Free I'll Be There by Iris Rainer Dart

wondered if he meant the Enquirer. “But she’ll be in understanding company here, because there are many kids from unusual situations, multiple stepfamilies, cohabiting parents who have never married one another, single parents whose spouses aren’t around anymore, or single parents who never had spouses in the first place. In fact in this school it’s the nuclear families who are unusual.” When his smiling eyes met Cee Cee’s concerned ones, he shrugged, laughed a little laugh, and said, “That’s show biz.”
    Cee Cee looked around his large office. There were a lot of pictures of this guy on every wall, eight-by-ten framed pictures of him standing among small groups of people. Now Cee Cee looked more closely and saw that one of the groups was Sylvester Stallone and one of his kids, and in another he was with Lesley Ann Warren and her son, then there was another of Jason with Goldie Hawn and her kids.
    “Well, we’ll give it a lot of thought,” Cee Cee said, standing, relieved that at that moment, through the floor-to-ceiling window that faced the school’s back lawn with a wide-angle view of the ocean, she could see Nina on her way back toward the administration building. Cee Cee shook the young headmaster’s outstretched hand and thanked him.
     
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    IRIS RA INER DA R T
     
    “So what are you working on now?” he asked, walking out the door of his office with her, and the question felt like a blow to her stomach. Larry Gold was trying to get a meeting for her with the network people she had walked out on when she went to Carmel all those months ago, but so far they were refusing even to listen to her apology. Trouble, she was known in the industry as trouble, her agent told her bluntly, but he was trying to smooth things over.
    “I’ve got a lot of stuff cooking,” she said, trying to sound even. “Well, that’s good,” the headmaster said, “because I’m a big fan.” Now Nina was standing next to her. When the headmaster put out his hand for the girl to shake, she gave him a look-intheeyefirm-grip Cee Cee knew Bertie must have insisted on, said, “Thank you so much for your time,” and she and Cee Cee were off down the hall.
    “So, what do you think?” Cee Cee asked her when they got into the car.
    “I think I should go to the public school in our neighborhood,” she answered. “I don’t want to go to a school for weird kids from weird families. I want to feel like I’m with real kids. And anyway, all they did on the tour was drop names and ask me what you were like.”
    “Neen, your life is special now and your circumstances are too.” “I’m not special, you are.”
    “Well, the public school in our neighborhood won’t work,” Cee Cee said.
    “And Buena Vista won’t either,” Nina snapped.
    Cee Cee drove silently for a few blocks, their mutual frustration hanging in the air.
    More stars than the Milky Way. The kid’s right, Cee Cee thought. That’s not the place for her. But somehow she had to find a school that offered some degree of safety and privacy to a child whose family profile was so high, one that would give Nina the feeling of normalcy her homelife with Cee Cee would never provide. Someplace where she could see that another lifestyle was possible, and where she would be among lots of families, whole ones, the kind she might want to have herself someday. “Don’t worry. We’ll find the right place,” she said, not sure if she was talking to herself or Nina. It would have to be a good school too, because this kid was one smart little cookie, very intense, with an overanalytical mind that never quit. At bedtime she
     
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    and Cee Cee would take turns reading to one another, and Nina always had a million serious questions about even the most frivolous storybooks.
    “At Piglet’s house the water was coming in through the window. He had just written a note which read ‘HELP, PIGLET, ME.’ Piglet put the note in a bottle whichfloated