Watching True actually enjoy learning gives Danziger food for thought. (Prompt: 017 Play)

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Second Star

"Not so fast, Hook!" cried Uly.

Cameron's voice had lowered to a growl. He leaned forward over the table. "So it is, Pan. What are you going to do now? Fly away?"

"I'm no coward!" he responded. "I'll fight you on deck with one hand behind my back!"

There was a long, awkward pause, and all eyes turned to True. She responded by scrambling through her pages. "Oh. No! Peter! It's a trick!"

Uly rolled his eyes. "True, that's not the line."

She flushed. "I added one word!"

"You added two. Do it again."

"Uly," said Yale gently. "It's all right. Let's just keep on going."

Cameron picked up his cue to continue. "Insolent youth! Prepare to die!"

Yale began to read out the description of Peter's and Hook's final fight. Danziger, standing back from the action, watched the children. True hadn't been particularly enthusiastic about the play reading at first, but then she'd started looking ahead to find her lines and had gotten lost. Now, she flipped pages again for another second before putting her finger down in the place she needed. Then she looked up, listening.

Obviously, her disdain had vanished. He smiled inwardly. It was good to see her excited about something school-related. Back on the Stations, he'd usually had to push her along to get her ready on school mornings. On some days, generally when a big test or project had come up, her reticence had been known to degenerate into outright defiance.

Beside him, Magus nudged his arm. She'd been reading Tiger Lily, but that character had already had its last line. "Hey. Danziger. This has actually been fun. Why didn't you read a part?"

"Rather watch the kids enjoying it. That's not easy to do when you're participating."

She made a hmf sound. "There's plenty of down time when you're reading one of the minor characters. I think you were just chicken."

He responded with a shrug. "It's good to see True getting so much better of an education that we ever could."

"Yeah." She nodded. "Sometimes it almost makes me want to go back to school. I remember them making us read Peter Pan because it was a 'literary classic.' It was so boring that everyone hacked the system to get the cheat notes. But if we'd read it like this, I'd probably have liked it."

"This is a play," he reminded her. "Not the original book. If this were an actual school instead of tutoring, they'd probably have made them read that."

"Well," she replied, "maybe since you're one of the parents, you can put a stop to that."

Danziger opened his mouth to express his doubt, but closed it before anything came out. Yale had asked him about True's education a couple of times already. He'd always deferred to the other man's judgment; what did he himself know about schooling, after all? Like his daughter, he'd also mostly tried to get out of it as much as he could.

But just last night, Devon had drawn him aside. This isn't the Stations, Danziger.

I know that, he'd told her.

That means you're allowed to have an opinion about what she learns and how she learns it. We'd value your input.

It was a startling idea. Back on the Stations, they'd been pretty strict about official curricula and testing schedules. Input and involvement from the parents was officially encouraged, but only within strictly defined limits, and it often seemed to him like the conference hours were deliberately scheduled to be as inconvenient as possible.

For him, school had been a chore, something kids just had to put up with and get through. He'd never been as rapt as True looked now, as they finished the play and began discussing it. He'd always thought such things were an affectation, actually; just another thing that the folks on the upper levels did in order to emphasize how much better they were than the drones.

But he had to admit that seeing True in such an animated discussion made him both proud and thankful. He'd already made sure she wouldn't face any inherited debt, but he'd known that she'd still face an uphill battle due to her upbringing and background.

With opportunities like this, though, she might just be able to move up the levels after all.