Selena Kitt - Baumgartner Generations - Henry

There was only one thing he was sure of now.

Life couldn’t get any more complicated than this.

But he was wrong.

Henry knocked, barely getting out the words, “Professor Franklin?”

“Come in!”

It was like deja-vu, a replay of the events of last week. He didn’t think he would ever be able to face her again, let alone be standing across from the woman actually asking for help.

“Hi Henry.” Professor Franklin stood, coming out from behind her desk to shut the door behind him, gesturing toward a seat. “Make yourself comfortable.”

Not likely, he thought, sitting stiffly in the chair. His hair was still wet from the showers-hockey practice had gone long, and although the coach had warned him he’d be off the team if it happened again, he’d managed to smooth over his absence the week before.

“I think we got off on the wrong foot.” Professor Franklin didn’t sit in the chair behind her desk this time. Instead, she came to lean against it, half-standing, half-sitting on the surface, right next to him. “Can we start over again?”

“Sure.” Henry focused his attention out the window. It was cold and windy, dead leaves chasing each other out on the lawn. “I guess so.”

“I’d like to do an assessment with you.”

He frowned, glancing up at her. “You want me to take a test?”

“No, not a test,” she assured him, her eyes softening. She really was a very pretty woman, although Henry couldn’t remember, for the life of him, anything about her coming over to their house like his mother indicated she had. “It’s just an assessment. It will give us an idea where you are and what you need to work on.”

“I can’t read.” He’d never said those words out loud to anyone, ever, and he didn’t even know how he’d managed to say them now. They made his breath turn shallow, his stomach flip. But there was something about the way she looked at him-understanding in her eyes, but strangely, no pity.

“That’s the first step.” Her smile made her eyes crinkle at the corners. “Admitting you have a problem.”

He shook his head and gazed back out the window. “You can say that again.”

“How did you make it this far, Henry?” She sounded both incredulous and sad.

“The truth?” He watched a black squirrel scurry across the quad and up the nearest maple.

“The truth,” she insisted. “It’s safe with me.”

He met her eyes, leaning back in his chair. Why not spill it? What did he have to lose? “Sometimes I cheated. Sometimes I lied. Sometimes I paid people to write papers or essays for me. But mostly, I just played hockey.”

“Hockey?”

He continued, “I went to a private school and they guaranteed me a varsity spot before I even tried out for the team. It was all about hockey. They even cut the budget for the football team my senior year so the hockey team could go to the International tournament. We were state champions three out of my four years. College and NHL scouts were around year long. They kept a count at the local Best Western. And I had my pick of colleges.” He said it all matter-of-factly, without any hint of arrogance.

“Hence the scholarship.”

“Yeah.” He shrugged, as if it meant nothing, but it meant everything to him. Everything.

Her lips were pressed together in a line, an expression Henry had come to recognize as annoyance or anger. “So your coach and your teachers had an arrangement?”

“Something like that.” He looked back out the window. The squirrel was down on the ground again, digging. “I never really asked. They just…passed me.”

“And your parents have no idea?”

He glanced up, panicked. “You can’t tell them.”

“I should.” She pulled herself up onto the desk fully and crossed her legs. She was wearing a skirt of course, a white one with brown spots, and Henry couldn’t help but admire her legs, even in his sudden state of panic. “I called your mother with every intention…”

“Please!” Henry reached out, grabbing her wrist, the touch startling them both. He took his hand away, trying to breathe. “You can’t. You just can’t.”

“My father was illiterate,” she explained, one of her feet swinging. She always wore heels and today was no exception-soft brown pumps-and one of them hung precariously from the end of her toes. “He spent his whole life unable to read. It’s no way to live.”

Henry stiffened. “Don’t feel sorry for me.” Now he understood how she had known, why her thoughts had immediately jumped to the conclusion she had when he sat there, frozen, staring dumbly at the paper she had given him, unable to read it out loud.

“I don’t,” she assured him. “My father was born in an era that didn’t even have names for learning disabilities, let alone ways to test for them. You don’t have that luxury.”

“I…I guess not.” He blinked at her, trying to remember a time, way back in elementary school, when he’d first started having trouble. He’d been so embarrassed by his affliction that he’d convinced his older sister to read to him from his school books over and over, thus memorizing the text, and when he was “tested,” he passed with flying colors. That was just the beginning of his ruse.

“I’m angry that someone didn’t notice before this.” Her eyes narrowed at the thought. “That you were able to slip through the cracks simply because you were good at some stupid sport.”

Henry narrowed his eyes right back at her. “Hockey means everything to me.”

“Well, if you want to keep playing, and you want to stay in school, you’re going to have to learn how to read,” she said simply.

She had him there.

“I got a book,” he admitted.

“What book?”

He flushed, remembering the snafu of checking it out, meeting Libby. “Phonics for Dummies. ”

The professor smiled. She had a dimple in one cheek when she did that he’d never noticed before. Maybe because, in class, he didn’t really see her smile very much. “Decided to start at the beginning?”

“Where else are you supposed to start?” He shrugged helplessly.

“Here.” She leaned forward and he caught a whiff of her scent, something flowery, when she got near. “With me. Are you ready?”

“I guess.”

“No guessing.” She was the professor again, all-business. “You either want to work or you don’t. I’m more than willing to give up my time to help you learn, but you have to be committed. Can you commit?”

Henry watched the squirrel holding onto his found nut for dear life, peering from side to side, as if something could take it away at any moment. He knew exactly how the little guy felt. “I really don’t have much of a choice.”

“Of course you do,” she countered, still in business mode. “You always have a choice. My father had a choice. He died still not knowing how to read, but at any point in his life, he could have chosen differently.”

“It’s so hard…” Henry blinked, willing tears not to fall. Christ, he couldn’t believe he was letting himself get emotional about this in front of her. “You have no idea.”

“Yes, I do.” She leaned toward him again, her eyes on his, steady. “You walking in here today and telling me you can’t read may be hardest thing you ever have to do, but it was also the bravest thing I’ve ever seen.”

He couldn’t answer her and if he’d had a voice left at all, it would have disappeared completely anyway when she lifted her hand and ran it tentatively through his still-wet hair.

She laughed when she saw the bemused look on his face. “I’m sorry. You really don’t remember, do you?”

“Remember?”

“Well you were young…my ex and I used to come over and play cards with your parents…” Her voice trailed off, as if she was reminiscing, but Henry couldn’t recall a thing about it. “You were such a sweet little blonde boy. I wanted to steal you and take you home with me.”