving pretty fast for us, and we're grateful for your help." Phil began to gather his things, and he crossed over to the chairs where Skye, Jemma, and Fitz were all still sitting. "Ready girls?" he asked. "I think we're about finished here." Skye and Jemma nodded and got to their feet. They both waved at Fitz as they followed Phil out of the office. Jemma told him goodbye, and Fitz waved back, a little sadly Skye thought. She had forgotten to ask what grade he was in, but she hoped that he'd be in one of their classes. As unusual as he was, Skye was pretty sure she liked him. He seemed spunky, which Skye had a lot of respect for, being somewhat spunky herself.
"Well," Phil said, as they made their way back out to the car, "would you like to see your class schedules? They look pretty good, from what I can see." He passed the papers Mrs. Baumbach had given him back to them, and Skye and Jemma took their respective sheets. Skye glanced over the page quickly, and noticed that she had Mr. DeRosa, the teacher who had sent Fitz to the office for science. She also spotted Mrs. Henry, the social studies teacher that Phil had mentioned that morning, plus classes in language arts, pre-algebra, and a few others. She scrunched her nose up when she spotted gym class listed, but overall didn't find anything egregious. Pre-algebra made her a little nervous, since she wasn't sure if she knew exactly what kind of math that involved, but she figured she could ask Jemma for help if it got too hard.
After studying her own schedule, Skye leaned over and looked at Jemma's, out of curiosity. Her heart leapt when she realized that they had the same teachers for science, social studies, and language arts, which must have meant—
"We're going to be in the same grade at this school?" Skye tried to keep herself from getting too excited, but Jemma's eager face beside her only mirrored how Skye was feeling. Phil smiled at them in the rearview mirror.
"Yes, we thought that might be a good decision, and Mrs. Baumbach was able to help us work it out. Jemma, your test scores have been high enough that the school was willing to try you out in the eighth grade, and the fact that you have some eighth-grade credits from when you went to Wheaton middle school helped, too. We did our best to give you as many classes together as we could, although I think you're in different maths, and some of your electives might be different as well." Skye's face split into a massive grin at the prospect of getting to share most of her day with Jemma. Jemma was also smiling, and she wiggled back and forth slightly in her seat, doing what Skye could only describe as a happy dance.
"I'm guessing you two are excited about that?" Phil chuckled, moving his eyes back to the road. Skye just beamed and nodded her head. Between funny Fitz from the office and knowing that she'd have Jemma at her side for at least part of the day, her nerves about starting school were starting to abate somewhat.
When they stopped at a red light, Phil fished his phone out of his pocket and passed it back to Skye. He asked her to call May and put her on speaker, so that Phil could talk to her about their lunch plans while he drove, and Skye did as she was instructed. When May's voice came through the other end of the line, she sounded happy to hear from them.
"I'm almost to a stopping place here, so I can meet you for lunch in… fifteen minutes? How does that sound?"
"That works for us," Phil said. "How does Pie in the Sky sound?" Skye looked at Jemma, quirking her eyebrows up in a silent question, but Jemma just shrugged. Apparently the phrase 'Pie in the Sky' meant as little to her as it did Skye. On the phone, May laughed.
"Why am I not the least bit surprised that's where you want to go?"
"Because it's one of the greatest restaurants known to Wisconsin," Phil replied. "And we have a duty as good foster parents to expose Skye and Jemma to the wonders of the Pie in the Sky Diner."
"Okay then. Pie in the Sky it is. I'll see you in a bit." The line disconnected, and Skye handed the phone back to Phil, who set it in the cupholder on the center console beside him.
"This is one of my favorite places," he told them. "They have great burgers, and there's a different kind of pie every day. The coconut cream and the blueberry are two of my personal favorites, and Melinda goes nuts for their sweet potato, but they have all sorts. Do you two like pie?"
"I guess so," Skye said. "Sometimes at Thanksgiving we would have pumpkin pie at St. Agnes, but I've never had any of those other ones." Jemma had a funny look on her face, like she was trying to remember something she had forgotten. Jemma so rarely forgot anything that it was unusual to see her that way.
"Well, I think you're in for a treat," said Phil as he eased the car into the parking lot outside an old-fashioned looking diner. Skye felt a little silly for not realizing that there were still places that looked like that in real life, but she had never seen one anywhere but in movies before, so she felt like she had a little bit of an excuse.
The inside of the diner was just as retro as the outside had been, filled with plasticky booths and a counter with spinning stools built right in. A jukebox was lit up in the corner, and there were all kinds of old-timey things on the walls, like records and pictures of Elvis and that guy with the leather jacket on the motorcycle from some really old movie Skye couldn't remember the name of. Phil was almost buoyant he was so excited to be there, and Skye thought it was a little funny to see a grownup acting like that, but she couldn't help but smile. His attitude was infectious.
Phil led them over to a booth in the corner, and he waved at one of the women behind the counter, who had her hair pinned up in a twisty knot and who was wearing a big white apron around her ample waist.
"Hi Carolyn!" he called as they sat down. The woman smiled and started gathering up some menus to bring over.
"Hey Phil," she greeted him, passing out the plastic-covered menu sheets to everyone and whipping out a notepad with ease. She pulled a pencil from behind her ear and poised it over the notepad. "Good to see you, sugar. Who are your new friends? Don't tell me you've replaced Melinda." She arched an eyebrow, but the glimmer in her eye let Skye know that she was just teasing Phil.
"I'm smart enough to know better than that," Phil teased back. "This is Skye and Jemma. They're staying with me and Mel, and we knew this had to be our first stop. Mel's meeting us here in a minute." Carolyn nodded, giving Skye and Jemma a look of approval.
"We're counting on you girls to keep this one in line," she said, waving her pencil in Phil's direction. "He's a troublemaker, so you have to keep an eye on him."
"Why do all the women in my life tell me that?" Phil asked, feigning hurt. The adults both laughed then, and Skye and Jemma shared a look that confirmed they both thought that grownups were beyond weird sometimes.
"Can I get y'all something to drink while you wait for Melinda?" Carolyn asked. They placed drink orders, which Carolyn whisked back in a blink. There were only a few other customers in the diner, so Carolyn didn't seem to have her hands too full at the moment. They perused their menus in silence for a few minutes, interrupted only by the sound of a bell over the door tinkling as May entered the diner, an amused look on her face.
"You got here fast," she said, sliding into the booth next to Phil. He looked up at her sheepishly.
"I may have started driving in this direction before I actually called you," he admitted. May shook her head and smiled.
"I had a feeling that might be the case." She reached over and gave Phil's hand a loving squeeze, then leaned in towards him to look at his menu. "I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm starving. What looks good?" She posed the question to Skye and Jemma, which surprised them. Skye's brain scrambled to settle on something from the menu.
"Um, maybe a burger?" she finally suggested, shrugging one shoulder. May nodded thoughtfully, like she took Skye's recommendation very seriously.
"What about you, Jemma?" It took Jemma a little longer to answer. Skye couldn't tell if it was because she was making up her mind or because she was building herself up enough to talk, but either way, May waited patiently until Jemma spoke.
"A BLT?" Jemma seemed unsure, and even thought Skye couldn't see her hand, she was sure Jemma was tapping under the table. May and Phil both nodded with encouragement.
"An excellent choice," Phil said. Jemma looked relieved and sat back a little in the booth, her shoulders relaxing.
Carolyn came back after a few minutes, and after chatting with May, took their orders and returned to the kitchen. While they waited for their food to arrive, May tried to make conversation.
"Well, how did it go at the school?" It took Skye a second to realize that the question was directed at her and Jemma and not at Phil.
"Oh, um, good, I guess. Phil said that me and Jemma were going to be in the same grade, and we have some classes together."
"I'm glad they were able to work that out," May smiled, giving Phil's hand another squeeze.
"They were pretty excited to find that out," Phil said. "And you already met another student—"
"Fitz!" Jemma blurted out. Her face went bright red when she realized that she'd interrupted Phil, and she immediately cast her gaze down to her lap, but Phil just chuckled.
"Yeah, he seemed like a firecracker," he said.
"How did you meet him?" asked May.
"He was supposed to go see the principal, and we were waiting in the office together," Skye explained. "He was nice, though."
"Seeing the principal? He sounds like a troublemaker…"
"It was only because Fitz's teacher made mistakes in class and didn't want Fitz correcting him," Jemma said, a little indignant. May made a thoughtful noise, and Phil laughed again.
"I told you, a firecracker!"
"Well, I'm glad you met someone nice," May said gently. "Hopefully that will make going to school tomorrow a little easier." Neither Jemma nor Skye responded. Skye didn't really want to admit that the prospect of school still made her belly flip, even if Jemma and Fitz were both going to be there with her. It was still a new school, with new kids, and new teachers, and new subjects that she was probably going to be behind in. She definitely felt less than nervous than she usually did with new schools, which was good, but doubts were still crawling around on the edges of her thoughts.
She was saved from having to dwell on her thoughts by the arrival of their meals. The table fell mostly silent as all four attacked their lunches with relish. Phil had been right; the burgers were great. Skye couldn't remember the last time she had eaten a burger that good. When they had cleaned their plates, Carolyn came back around and asked them about dessert.
"We've got peach a la mode today, plus a new one I dreamed up last night. I call it the Chunky Monkey, and it's a chocolate and banana cream with walnuts on top."
Phil's face lit up. "A la mode?" he asked. Carolyn nodded, and made a note on their ticket.
"Yes indeed, sugar. I'm guessing I can put you down for that one?" She went around then and took everyone else's pie orders. Skye thought the Monkey one sounded like fun, and when the massive slice of pie arrived, piled high with whipped cream, nuts, and a drizzle of chocolate, she knew she had made an excellent choice.
Fitz is here! And it seems like maybe school won't be as bad as the girls worry it will be... Also, I tried my best with the science facts, but I'll admit it's been awhile since I learned any cellular biology, so it might be a little rusty!