Wednesday, September 20, 2000 (1:00 PM)

       “Joe, are you all right?” Anna Phillips asked him as she knelt beside him to help him back to his feet.  “They hit you really hard!  Oh dear!”

       “I’m fine, Anna,” Joe muttered to her as he pulled his arm free of hers and rubbed at his sore stomach.  “I’m all fine, see?  All in one piece.  No worries here.”

       “If you’re sure,” Anna said, softly, shyly.  She backed away from Joe and brushed at her skirt and blouse, trying to beat off leaves and dirt from the ground.  “I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t been there, Joe!  Thank you!”

       “You’re welcome,” Joe said.  “Look, I’d like to talk longer, Anna, but Frank is waiting for me and I have to get to class.  I’ll see you later?  Are you all right?”

       “Oh yes,” Anna said.  She nodded a little reluctantly and continued back up the hill to the main sidewalk.  Joe leaned down to pick up his own backpack again and grimaced.  That hurt, blast it all.  He couldn’t afford another injury that would keep him from playing; he’d lose his position to that twerp Coonby for sure!

       “I’m here,” he said to Frank when he got back to the bench.  Frank was still sitting, though Joe knew Frank was not sitting patiently.  Joe waited for Frank to stand before he put Frank’s hand on his shoulder and led his brother toward the back entrance of the dorm.

       “What happened?” Frank asked. 

       “Gangbangers,” Joe told his brother.  “They were harassing Anna Phillips.  What the heck are gangers doing on campus?”

       Frank shrugged.  “I don’t know, unless they think they can get a leg in here.  Either that or they’re just out causing their usual trouble.  You know how those gangs are, have to prove who the big man in town is.”

       “Well, they’d better keep their little gang selves off of our campus,” Joe declared.  “Or there will be some serious head-busting.  We’re coming to the door, Frank.  Ok, step up.”

       Joe held the door open until Frank was inside and held it until Frank had tapped and walked his way out of the way of the door.  Joe took his hand and placed it again, then led the way up the stairs.  These, at least, Frank could handle.  He knew exactly how many there were to each landing and how far to step for each step.  Joe was grateful that they were back in the dorm.  He led Frank down the corridor to his room and let Frank open his own door.  It always took him awhile to get the key positioned just right but Joe always let him do it on his own, even if his nerves screamed for him to take the keys and do it himself.

       “Thanks, Joe,” Frank said a few minutes later.  “I really appreciate your help.”

       “No prob, bro,” Joe told him.  “Do you need me to do anything before I leave?”

       Frank shook his head.  “No, I’m fine.”

       Joe wondered but, finally, he turned and left the room.  He closed the door behind him as he grabbed his bag and began to run to get to his own class.

 

       If I have to endure one more lecture on punctuality, I think I may kill someone.

       Forty minutes and one class later, Joe stormed out of his classroom and stomped away to go in search of some peace and quiet for a couple of hours.  The fight and escorting Frank had made Joe nearly fifteen minutes late for his own class.  Bayport U didn’t have a set attendance policy, the officials normally left that to the various professors.  Professor Taikman had decided that everyone should attend every single one of his boring lectures.  He allowed for a certain amount of absences but he always took those personally.

       Like I don’t have better things to do, Joe muttered to himself.

       Joe wandered along the sidewalk that led back to Tauhausen Hall, running over the latest lecture in his mind.  It was true that what Professor Taikman didn’t know about this class, Juvenile Development, probably didn’t need to be known and it was true that Joe was learning a lot in his class.  Joe liked to think himself up on the latest in law enforcement or juvenile delinquency but with what he had learned from Professor Taikman in the four classes he had thus far with the man, Joe began to feel like an unschooled simpleton. 

       Joe stopped in the quad on the way by to see the repairmen hard at work on the portion of the lawn that had exploded a few weeks before.  The lawn was torn into bite-sized chunks, swallowed over by a pile of mud that looked to be a foot deep.  The men were down in a hole that they had dug with a backhoe.  The whole was actually digging beyond the damaged portion, turning the quad into something more like a heptagon.  The hole seemed to follow the main water line.  So far, they had the water shunted to a secondary service since the campus still had water.  Joe watched them work for a moment before he continued his trek back to his dorm.

       “Hi, Joe,” Joe turned to see Anna Phillips for the third time that day.  She stood beside him as he watched the construction workers drilling inside of the hole.  She wore, as usual, a sweater, this one of the soft, baby blue variety.  The blue, if Joe was going to be social about the whole thing, looked good on Anna.  It softened her complexion so it looked milky.  Joe was often amazed that she didn’t have a boyfriend. 

       “Hello, Anna,” Joe said again. 

       “I just wanted to thank you again, you know, for earlier.  I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t been there,” Anna said.  “So thank you.”

       Joe shrugged, giving Anna a ‘think nothing of it’ gesture.   “All in a day’s service with the Hardy brothers, ma’am,” he said as he gave her a sweeping bow.  “Those guys didn’t belong anywhere near our campus anyhow.”

       “Well, not many other boys would have done what you did, Joe,” Anna said, softly.  She bestowed on Joe a sweet smile and he sighed.  Not another one!  Hadn’t he gone through enough of these in one lifetime?

       “Perhaps,” Joe said equably.  “Hopefully they won’t be back to cause you any more trouble.”

       “I hope so too,” Anna gazed past Joe’s shoulder at something behind him but Joe didn’t turn to see what she was looking at.  Her gaze fell back on Joe a second later.  “It was very nice of you to do what you did.”

       “Oh, no problem, but, I’d better be going, I need to plot out the best course around the quad to get Frank to the Computer Labs for his classes, so, I’ll talk to you later,” Joe said.  A lame excuse but at least a halfway legitimate one.  Until the construction work here was done, this was definitely off-limits to his older brother.  He could just see some careless construction worker tossing something or moving something that Frank wouldn’t be able to see.  He’d better make sure to warn the rest of the gang too. 

       “Oh, all right,” Anna said, as she turned slowly away.  “I… I’ll see you later.”

       Joe nodded to her and continued his trek back to Tauhausen Hall.  He made a mental map of the campus in his head, rejecting some routes automatically because they were either too rough or too congested and trekking down possibilities until he came up with the best route to the computer labs.  So far, it was turning out to be a halfway decent day.

 

       “Mr. Hardy, are you with us?” Doctor McCormick asked Frank for the fourth time during the lecture on Abnormal Psychology.  Frank had his micro-recorder going, his new way of taking notes now that he couldn’t read anything if he wrote it down.  Doctor McCormick seemed to be going out of his way to treat Frank as if he lost his brain, rather than his eyesight.  Frank sighed and told Doctor McCormick that, yes, he understood everything and, yes, he had been paying attention.

       Frank really had nothing better to do than listen.  He could try to doodle but, unless he paid careful attention to the paper in front of him, he would end up doodling on the desk instead of the paper.  He normally took reams of notes in these classes, notes that he would later put into decent order and study thoroughly before the next class.  Writing things down normally distracted him from the length of time the class was taking.  Frank had no idea what the time was right now.  He had yet to sign-up for a class on Braille, much less to learn how to read it or to get a watch that had Braille numbers.

       Slow and easy, Frank thought to himself.  You can’t do it all at once so don’t try.

Just listen, learn and try not to think about what you can’t do anymore.  The can do’s still outnumber the can’t do’s, so remember that.  You’ll feel better in the end.

       The topic of the lesson shifted a moment later and Frank’s attention was drawn back into the conversation.  One good thing about Doctor McCormick was that he didn’t lecture.  He conversed.  He asked opinions and generally allowed a person to play devil’s advocate if they felt strongly about something.  He normally didn’t judge either.  Perhaps Frank’s blindness threw the doctor as much as it threw Frank.  Frank responded well to the doctor’s questions and ventured his opinion on a couple of the topics, speaking in his normal tone of voice, confident that people were looking at him but only because he was speaking, rather than to gawk at his dark glasses.

       When the class ended a short time later, Frank was actually surprised that the time had suddenly flown by.  He looked around for a moment, listening but stayed in his seat.  Another of those many lessons he had been forced to learn was to stay put until someone showed him where he was going or he knew where he was going himself.  That, he hoped, would come later, when he had the seats better plotted.

       “Is everything all right, Mr. Hardy?” Dr. McCormick’s voice asked a moment later, from somewhere very close by where Frank sat.  “Do you need assistance getting somewhere?”

       Frank shook his head.  “No, sir.  My roommate is supposed to be coming for me any minute now.”

       “Did you find the class stimulating enough?” Dr. McCormick asked him, his voice filled with endless patience.

       “Extremely,” Frank said, honestly.  “And it’s amazing how much you pack into one class, sir.”

       There was a momentary pause.

       “Have you had any trouble with your reading assignments?  I know that your… situation… is new to you.  I would like to think you wouldn’t hesitate in asking for extra help should you require it?”

       “Well, so far it hasn’t been a problem, but I have a feeling my girlfriend may grow tired of reading things to me on an endless basis,” Frank admitted.  “My father has tracked down most of my reading material on audio book, however, so that shouldn’t last much longer.”

       “Ah, good, I was going to recommend the same,” Dr. McCormick sounded like he was smiling.  That was odd, Frank didn’t think Dr. McCormick knew how to smile.  Maybe it was just easier to imagine when you couldn’t see his face.  “I’ve worked out a system for your test-taking that I hope will work for you, Mr. Hardy.  I understand that you have a laptop computer?”

       ‘Yes sir,” Frank said, curiously.

       “Ah, good.  Do you happen to have any voice-activated software on your computer?”

       “Yes sir,” Frank said, again.  “Actually, we just installed a new system on it over the weekend.  I needed it for my computer science courses.”

       “Very good,” Dr. McCormick sounded very pleased.  “I have transcribed the tests into a computer program that I think will work very well.  It will read the question to you and, by your answers, will mark the appropriate lists.  The essay questions will require determination on your part, of course.”

       “Ah, yes, sir,” Frank said again.  This really was going to work, he thought again.  I won’t have to find another school to go to.

       “Ah, I see your friend is here to get you,” Dr. McCormick said a moment later, politely.  “Mister…?”

       “Ah, MacKenzie,” Connor said to Dr. McCormick.  “Connor MacKenzie.”

       “Ah, the young quarterback of our football team, aren’t you, Mr. MacKenzie?  It’s good to make your acquaintance.”

       “You as well, sir,” Connor said politely.  “Thank you for keeping him company, I got stopped on the way over here to get him and it took awhile to explain to Doctor Martin that I was in a hurry.”

       “No problem, young man, no problem,” Dr. McCormick said.  “It gave me a chance to talk with Mr. Hardy here.  Now off with you scamps before the next class comes barging in and runs you both over.”

       Frank smiled as he stood, gathered his cassette player and stuffed it in his bag and groped for, and found, his cane.  He tapped his way down to the end of the aisle of seats and then Connor took his hand, placed it on his shoulder and led the way from the room.

       “Sorry I’m late, Frank,” Connor said again.  “Are you all right?”

       “Fine,” Frank said.  “Dr. McCormick is very interesting.  I was just thinking about his class.”

       “Uh, we need to go left,” Connor said somewhat absently.  “Sorry, I’ll get better at this, hopefully soon.  Er, Joe told us to avoid the quad for a while, they’ve got the whole area torn apart putting in new water pipes.  It looks like the whole of the Civil War was fought there.”

       “I take it they’re replacing the whole water main, instead of just the section that blew out?”  Frank asked his friend as he continued to tap.  There, he felt a larger crack in the sidewalk than he normally allowed for.  He stepped a little higher there and got past it.  His cane tapped against something, a person’s leg he realized a moment later.  He tapped against even ground for a while, or at least, he hoped it was even ground.

       “Oh, I got assigned to Doctor Pherson,” Connor continued.  “I haven’t met him yet, I’m supposed to go see him later this afternoon.  Did you want to go back to the dorm or just stop in the Student Union until you have your Computer class?”

       “Let’s go by the library,” Frank said.  “I want to pick up a couple of books on tape, they promised to have a couple in for me today that I’ve been looking for.”

       “Library it is,” Connor agreed. 

      

       After a short stop at the library and another jaunt to the Comp Lab, Frank was safely ensconced in his next classroom, his earphones on so that he could do his assignments without having to disturb everyone else in the lab.  This was where things got hard for him.  A lot of computer work relied on a person being able to actually see what he was doing.  He knew that staying in these classes was a test.  If it went well for the next two weeks, he would stay.  If it didn’t, he would have to concede that some things just weren’t possible. 

       Samantha was waiting outside the door of the lab for him, or at least he assumed she was because the bell had barely rung when she was at his side, helping him pack up his laptop and guiding him out of the room.  Unlike the rest of his guides, who followed the ‘approved’ method of guiding a blind person, Samantha held onto Frank’s arm and generally talked their way through obstacles.  Frank had to admit he liked her method better than the approved one.  Nobody would look twice at a guy walking along with his girlfriend, except to ogle the legs of that girlfriend or perhaps her smile and her face. 

       She escorted him with ease over to Tauhausen Hall, taking the most convoluted route Frank had ever taken.  He had to admit, however, that he encountered fewer obstacles to get around than he had going other directions.     

       Samantha just never seemed like she minded, either that he lost his site or that she had to do most of the work getting them around.  Usually, back in the days when he could see, she would snuggle up next to him while he was driving his midnight blue Lexus Convertible.  He rather enjoyed having her snuggle up next to him.  He just didn’t feel right about being the snuggler.  It felt very wrong. 

       “I told you everything was all right,” Samantha told him again and they stopped on the trail between the forest behind Tauhausen Hall and the dorm itself.  She pulled him close and wrapped her arms around him. 

       “I know you did,” Frank admitted, softly.  “I just… I know how hard this is on you and everyone else too.  I don’t want you to have to take care of me all the time.”

       “I like taking care of you,” Samantha brushed a hand along his cheek and a lock of Frank’s hair blew into his face.  “Do I wish things were different, that they were like they were before?  Sure.  But I’m not giving up.”

       “I can’t even see you,” Frank whispered to her. 

       “Yes you can,” Samantha told him.  She lifted one of his hands to her face and he felt her silky smooth skin, her forehead, her eyes, her small, slightly upturned nose and her lips.  A small smile came to his face as he felt her soft skin under his fingers and he pulled his hand back only reluctantly from her face and took her hand in his again.

       “Thank you,” Frank smiled at her again and he felt better than he had in two weeks.  “Maybe I can see you at that.”

       “You won’t forget what I look like too soon, will you?” Samantha asked, quietly.  “You have a memory that doesn’t forget much, Frank Hardy.  I expect you to remember!”

       Frank laughed as she took his arm again and led the way forward again.  “Yes, my Lady!” he saluted her with his free hand.  “Order received and obeyed!”

       Sam returned his laugh, her laugh like the tinkle of a waterfall to Frank’s ears.

       Samantha stopped a moment later, however, when they both heard a ruckus going on up ahead of them.  Frank listened intently, hearing what sounded very much like someone hitting or kicking someone else.  Samantha led Frank slowly forward and they both stopped.

       Suddenly, Samantha gasped out loud and let out a startled exclamation,

       “JOE!”  

 

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The Hardy Boys belong to Simon and Schuster and the Stratemeyer Foundation. I've only borrowed them to play with for a while but I promise to return them whenever I've finished with them.  (I make no promises as to condition, that's entirely up to them).  I promise, I'm only writing for fun and I'm not making a single dime off of this (unless you count personal fulfillment).