Shortly afterwards, they were being taken on a quick walking tour around campus by a student with a summer job in the admissions office. There were a number of questions they had been reluctant to run by Wilt that they got answered right away, and mostly to their satisfaction. Without much further discussion, they agreed that they’d found their place.

Back in Wilt’s office a little later, they found the letters waiting for them. “Is there anything else we can do for you?” he asked.

“Well, yeah,” Cody said. “We’ve been camping on this trip. Is there any place around here we could camp for cheap?”

“Not right around campus,” Wilt told them. “But if you don’t make a mess, I can arrange to let you stay in a dorm room for free. No linen, though, I’m afraid.”

“No problem, we have sleeping bags,” Cody told him. “It’ll just seem strange to be using them inside.”

Thus it was that they spent their first night at Southern Michigan University in a dorm room. It was bare, only beds and mattresses, but that was fine with them. The only problem was that the beds were bunk beds, and neither of them were crazy about it.

“This isn’t going to work,” Janice said unhappily as they got ready for bed. “I don’t know how I can sleep without you next to me.”

“Well, let’s zip the sleeping bags together again, and just crowd together,” he suggested. “It’s not going to be any different than any other night on this trip.”

In only minutes they were cuddled together like they’d become used to. “You know, Cody,” she said as she held him in her arms. “This is really like a dream come true for me. I never even thought that I’d be going to college, and now it seems pretty real.”

“Well, I never dreamed that I’d be going to college with you,” he said, pulling her closer, if such a thing were possible, “but it looks like that’s what’s going to happen, and I couldn’t be happier about it. Unfortunately, we’re not out of the woods yet. There’s still a chance this might not work out for us.”

“What do you mean?”

“The reality of it didn’t hit home until we were talking about financial aid with Mr. Wilt this afternoon, and the reality isn’t pretty. Let’s face it, Jan. This place isn’t cheap, even if they try to cut corners to make it more affordable for students. Shay is getting some good grants and scholarships to go to Lake State, he’s getting help from Mom and Dad, and he’s still going to be up to his neck in student loans. Mom and Dad aren’t rich by any means, and while I know they intend to do all they can to help you out, they weren’t planning on having three kids in college at the same time, instead of two.”

“You mean we’re not going to be able to afford to come here?” she said as he felt her tense in his arms. “Cody, what are we going to do?”

“About all we can do is the best we can,” he said. “Don’t get me wrong, Mom and Dad will help as much as they can, but there’s a reason we’ve gotten along on two old cars. Dad is still buying the business from Mr. McGuinness, and that eats up a lot of the money he makes. There’s not all that much left over. Some of that has gone to help Mom run the Iditarod a couple times. That isn’t free either, by any means.”

“I guess I hadn’t realized that.”

“I guess no one ever explained it to you,” he said. “Hell, that’s part of the reason we’re camping out on this trip and making the trip on the money we’ve earned this summer. In a few years when Mom and Dad get the business paid off, things won’t be anywhere near as tight, but that’s not going to help us much right now. That doesn’t mean we can’t go to college, it’s just that we’re going to have to work some things out the hard way. Face it, we’re going to have to go the student loan route, and spend years paying it all back at really nasty interest rates.”

“I have some money in the bank,” she said, sounding rather dispirited. “You know, from the sale of the house.”

“True,” he said. “But when you add up what this is going to cost us, it’s not all that much money. Hell, even with your grades, you’re in a better position for getting federal and state student aid than I am.”

“I am?”

“Yeah,” he said. “It’s kind of how the system works. I know from when Mom and Dad were getting ready to send Shay off to college that, when you apply for federal student aid, part of the application involves how much the parents will contribute. In your case, that amount is going to be nothing, so you stand a chance of getting more money from student aid than I can.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“Sure, I’m sure,” he said. “Even though you’re eighteen now and you have the emancipation papers anyway, why do you think that Mom and Dad never made a move to adopt you?”

“I guess I never thought about it,” she said. “I mean, you and your folks have been so nice to me the issue never came up in my mind. But now that you mention it, it does seem kind of funny.”

“Mom told me about it a little back when you were first with us. From what I gathered, they kicked the idea of adopting you around with Mr. Schindenwulfe, back when they were trying to keep Family and Children’s Services from putting you with some random foster family until you turned eighteen. The parent contribution angle for college expenses is what killed that idea. Well, that, and the fact that Mr. Schindenwulfe thought he could get the emancipation through more easily and more quickly. That’s part of the reason why everyone went along with the name change so easily, to make you feel more a part of us without legally making my folks responsible for the parent contribution. Not that any of us love you any less, but from what I understand the money difference between one way and the other is considerable. They were just trying to make it easier for you to go to college.”

“I guess I never realized any of that,” she sighed. “But then, until now I had no reason to know about it. So what do we do?”

“God knows, I don’t have all the answers, Jan,” he told her in the low light coming through the window of the dorm room. “I don’t even have some of them. Sure, we’ll get help from Mom and Dad. There’s a state financial aid grant that will help a little if we can qualify for it; it’s based on test scores, I do know that. Yeah, there will be student loans. And we might as well apply for every grant we can find out about. A few bucks here, a few there, it’s going to add up after a while. We’ll probably have to hold down jobs, at least part time. And there are some corners we can cut, and one of them might help us out at least a little.”

“What’s this?”

“Well, you know about the deal with Susan McMahon and her apartment building. I’ve only talked it over with Dad in the most general terms, and absolutely nothing is worked out on it yet. But the thing that intrigues the accountant in him is the fact that she’s making payments on the place, paying taxes, doing the upkeep, and is still able to go to Europe each summer on what’s left over. If we, and by that I’m including Mom and Dad, can work out a reasonable deal with her and her family on that, it might be worth at least some of our expenses and help us live more cheaply than living in a dorm room like this besides.”

“That would be nice,” she said. “I mean, we haven’t been here all that long and I don’t think I’d like living in a little box like this. One night is all right, I guess, but to have to live like this for years, and without you? I couldn’t take it, Cody, and that’s that.”

“Me either,” he smiled. “I’ve gotten used to having you next to me when I go to sleep.”

“Oh, Cody,” she sighed, “you’re so good to me. I still can’t believe that I was so lucky to have you rescue me.”

“It’s worked out so far,” he said, rolling over a little to be able to give her a nice, long kiss.

Eventually they broke the kiss, and just lay there silently holding onto each other. Cody lay awake, turning over various things in his mind, mostly on the question of how they were going to be able to afford the awesome cost of four years at this place. It clearly wasn’t going to be easy; there were a lot of questions, a lot of unknowns. While he was pretty sure they could manage everything through student loans, it would leave them with a huge debt to pay off when they got out of college – and then to consider another three years of law school on top of that? That would be even more expensive! As much as he’d given consideration to going to law school, right at the moment it seemed to be pretty far out of reach.

“Cody?” he heard her whisper, “are you still awake?”

“Yeah,” he replied. “Just trying to think all this out.”

“I’ve been thinking about it, too,” she said. “Do you know if Susan’s parents are paying her tuition and like that?”

“No idea,” he said. “I guess I thought they did.”

“Wouldn’t it be, well, a little rude of her to let them pay her tuition, and then she goes to Europe on the money she makes off her apartments?”

“Yeah, I guess it would be,” he sighed. “But maybe her parents aren’t paying all that much of it. Maybe she got a good grant someplace that’s picking up tuition. Now that I think about it, I seem to recall someone saying at a family dinner or something that some foundation gave her a pretty good scholarship.”

“That would make things a little different,” she sighed. “But with the grades I had before last semester, I can’t see me getting a scholarship for much of anything. But there’s got to be a way, Cody, and if there is I’m sure you’ll find it.”

With that, she cuddled up a little bit closer to him, and soon he figured she was asleep. He lay awake, the thoughts still roiling through his head, wishing that he had the confidence in himself that she had in him.

It took them a couple of days to get home following an early start out of Hawthorne the next morning. After talking it over, they bucked up their courage and decided to take on the Chicago traffic just to see how bad it was going to be. It proved to be about as bad as they expected, and they both drove part of it for the sake of the experience. They soon learned that if both of them kept their eyes open and the rider helped the driver navigate and look for problems it wasn’t too bad. Chicago seemed to drag on endlessly, and when they were out the far side of the city they agreed without much discussion that in the future they’d take the longer but less nerve-wracking route through Michigan. Still, going through Wisconsin allowed them to see the Wisconsin Dells, which they found interesting before turning the pickup’s nose toward Spearfish Lake.

It was late on Friday afternoon when they pulled into town and parked in front of Spearfish Lake Outfitters. It wasn’t busy inside, and as soon as Candice welcomed them home she called John over from his office to hear a little about the trip. “So,” she asked as soon as he arrived, “how did it go down in Hawthorne?”

“Pretty good,” Cody said, finding a counter to lean up against. “It’s a real nice place, and the people we got to talk to seemed nice, too. There are still some questions in our minds, but we’re pretty sure that’s where we want to go. We got accepted, pending some paperwork and keeping our grades up.”

“Accepted?” John said. “I didn’t think you were even planning on applying on this trip.”

“Well, we didn’t plan on it,” Cody told them, “but we thought we’d drop by the admissions office to see what kind of problem Jan’s grades were going to be, and one thing led to another. They were actually pretty positive about it.”

“That’s only part of the story,” Janice giggled.

“Well, yeah,” Cody grinned. “It turns out we met the admissions officer at the state championship meet on Sunday, and that sort of greased the skids a little.”

“You’re not going to tell them, are you?” Janice laughed, seeing that she had him caught out a little for once.

“Tell us what?” Candice asked.

“The reason the admissions officer remembered Cody,” Janice smiled broadly, “is that he remembered Cody winning centerfire pistol at the state meet on Sunday. Cody was one of the ones who outshot him.”

“Winning?” John said. “You mean like overall high score?”

“The trophy is out in the pickup,” Cody laughed. “I won it by one point on sort of a fluke, but I think that given time and practice I could shoot at that level and be successful with it.”

“Well, good,” Candice replied, proud of her son despite on how shy he seemed to be about it. “I’m sorry we weren’t there to see it, but that’s really something to be proud of. So what else did you do? Did you get to see Shay?”

“Yeah, that place has got a lot of rides and stuff, and he took us on all the ones most likely to make us barf,” Cody shook his head. “I’m still surprised that I can eat. He’s got some news for you that’s going to make you happy, but Janice and I said we weren’t going to tell you so don’t ask. He should be home toward the end of next week, so you’ll just have to wait and find out. Anyway, we got to go to a lot of the places we talked about and had a good time everywhere.”

Between them, Cody and Janice told them about the rest of the trip, and the places they’d been over the previous few days. It had been a good trip, no doubt about it.

“I’d say you kids got back just in time,” John announced when they’d worked their way through the story. “Not much has happened around here, not surprising, but you’ll be glad to know that Matt Schindenwulfe called this morning. Janice, the probate hearing on your name change is Monday morning at nine.”

“Good,” she smiled. “That just adds to everything that’s made the last few days really wonderful.”

“Well, considering the news,” Candice said, “maybe tonight would be a good time to drag the gas grill out of the garage and break out some steaks.”

A little later John and Cody were out in the back yard, attending to the sirloins on the grill. This was not a difficult job, nor very time consuming – the steaks needed to be turned every few minutes, and it didn’t take both of them to do it. Still, John and Cody rarely had time to talk to each other one on one anymore, and when John suggested that his son help him, Cody was not about to turn him down.

“So,” John said as he got the steaks lying out on the grill, “this thing with Shay. Is it trouble?”

“No, Dad, it’s actually good news. At least Mom will think it’s good news, and I’m not sure I don’t agree. But he deserves to be the one to tell her, and not have me let the cat out of the bag.”

“Well, good,” he said. “I was afraid it was going to be bad news that would just mean more problems.”

“Nothing like that. Besides, you’ll know in a few days.”

“Anyway, to change the subject, I take it the two of you are really sold on Southern, right?”

“Yeah, we are,” Cody sighed. “Dad, to be honest, the money is a problem. You know they don’t have much financial aid, and even though they try to make up for it in other ways it looks like it’s going to be a reach. On the way back we talked about maybe going down to Riverside Community College in Camden for a year and commuting back and forth, just to save some money. It’d be a long drive, but maybe it wouldn’t be bad if we could hold classes to just a couple days a week. But that would louse up the deal with Susan McMahon’s apartment.”

“Oh, yeah, I remember you telling me about that,” John said. “I guess I don’t remember much about it. Did you find out anything about it?”

“No, not really,” Cody admitted. “We didn’t even try to drive by since we didn’t know where it is. But what I do know is that she takes in enough rent to cover her own apartment, the payments and utilities, and still has enough left to go to Europe.”

“I knew that,” John smiled. “Josh has told me more than once that he’s totally amazed at the way Susan can fall into things like that. You’re saying that we ought to buy it from her?”

“I think it’s worth looking into,” Cody told him. “I wouldn’t want to sign papers on it just yet since Janice and I don’t absolutely know for sure that we’re going there. But given that, I think maybe we ought to look into it a little more and let her know that we’re interested if it works out that we can go there.”

“I’m sure her father is involved somehow,” John said. “I often have breakfast with him out at the Café. I’ll see if I can’t kick it around with him a little and maybe get some idea of the numbers. If it’s all it’s cracked up to be, it might be a good deal all the way around. I don’t think Mike would mind not having to pay a commission to a realtor.”

“When you get right down to it, I’m in your hands on this. I don’t have any idea where to start.”

“I’m willing to help, but this is one of those things you ought to learn about sooner or later,” John told him. “But speaking of sooner or later, it was real quiet around here this week with all of you kids gone, and your mother and I are just going to have to get used to it. But it gave us the opportunity to talk about some things we needed to go over, and there’s something we decided that you and I need to talk about.”

“More problems, Dad?”

“I don’t know. Look, this is awkward for me and your mother is better at talking about these things, but I guess I got elected. Look, it’s no secret that you and Janice have been spending the night together since day one, right?”

“No, of course not. It was a little awkward right at the beginning, but I’ve not only gotten used to it, I’ve come to like it.”

“I know this is a hell of a question to have to ask, but are you having sex with her?”

“No,” Cody said. “I suppose Mom told you why not.”

“She told me back last winter that you didn’t want Janice to think of you like she thought of her father and brother. I think that’s commendable of you, and I doubt that I would have been able to manage that all this time when I was your age, which I suppose shows the strength of character I always knew you had.”

“To be honest, there have been times when it’s been hard as hell,” Cody shook his head, “and, to continue being honest, it almost happened on this trip, would have happened if Janice’s, uh, timing hadn’t gotten in the way.”

“We sort of wondered about that,” John shook his head. “In fact, we wondered if that wasn’t part of the reason the two of you wanted to take this trip, so you could be away from us for that reason.”

“It really wasn’t part of our thinking, it just happened, well, almost happened,” Cody replied, “but Dad, I again have to be honest and say that I don’t think we’re going to be holding off much longer.”

“Like I said, I’m surprised you’ve held off this long, but I know that you’ve tried to for Janice’s sake. In the last week your mother has told me a lot that I didn’t know, including the fact that Janice told her that you decided you were going to hold off until you were sure that she was ready for it.”

“That’s a pretty simple way of putting it, but yes. I don’t want Janice having sex with me because she thinks it’ll make me happy. I want to be sure that she wants it for its own sake as much as I do.”

“Cody, you continue to amaze me. I was a hell of a horny teenager, and I could never have done something like that. You love her, don’t you?”

“I couldn’t have said that in the beginning, but yeah, I do. I’ve come to believe that there’s nothing that could split the two of us.”

“You’re a lucky kid, and you’ve been smart to hold off as long as you have,” John smiled. “Your mother has come to agree with me that Janice is not only in love with you, she’s totally devoted to you. I mean, like in worships-the-ground-you-walk-on devoted.”

“Yeah,” Cody sighed, “it makes me a little uncomfortable at times.”

“I hate to say it, but that’s something you’re going to have to get used to, not that it’s bad. You and Janice are going to have a different dynamic than your mother and I have, and you’ve already developed it. Now, that much said, there’s a difference between having sex and making love. It took me a while to learn that, but I think you understand that already. I think I can say that what Shay has been doing with Bethany is having sex. When it happens with you and Janice, the two of you will be making love.”

“Yeah,” Cody replied slowly, “I guess that’s what I’ve been holding out for, and it seems to have worked.”

“One more thought you always should remember when dealing with Janice, especially at this period,” John said wisely. “I didn’t really realize this myself until Carole Hunt pointed it out to me. Janice hasn’t even had sex. She was just raped. Having friendly sex and making love are going to be as new to her as to you, so when you do it, try to remember that she’s still a virgin in that sense and open the doors for her gently.”

“Dad,” Cody frowned, “let me get this straight. You’re saying that it’s all right with you and Mom if Janice and I, well, make love?”

“It’s as hard for me to say yes to that question as it is for you to ask it, I’m sure,” John smiled. “But just do it right, don’t do anything you’re going to be sorry for, and, well, try not to rub in the fact that your mother and I aren’t eighteen anymore and therefore not as horny as you can get at that age. Just hold off until the time is right, then do the right thing. And close the door when you do.”

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