- they didn't tell her there was one with animals.

"- oh, well, yeah, there's one with animals. If you're cutting out a lot of curriculum for late start I'm not sure you'll have time but maybe you could go after school lets out or something," says Julie.

"That's not the one we're seeing Friday, the one with animals is next week."

Okay.

"I'm starting to think you probably really won't like the Friday school, and we can bail on the appointment early if you want."

What's wrong with it?

"It's intended for special education - that's the word for kids with disabilities who can't do well in a regular format school even with the accommodations public schools have to provide. Slow kids, mostly, but probably a mix."

- yeah, if she's having trouble with the regular schools reminding her of the institution, that plus more institution type stuff is not going to be great.

"Yep. And they're more likely to need to use restraints of some kind, which I'd usually assume was something they saved for violent kids or maybe ones who have seizures, but I don't have a good way to be sure."

Maybe they should just. Skip that one altogether.

"All right. I can cancel." Julie gets her phone and goes to do that.

Dusk hugs Winona.

Winona hugs her back. "Animals one is next week, and the other private one is a Montessori school - that's a schooling philosophy that mostly gets applied in elementary school but this place has it extended up all the way through high school, they do a lot of outdoors stuff and have less structured time."

Outdoors is good. It's good that nobody can trap her in a room any more but better if nobody's trying to.

"I agree." Snuggle.

She really hopes this does work out.

"Me too, kiddo," says Julie, coming back from having left a message on the third school's answering machine.

Huh hug hug.

And dinner.

Dinner. There are cupcakes and Dusk gets one.

- do they want to go flying, after?

"Sure," says Winona. "I thought you didn't like to fly?"

It's been growing on her.

So they can all go out for a nice evening flight.

It's very nice. Sunset and everything.