Angela 3: Silver Path of the Moon

By David A. Bedford

Angela, a senior, is faced with uncertainties as she thinks about her future. Visiting colleges, she struggles with her own insecurities and fears. Though maturing, the process can be pretty confusing. She delights in her friends, especially Miles, but problems arise when North Padre Island is hit by a hurricane. City officials are set to vote on a harsh anti-immigrant ordinance. This law, which would make life hard for her immigrant friends, although they are in the country legally, stirs emotions on both sides of the fence. Angela's controversial topic for her honors History and English research paper causes tempers to flare, as increasingly heated opposition from the usual and unexpected sources come to a head. Angela 3, an exciting and fast-moving ending to the Angela series.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Progressive Rising Phoenix Press, LLC
• Release date: Mar 22, 2015
• ISBN: 9781944277918

David A. Bedford

David A. Bedford was born in Fort Worth, Texas, grew up in Argentina, and moved to the United States for his studies. He attended Texas Tech University and received a BA and MA, before attending The University of Texas at Austin, where he earned his PhD in foreign language education. He has prepared new missionaries for language study, served as a consultant for the Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board, and served as the Language Lab Director and Adjunct Professor of Spanish at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. After a four and a half year stint directing the Portuguese Language School in Campinas, David accepted a position at Texas Christian University where he is an instructor of Spanish.

Book preview

Angela 3:

Silver Path of the Moon

David A. Bedford

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.

Text Copyright © 2014 David A. Bedford

All rights reserved.

Published 2015 by Progressive Rising Phoenix Press, LLC

www.progressiverisingphoenix.com

ISBN: 978-1-944277-91-8

1st Printing

Cover design by Kalpart

Cover photo credit: Bigstock Photo

http://www.bigstockphoto.com

Book design by Polgarus Studio

Visit: http://www.polgarusstudio.com

To the sunshine of my life

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Epilogue

About the Author

The characters, events, businesses, news reports, and all other matters in this book are totally fictional. Any resemblance to real persons, events, businesses, and news reports is purely coincidental and unintended.

The following is not an account of any events that have happened. Instead, it is a cautionary tale of what may likely happen if the people of the United States do not wake up to the reality that surrounds us.

Chapter 1

Angela Fournier sat on her favorite spot atop a sand dune in the late afternoon, the sun, directly behind her, warming her back. She was on the barrier island in the Sargasso Beach nature preserve on the Texas Gulf Coast, where she came to find peace and inspiration, the place she and her friends had fought to keep unspoiled earlier in the year – but she was not finding peace. She was worried.

In two days she would be starting 12th grade. That meant she had to apply to colleges and hope to get in. What if no college she wanted would take her? What if she were not good enough? Would she be able to do well in her new courses? And the nature preserve! What if they try again to build a refinery? Would she and her friends have to keep going to meetings, making posters, signing up voters, and have a referendum every few years? What about all the other places along the coast? The oil and construction people will probably be a lot more organized next time and they have so much money!

She tried to fight the sinking feeling. Why did she worry so much about everything? Is it bad to worry? It sure felt like it. Here she was, worrying about worrying. That’s crazy! Now she had to worry about going crazy. No, stop it!

She considered the wisdom in never worrying about anything. That wouldn’t work. If you never worried, you’d never do your homework or study for tests. If an airplane pilot never worried about anything…oooh!

There are so many things to worry about, more than enough to worry all the time. And there’s worrying about worrying. Really, that is nuts. I guess I need to figure out what I don’t need to worry about, thought Angela. First, lots of things I worried about never happened. Ok, that’s good! I can put those aside. Some things that worry me nobody can do anything about. Maybe I can worry about those just a little. Yeah! That makes sense, too.

All right, she thought, then there’s stuff I have to do and I worry that I can’t do it. If I spend all my time worrying then I won’t get it done at all and that’s really stupid. Now I’m seeing something, making progress… Let’s see: If I stay busy working on those things I’ll get them done and not have to worry about them. And, I’ll be too busy to worry about what I shouldn’t worry about. Oooh, that makes me feel better.

Angela stood, stretched, and lingered to watch the full moon rise out of the sea. As the sky darkened, the reflection of the moon on the gulf waters made a silvery path reaching all the way to the beach. Not for the first time, she imagined herself walking on the path, reaching the end, stretching out her hand, and touching the moon. She felt calm and happy. She turned to take the ferry across to the mainland and get home before it was too late, happy that she had a plan to deal with worrying and wondering if she could make it work.

Do other people talk to themselves in the head like I do? That’s crazy!

Chapter 2

Angela, Fiona Banbury, and Benjie Cooper met outside the main doors of the school on the first day of classes. They smiled at each other, not needing too many words to be companionable, given all they had been through together.

Where’s Michaela? asked Angela.

I saw her go inside a few minutes ago, offered Benjie.

Let’s see if we can find her and Yves and Sonya, Angela suggested.

They entered the cool building. Angela wondered why they had been standing outside in the heat, dripping with sweat, instead of moving inside to talk. They had been too happy to see each other and reluctant, maybe, to start the school year. Once you walked through the doors, you felt the weight of officialdom. Half expecting to be confronted by the KittyKats, their name for the five mean girls, they made their way to home room. Coach Ferguson was in charge, as usual and (as usual) was chomping on a large wad of chewing gum. Kitty Johnson, the leader of the KittyKats, was at the back, busy talking and having no attention to give to them. All for the better, thought Angela. Ferguson took roll with his fanciful renditions of any last names that were not strictly well-known Texas Anglo, German, or Czech. Angela was reminded of how baseball announcers on TV pronounced all the players’ names as if they were English.

After the pledges, there were no unusual announcements, so Angela, Fiona, Benjie, Michaela, Ives, and the remaining honors students converged on Mr. Logan’s room for pre-calculus. Being seniors, they were not nearly as put off or intimidated by their teachers as in previous years. They were even inclined to be indulgent with Logan. There were three new students this year: one tall guy with the merest hint of Mayan features, a girl with light brown, wavy hair and hazel eyes, and another guy who looked Italian. Angela managed to talk to the first two before class started.

Hi, I’m Angela Fournier, she said by way of starting the conversation with the girl.

I’m María Emilia Guzmán Toledo. Nice to meet you.

Where are you from?

McAllen. At least, that’s where I grew up. I was born in Mexico City but my parents moved to the U.S. when I was two. Dad’s an accountant.

Wow, that’s cool, said Angela, who, having grown up in San Antonio, was used to people with all sorts of varying Mexican backgrounds, ranging from people who descended from families who settled there before any Anglos came, to recent immigrants.

She turned to the boy. And you. What’s your name?

Juan Carlos Rodríguez Peña. I was born in Dallas, but my parents are from Jalapa, in Veracruz, Mexico.

Hi, nice to meet you, too.

Angela started to address the other new kid, but Logan began talking. The class settled down, no longer feeling a need to cause trouble. Angela wondered whether they had become appreciably more mature as seniors. The teacher opened with a story about Sir Isaac Newton, who invented the calculus because he was frustrated with the limits of existing mathematics in explaining what we know as classical mechanics (large-scale physics). Then he proceeded to lock up his notebooks in a trunk and say nothing about his new math for twenty-seven years. Apparently, Logan thought it was supremely funny. Angela could concede that it was interesting and odd.

So far so good, the friends agreed after class. It went without saying that they were apprehensive about getting into the real math. Fiona said:

I know. It’s like Angela said. If other seniors have made it through pre-calculus, chances are we will, too.

Thanks a lot, Benjie replied with his patented tinge of sarcasm.

Look! said Michaela, holding up a pencil sketch of Isaac Newton working away at calculations.

After admiring the drawing with suitable exclamations, the group headed for Romano’s class. As usual, Romano was chatting comfortably with students before the bell rang. Angela headed for the other new boy and introduced herself.

Hi, he answered. My name is Alcides Menotti. He had a slight accent, unlike the other two, who spoke perfect American English. I’m from Argentina. My parents are doctors. We came first to New York a couple of years ago and moved down here this year.

Wow, that is so cool! Angela wanted to say more, but Romano called the class to order. He took roll and then started into to the lesson.

"This year we will be studying government systems: ideology, political culture, and practice. For example, our ideology in the U.S. is democratic and market-oriented. We aspire to be ruled by law, not by persons. Most countries outside North America and Europe tend to an authoritarian ideology: a person or group rules and determines what is law in practice, with little regard for whatever the constitution of the country may say. Finally, a totalitarian ideology wants to control all aspects of the life of the people, especially the information they have access to. The Nazi regime in Germany of the 1930s and 40s, and the Soviet Union, which existed from 1922 to 1991, were examples of totalitarian systems.

"In terms of their practice, or how governments actually work, they can be classified as monarchical, which means ruled by one person; oligarchical, ruled by a small group; plutocratic, ruled by the rich, and so on. Finally, the political culture has do to with the concepts and values a society has concerning what a government should be like and do. These usually persist in spite of changes of regimes, practices, and ideology. For example, one can see that the contemporary Russian government, which is democratic in name, has many similarities with the old Tsarist governments and with the communist Soviet period. Any one country can have a mixture of these different practices in its governing system.

So, what is the U.S. like? What is its system?

Democratic, offered Benjie.

Yes it is. What makes it democratic?

We elect the President, senators, representatives, governors and so on. And we can write or call them and tell them how we think they should vote on laws, Fiona offered.

In our town, said Angela, we can organize a referendum to change things.

Yeah! And in California they are always voting on proposals for new laws at every election, added Yves.

Romano stepped in: Do we have any other ways to describe our governing system? Yes, Keller.

We are a republic, not a democracy.

What makes us a republic? asked Romano.

We don’t make the laws directly. We have a constitution and it says how laws are made and who makes them.

That is one definition of a republic versus a democracy, Romano replied. All of you pointed out real ways we practice government in the U.S. Definitions of ‘republic’ and ‘democracy’ tend to overlap quite a bit, but not entirely. He pulled out a Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary and read, Democracy: ‘a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections.’ He turned ahead toward the end of the dictionary and read: "Republic: ‘a government having a chief of state who is not a monarch’ – that’s a king or queen to you guys – (the class laughed) ‘…in which supreme power resides in a body of citizens entitled to vote and is exercised by elected officers and representatives responsible to them and governing according to law.’ So, yes, Keller, we are a republic and yes, Benjie, we are a democracy. We have elements of both, with the national government much like the definition of the republic