Study Break

by Elizabeth Goode

Jim Frayne slammed his textbook closed and held his head in his hands. He had to study. He needed to study. He had a test tomorrow, for crying out loud! It had been nonstop distraction all day, and if it hadn't been starting to get dark outside, he would have taken to the woods with his book and a notepad. First, Miss Trask had initiated a massive spring cleaning initiative with the household staff. Vacuum cleaners had roamed the hallways since ten o'clock in the morning. Outside, staff members were noisily beating the dust out of some rugs. Gallagher - bless his cantankerous, ancient heart - was mowing the lawns on his riding lawnmower, painstakingly weaving his pattern across the grass. It had never occurred to him that taking care of such a large estate could be so noisy. He had made some progress late in the afternoon by shutting himself into Matthew Wheeler's study, but when he came home, he had apologetically evicted his adopted son from the room to make an international phone call. Matthew Wheeler had been intermittently yelling at someone in Scotland for the last couple of hours. From what Jim could tell, the person in Scotland seemed to deserve it - something to do with a company credit card and some suspiciously personal purchases - but that didn't help with the noise situation. At 5:30, Gallagher and his crew stopped the mowing. Jim sighed in relief and tried once again to retain the information on the pages of the book. That was when Gallagher fired up the weedeater.

With a frustrated groan, he stuffed his study materials into his school bag and exited his room, determined to find somewhere to get his work done where noise pollution would not be a problem. He passed Honey in the hallway - she had Diana Lynch in tow and both girls were giggling about something. Honey carried a huge posterboard, and Di was lugging a case full of paints and art supplies. They barely noticed him, except for a slightly breathless, "Hi, Jim!" from his sister. Briefly, he wondered where Trixie was, but he quickly focused on the task at hand. The clubhouse. It had lighting, and none of the other Bob-Whites were likely to be there at this time of day on a Sunday. If Trixie wasn't with Honey and Di, she was probably stuck doing chores or homework. He knew that Brian was probably holed up in his room at Crabapple Farm - he had to take the same test that Jim did the next morning. Mart and Dan had gone into Sleepyside to catch a spy thriller at the Cameo. Jerks, he thought ungraciously. I wanted to see that movie too! Couldn't wait one day so Brian and I could go too, could you? He knew that his attitude wasn't fair. Dan had to take his fun when he could due to his work and school schedule. He passed by the drawing room where Mother was curled up in a chair with a book, listening to music with earphones. Good idea. Too bad I can't study with music.

From Matthew Wheeler's study, he heard the man shout into the phone, "And it was a damn coincidence that you brought your new wife to Glasgow with you? You can't use a company card to pay for your honeymoon! On lines three and twenty-four, you're charging a hotel suite and room service with two bottles of champagne! Did you wine and dine our business associate in your hotel room? I'm running a company, not an escort service!"

Even through his irritable mood, Jim laughed. It sounded like someone was having a worse day than he was. Poor Matt. Financial irresponsibility always got him fired up. He prided himself on running his businesses with integrity.

He headed out the door and down the driveway toward the gatehouse that served as the clubhouse for the Bob-Whites of the Glen. He opened the door and turned on the lights, surprised to find that he was not alone after all. Trixie was curled up on the small sofa, a book dangling precariously from her hand. With no lights on, it was obvious that she had come to the clubhouse to read and had then fallen asleep. She'd probably been out for a few hours. For a moment, he watched her sleeping, reluctant to wake her up. After all, if she was napping this hard, she probably needed the rest. It wasn't often that Trixie stopped moving long enough for him to just look at her. Even in sleep it seemed that her skills of observation detected that she was being watched. Her blue eyes shot open, and she scowled sleepily up at him.

"It's rude to watch a person sleep! I wasn't drooling or snoring or anything weird, was I?"

He shook his head. "Nope. As peaceful and serene as Snow White or Sleeping Beauty. Nothing so 'weird' or common as snoring or drooling. And it's not like I've been standing here for ten minutes or anything. I just walked in the door."

She sat up and wrinkled her nose at the darkening sky outside the window. "What time is it? I came down here to finish my new Lucy in peace after lunch." Pausing, she continued, "And thanks for the creepy comatose princess reference."

With a grin, he waved a hand in the air. "Anytime."

"What are you doing down here? I thought you'd be holed up in the Manor House studying for that huge chemistry test that Brian's gone insane over."

"I was. Unfortunately, I'm kind of obsessive about quiet when I have to study. I wish I wasn't, it's just how I work best. I can't even listen to music. The vacuuming started this morning, then the rug beating, then Gallagher and his mowing. I shut myself in Matt's study for a few hours earlier, but he came home and needed it for a real doozy of an international phone call. He's been yelling at some guy who works for his company who took a company credit card and his new wife to Scotland and tried to pretend it was for business instead of his honeymoon. So, it's loud up there right now."

Trixie smiled. "Brian procrastinates if he tries to study in his room, so when he has something serious to study for, he takes over the kitchen table. The whole table. And then he gets irritable when anyone needs to ask him anything or moves any of his stuff. Moms and Dad are grilling out so the table is all Brian's."

Retrieving her dropped Lucy Radcliffe book from the floor, Jim glanced at the cover. "Lucy Radcliffe and the Mystery of the Haunted Cave."

She blushed. "Go ahead and laugh, if you must."

He passed the book back to her. "What's it about?"

"Well - now that you ask, I guess it's pretty farfetched - Lucy and her friends go on a hike and discover a cave while they're on a trip to visit Lucy's aunt and uncle. The cave is supposed to be haunted, and they hear weird sounds coming out of the cave, but it turns out that bank robbers are using the cave to hide their loot and they're digging a tunnel to come up under the town museum and steal a - " She stopped, suddenly aware that her enthusiasm had bubbled forth out of control.

Jim laughed. "Not so farfetched if you ask me. I mean, think about if we described the summer you found me like it was a book? Runaways, a fortune hidden in a mattress, a hidden safe, a fire, thwarting criminals, a girl disguised as a boy - Mart would say it's downright Shakespearean."

"Twelfth Night. Ugh." Trixie groaned, stuffing her Lucy Radcliffe mystery back into her school bag. "How on earth did you manage to bring my fun reading around to what I'm supposed to be reading for English class? Joanne made a more convincing boy than Viola did any day!"

"Honey was reading it last night. She and Di got picked to be partners for their presentation. Rumor has it you're stuck with some shy girl who won't speak up? Honey was upset because she wanted to be partners with you so she could do the reading and you could do the talking. Now she's got Di, and neither English nor public speaking are her strong points. Though, she did paint a really neat looking backdrop for them."

"Janet won't do ANYTHING! She's making me do all of the hard work. It's just not fair!" Trixie's face was set in a slightly mutinous expression that Jim couldn't help but find endearing. He completely understood her frustration.

"Group and partner work always makes me nervous anyway. I've never liked having the burden of responsibility for someone else's grade, not to mention that I have a really hard time trusting other students with my grade."

She flashed him a rueful grin. "That I can believe. If I were as much of a brainiac as you are, I guess I'd be twice as worried. As it stands, I guess I'm a little too worked up over Janet sharing the glory of my hard-won B-minus."

Jim tossed one of the couch pillows at her. "Stop selling yourself short, Trix. Your brain is just as - as brain-y as mine. The only difference is study habits - you need to develop some better study habits and you'll be on the honor roll in no time. Remember in Arizona when you had to study a certain amount of time each day? By the end of the trip, you were calculating the exact moment of those train collisions like a pro!"

"Now I know you're Honey's brother. You're even starting to sound like her. Brain-y brains?" Trixie tossed the couch pillow back at him. "Why would you be worried about being responsible for someone else's grade for a group project? As far as I can see, any student who ever talked to you for five minutes would be jumping at the chance to be partnered with you. I know Brian was super happy to be your lab partner."

A feeling of relief washed over him at her casual revelation, as well as a rush of uncertainty. Can I tell her? Without sounding like an idiot? He took a deep breath. Just tell her. It's Trixie, she won't freak out. "When I lived with - in Albany, I couldn't always spend as much time on school as I wanted. Like, if I had to meet classmates for anything outside of class time, it was - hard to get time off the truck farm."

For a moment, Trixie didn't reply, and Jim was left feeling dizzy and slightly sick at his revelation. Great job, Frayne. Why would you tell her something like that? She doesn't need to hear about your ridiculous insecurities ...

His mental tirade against himself was cut off by the sensation of Trixie's hand on his arm and the uncharacteristically soft tone of her voice as she replied, "I hadn't thought about that. Maybe Janet isn't reliable for the project because of something she can't even help? She's so shy she probably wouldn't tell me even if I asked, which I didn't. Gleeps, I can be pretty self-centered sometimes, huh?"

Jim disagreed heartily. Trixie was the least self-centered person he knew, but before he could get a word in edgewise, she continued. "I mean, maybe her family's poor and she has to work or baby sit younger siblings or something. She might have parents that don't understand or don't care -"

" - or, you could have been right. She might just be dead weight as a partner. It happens point is, I know you're smart enough to carry the project on your own and get better than just a B-minus."

She nodded sheepishly. "I guess I should work out a back-up plan in case she doesn't pull through with her part of the work. I'll have something ready that she can just read from, just in case, so I can get my grade." She paused, giving him a quick grin that made his heart race just a little bit faster. "You know, if Brian or Mart had tried to motivate me, I don't think I would have listened. Even Moms and Dad seem like they're disappointed in me when it comes to school work. Coming from them it seems like criticism, but coming from you, it's just like a regular conversation. Instead of feeling like I messed something up, I feel like I've just been told how I can make it right. If that makes any kind of sense."

That's how you make me feel when I go off about stupid Albany or something and then feel like a huge idiot. You never make me feel awkward or like a pity case or anything, Trix. That's why I like talking to you so much ... His brain was exploding with things he wanted to say to her, but all he could manage to get out was, "Thanks, Trix. I mean it."

He glanced at his watch. "Where are Mart and Dan, anyway? Shouldn't their movie be over by now?"

Trixie crossed her arms. "Like they couldn't wait one day to see that spy movie! Us girls wanted to see it too. Jerks."

At Trixie's nearly verbatim expression of his own earlier thoughts, Jim laughed out loud. "I was thinking just about the same thing before I came down here to get some peace and quiet."

"Some peace and quiet you got with me here, huh?"

He shrugged. "Turns out it wasn't peace and quiet I needed to shut off the academic panic button in my head. I think I just needed to get out of my head for a bit. I do still need to go over a few things, though. Some of the terms are still banging around in my brain without any kind of anchor."

Trixie grabbed his book, looking over the page it was opened to and the review terms and formulas. "Here, I'll quiz you. You just sit there and try to relax. If you truly know the material, it'll come out much easier if you relax than if you get all worked up about it again."

Jim agreed, mostly because it was Trixie suggesting it, even if he was dubious that she could help calm his restless mind. He was pleasantly surprised to discover that he knew a lot more than he thought he had - not only that, but Trixie was actually very good at putting him at ease and pulling information from him that he hadn't thought he had a firm grasp on before. She even used charades at several points, an endeavor that ended with both of them laughing so hard they felt like they might be sick.

He was still wiping his eyes and shaking with laughter as he stammered, "You - you just ..."

"... just got you to say, "noble gases" by making a paper crown and holding my nose."

"Yes, you did. And, got me to remember the element Tungsten by making faces at me, and used my BWG jacket as a Superman cape for Krypton ..."

" - which is also a noble gas. The noblest, if you think about it. I mean, Superman is about as noble as it gets." She giggled. "Who knew? Chemistry can be fun! I bet Brian didn't have nearly this much fun studying."

Jim shook his head. "I'd bet on that. So, Trix. Now we've got my schoolwork taken care of, I've got some extra time. How about we take a stab at your Twelfth Night presentation? I can stand in for Shy Janet, if you like.I had to read it in 9th grade, I think. Must be some kind of New York State curriculum requirement or something."

The expression of gratitude in her blue eyes was enough for him, but she upped the ante with an invitation back to Crabapple Farm for dinner.

"Moms and Dad are grilling out, and you can show off to Brian how well-prepared you are for your test. We can call Honey and Di and see if they're done with their project yet."

"What about Mart and Dan?"

"What about 'em? They went to the movies without us, so they can eat our leftovers so far as I'm concerned."

Jim found that he agreed. That spy movie really did sound like it was good.

"First things first, Shamus. Presentation first, then sustenance." He grinned at her, and gave her stray curl a tug. "Honey and Di have art on their side - what's your idea for some kind of attention grabber for your presentation? We've got to bump you up from the B-minus range into the A-pluses, where you belong."

Trixie's face lit up. "Well, I had several ideas, but Janet vetoed all of them. First, I thought we should dress up and do a scene from it, then I thought maybe we could present it like a preview for a new movie. Janet didn't like that either."

Jim was starting to dislike Janet Whatsername. "Well, she's not here and you are. If she had any good ideas, she could have at least phoned you or something. I like the movie preview idea, Trix. It's creative. Maybe you could use real movie stars and "cast" it, and write a voiceover like a narrator, summarizing the play?"

Bouncing with excitement, she gave him a quick, impulsive hug. "I love it!"

His mind was racing - it always did when he was around Trixie, mostly in a pleasant, breathless sort of way. He knew he could be a little bit boring, and he understood that his time living in fear of his stepfather had turned him into a little bit of a control freak. It had been Regan who had casually mentioned that sometimes when you didn't have any control of your own safety and life, little things started seeming like a huge deal. For Regan, apparently it was professional perfectionism - his stables had to be orderly, the horses in his charge fed, exercised, and groomed like clockwork. For Jim, it was self-applied academic pressure. Sometimes he felt like his goals were so big that he just wasn't enough to contain them.

Trixie was good for him, in more ways than one. Giving her encouragement somehow put things in perspective for him, and her learning styles were so different from his own, that he often came away from a conversation with her with a fresh stock of new ideas and and Mart had warned him when he agreed to help Trixie with her studies - they had tried and only succeeded in frustrating not only themselves but also Trixie. That hadn't been Jim's experience at all. She had an intelligent, eager brain, was entirely unfazed by public speaking, and tended to seek out creative solutions. Thinking outside the box was no issue for Trixie - it was when she was required to think inside a particular sort of box that she had trouble, and, like he'd pointed out to her earlier, that wasn't something that was insurmountable. Better study habits would help her, and he was all too happy to be the one to give her some support in that area. It was the least he could do for the girl who gave him the gift of having a family again.

Aloud, he said, "I think I saw some posterboard around here somewhere. I think it was left over from the ice show. Di left some of her movie star magazines here when she used them for some kind of collage. You could do your celebrity dream-casting of Twelfth Night with those - here's Honey's sewing kit, it should have scissors."

She scooted onto the floor and started rifling through the magazines, looking for the right images to use."You know something, Jim?"

"What, Trix?"

"I think you're going to be one swell teacher when you get your school."

The certainty in her statement did something to him. He actually felt different after she said it. Lighter, somehow. Not the perennial if that reverberated in his head all of the time. None of the doubt he often felt, none of the worry about if he would succeed. Just when. When he got his school. He wanted to laugh, wanted to cry, wanted to somehow explain to her exactly how much that one small sentence had meant to him, but he couldn't find the words. So, he did the next best thing he could. He sat down on the floor with her and listened as she talked while she worked. Glancing at his Chemistry book, abandoned on the sofa, he willed himself to look away from it, assured of his preparedness for his test.