Breathless (6 page)

What?

"All three of you are seventeen years old," said my father. "You are young adults.

You're practically old enough to make your own decisions legally."

"We'd created the curfew as a boundary for you," said my mother. "We knew it was only a matter of time until you tested that boundary."

"Now that you have," said my dad, "it proves to us that you've outgrown it."

What?

"Um," said Jason. "I didn't have a curfew. And I was the one who broke someone's nose."

"And we want to talk to you about that," said my father. "But first, we want to let you all three know that we are going to allow you to make your own decisions about when you come home at night."

"Bear in mind," said my mother, "that those decisions will affect all manner of things.

Your performance in school for instance. Your ability to get your chores done at home. Your relationships. These are all things you'll need to weigh as you make your choices."

Yuck. Leave it to my mom to make a privilege sound like a burden.

"Now," said my father, "Cameron and Jason, I want to talk to you about this fight with Eric."

Cameron and Jason looked at each other. They didn't look too excited about this chat.

Jason was catching on to the way my parents worked. They made you feel so adult.

The guilt was almost too much to take. When you were around them, you just wanted to do...better. They totally sucked.

"Why did you choose to engage in an altercation with Eric, Cameron?" my dad asked.

"Alter-what?" asked Cameron.

"Argument," I said.

"Why didn't you just say argument, then?" Cameron wanted to know.

Neither of my parents answered.

Cameron sighed. "He was pissing me off. He said that he was sick of seeing all those motherfucking Jones orphans at his party. Then he said, 'Oh, wait. I forgot. They don't have mothers.'"

"And that comment was designed to make you react, wasn't it Cameron?" my mother asked.

"Yeah, I know. He was just trying to get under my skin," said Cameron.

"If he made you angry, he had power over you," my mother said.

"I know!" said Cameron. "And I tried to do what you said. I told him to shove it and shut up, and I started to walk away."

Jason spoke up. "I thought that guy needed to be taught a lesson."

"Oh?" said my dad.

"Yeah. People shouldn't say things like that."

"And if they do, they should have their noses broken?" my father asked.

"Well, something like that." Jason shrugged. "Weren't you just talking about consequences, Mr. Jones? Eric said some awful stuff. The consequence was that I beat him up."

Huh. Jason kind of had a point.

My father considered what Jason had said. "I don't agree with what Eric said either,"

he said. "But let me ask you this, Jason. What if it hadn't gone your way? What if Eric had broken your nose? Then what consequence would he have received?"

"Well, that wouldn't have happened," said Jason. "I wouldn't have gotten in the fight if I didn't know I could win."

Really?

"How could you have known that?" my father asked. "Eric's a lot...bigger than you.

He's a strong boy. He works on his parents' farm. He's on the wrestling team at school."

"He was drunk," said Jason. "I could tell that his reaction time was pretty screwed up and that he could hardly stand straight."

"So you got into a calculated fight with Eric because you were sure you could beat him?" my father asked.

Oh. My father was backpedaling. When he started rephrasing people's statements, I knew it was so he had some time to think about what they'd said, so he could formulate a response. In addition, sometimes restating someone's argument caused them to start arguing with themselves or backing down.

Not Jason. "Yeah," he said. "I wasn't angry with him. It's pointless to get angry with people. They're the way they are. There are two options. You either accept what they're doing. Or you make them stop doing it."

Wow. My mother said something like that. But the end part was different. My mother didn't believe in making people stop doing whatever they were doing. She believed in asking them to change.

For maybe the first time ever, both my parents were speechless.

Finally, my mom said, "Jason, what gives you the right to determine whether someone else's actions are right or wrong? What gives you the right to decide that someone else shouldn't say or do what he's doing?"

Jason furrowed his brow. "
I
don't decide," he said. "Some things are right. Some things are wrong." He shrugged. "What Eric said to Cameron was just wrong. It was cruel. It was ignorant. And it was juvenile. He deserved what happened to him."

"And punching him in the nose? That wasn't wrong?" asked my mom.

"Punching him in the nose for no reason would have been wrong," said Jason. "But what I did..." He trailed off. "I guess I could have let it go. In the end, it probably won't make him stop saying that kind of stuff. But I guarantee he won't say anything like that in front of me again."

Jason looked so sure of himself. So certain. So convicted. I'd never seen a boy our age who knew so clearly what he thought. I was impressed.

And my parents weren't saying anything. They exchanged a look. This whole conversation had not gone the way they wanted it to. It was probably because Jason had said that some things were right and some things were wrong. I think I explained before that my parents didn't believe in evil. By extension, they didn't believe in right and wrong either. Jason was opposed to everything they believed. It was weird, because I'd always known there were people like that. But I'd never met someone who had as much conviction as Jason. And he could defend his beliefs too. Jason was pretty cool.

I wondered if this meant that my parents would reinstate our curfew now. After all, it seemed like they'd kind of lost an argument.

I waited for one of them to say something.

Finally, my mother did. "Jason," she said quietly, "how do you know what's right and wrong?"

Ooh. She went there. Right to the heart of things. I always thought this was the place where the opposite argument kind of fell apart, so I waited for Jason's answer.

He hesitated. "Um...I guess I'm not totally sure," he said. "I know I was taught right and wrong, but the people who taught me... Well, when I got older, I decided that some of the things that they said were right were actually wrong. And vice versa.

But...I mean, if my only concept of right and wrong had come from them, then how did I evaluate their beliefs using their concepts? So, I guess I think that right and wrong must be sort of...like ideas that people just...know, somehow. Like...like Plato or something."

Plato? What was he talking about?

My father looked surprised too. "You've read Plato?"

"I think it's the 'Allegory of the Cave,'" said Jason. "You know that essay?"

"Of course," said my mother, who also seemed shocked.

"Well, so there's a world of ideas, right? And right and wrong are in the world of ideas. But we mess them up, because we live in the cave, and we can only see shadows of the world of ideas. I mean, something like that anyway."

Both of my parents stared at Jason, slack-jawed. They didn't say anything.

"I'm glad we all talked about this incident," my mother said abruptly. "I feel like it was very productive. Don't you, Daniel?"

"Sure," said my dad.

And we were dismissed. The score? Jason-1. My parents-0.

* * *

On Monday, we went to school. I usually caught a ride with Toby, but I was still pissed at him, so I rode the bus with the guys. Even though I had my driver's license, I didn't have a car. My parents were great, but they didn't have the money for another car. Not when they had to feed five teenagers. I didn't really mind. I liked riding with Toby. However, that Monday morning, waiting at the bus stop, I felt kind of stupid.

Here I was, a senior in high school, riding the damned bus. My dad worked at the high school too, but we couldn't all fit in his car. Plus, my dad always got to school about an hour before class started so that he could make copies and get ready. Nobody wanted to get up that early.

Overall, it was good, because I would have felt bad about making Jason fend for himself on the first day. Sure the guys would have looked out for him, but all of them except Chance were strangers in Bramford. The town looked on them as outsiders.

And Chance was only fifteen, so he was a lowly sophomore. He wouldn't have been much help.

I took Jason to the office first thing. My dad had set it up with the school so that Jason could get a schedule. They were used to it, since my family was always getting new foster kids. I sat with Jason in Mrs. Clem's office. Mrs. Clem was the Dean of Students, and she set up all the schedules. I liked Mrs. Clem, but when we arrived, it was obvious she'd already heard about what Jason had done to Eric over the weekend.

Bramford was notoriously protective of its own. Jason didn't belong in Bramford and had already damaged a member of one its oldest families. That wasn't good in the minds of most of Bramford's inhabitants.

Mrs. Clem seemed a little cold. She pursed her lips.

"Are we going to get your transcripts, Jason?" she asked.

"I don't have any," he said.

Mrs. Clem raised her eyebrows in disbelief.

"I was kind of...home schooled before," he said.

"But he reads Plato," I said, feeling like I should defend him in some way.

Mrs. Clem didn't react to that. She just poured over her computer screen, lost in thought. Finally, she began punching keys. "Normally, with no transcript, I'd put you in General Education classes," she said to Jason. "But most of them are overcrowded, and it occurs to me that since you seem to be a little...volatile, it might be better to keep you away from...overexcitement."

She was referring to Jason's fight. She was so prejudiced! She'd never even met Jason, and she'd already judged him.

"So, I'm going to try you out in Honors classes," she said.

Really? Maybe I was the one who was judging Mrs. Clem. That was pretty decent of her.

She printed out Jason's schedule and handed it to him.

"Cool," I said, looking over his shoulder at it. "You've got three classes with me!"

Bramford was on a semester block schedule, which meant we only had four classes a day. I was going to be seeing a lot of Jason. Of course, it also meant that Jason was going to be seeing a lot of Toby. Toby and I had the exact same schedule.

Ugh. And we sat next to each other in every class. I didn't want to see Toby. I was still angry with him. But I was going to have to. In exactly five minutes, I noted as the opening bell rang.

I smiled at Jason. "I'll show you around," I said. "We've got the same first period."

Jason, Toby, and I began the day in Ms. Campbell's Advanced Placement English class. It was downstairs, directly under the main office. Jason followed me as I navigated the crowded halls and staircase. As we approached the door, I wished as hard as I could that Toby wouldn't be there.

No such luck. He was sitting in his normal desk. Ms. Campbell was shuffling through some papers at her podium, not monitoring the hall like she was supposed to. She claimed she always forgot to do it, but once or twice the principal had ducked his head in the classroom and asked her to come into the hall. She'd said sweetly, "Sure.

One sec!" And then she'd never gone into the hall.

Ms. Campbell was kind of a rebel, I thought. I liked her. She'd let us read
Lysistrata
, which was a pretty racy ancient Greek play about a group of women who withheld sex from the men so they would stop fighting a war. It had penis jokes! I couldn't believe we'd been allowed to read it in class.

I took Jason up to Ms. Campbell.

She looked up. "Hi, Azazel," she said. "What's up?"

"You've got a new student," I said. "Jason Wodden."

Ms. Campbell looked at him. "The kid who beat up Eric Nelson?"

God. Had everybody heard about this?

Ms. Campbell leaned forward conspiratorially. "Nice going," she whispered. She straightened back up and went back to her papers. "Of course," she said, "if you tell anyone I said that, I will deny it."

Ms. Campbell was cool.

"So, I guess I need to get you a textbook and a syllabus," she said to Jason. "You can sit—"

"Actually," I said. "I was hoping I could move my seat for today."

"Really?" said Ms. Campbell. "You and Toby—trouble in paradise?"

I didn't say anything.

"Sure, it's fine," she said. "Any open seat then. Both of you."

Toby turned around in his seat and saw me. I looked away, ushering Jason and I to some desks in the back of the room that I knew no one sat in. Jason and I sat down.

Ms. Campbell's classroom was long and thin. The desks faced a whiteboard, but there were only three long rows. Toby and I usually sat in the front. There were several sets of seats between Toby and me now. Purposefully, I didn't look at him.

Ms. Campbell dropped off a textbook and syllabus at Jason's desk. Jason began flipping through it. It was
Perrine's Literature: Structure, Sound, and Sense.
I busied myself with beginning our journal prompt, which we had to do each day in class. As I got out my notebook, I pointed it out on the board to Jason. "We have to write a paragraph about whatever the question is every day," I told him.

Jason nodded.

Today's question was, "What is the purpose of rules?" Ms. Campbell always asked weird things.

"Azazel," said Jason.

"Yeah?" I said.

"Toby's staring at us," he said.

"I don't care," I said. I didn't have anything to say to Toby. I was still mad at him.

"I think maybe you should talk to him," said Jason.

"No way."

"It's just...you sitting with me like this... He might think..." Jason trailed off again.

His trailing off was maddening!

"He might think what?" I demanded.

Jason shook his head. "Nothing. Never mind."