Chapter 17 #3
“Great!” She smiles big, racing toward me in her brown knickers and short-sleeve white blouse with a Peter Pan collar. “We flew to Orlando.” She twirls, her eyes wistful. “I love the princesses. What’s your favorite park?”
I’ve never been to Disney World. I know it seems stupid. We’re only a few hours’ drive away, but there was never enough money, and when I grew up, there was never enough time.
Seemed boring anyway. Kids’ stuff.
My nephew would love it, though.
When I don’t answer, she continues. “I think mine is Animal Kingdom. It feels so far away.” She takes the container of pencils and starts checking for ones needing to be sharpened. “Callum likes Hollywood Studios—” Her eyes go big and she singsongs in a spooky voice, “The Tower of Terror.”
I pinch my eyebrows together, watching her. I can’t imagine Callum relaxing enough to enjoy a thrill ride.
“Music?” I remind her. “Candles?”
Her eyes light up, and she skips over to a nearby table. Pulling a lighter from the drawer, she moves around the room, lighting wicks as thunder cracks outside.
“Have you ever seen snow?” she asks me.
Leaning over my desk, I pull up my lesson plans. “No.”
“Me, either.” She sighs, the room glowing with firelight. “I hope he takes me to the snow this winter. I want to ice-skate.”
Did Callum promise her he’d take her somewhere to see snow? What do their parents have to say about that?
Horses prance through a silver storm…
Snow.
That’s why she wants to see a real winter.
Sliding my hands in my pockets, I walk to the windows, searching through the red, yellow, and purple glass, but I don’t see his car. Their driver must’ve brought her this morning.
I want to ask if he’s home. I want to ask if he’s alone.
Music starts, a soft tinkling of whatever Anna-Katherine feels in the mood for today—a little Native American flute, it sounds like—and I walk back to the switch on the wall, dimming the lights.
Students start drifting in.
“Oooh,” Sadie Knox coos as she looks around at the rainy morning mood. “I like it.”
“Morning!” Ginny Taylor-Thomas smiles, carrying in a container with her school bag hanging around her neck. “Is it okay if we eat in here?”
I peer through the clear top of the tray. “What have you got?”
She sets everything on her desk, prying off the lid. “I made some for everyone.”
She holds the tray of sugar-coated croissants out to me, and I don’t like sweets this early, but Krisjen’s words from a few years ago always rise up to bite me. Let people be nice to you.
I gave her some flippant retort at the time, but it stuck with me. People enjoy being helpful, I guess.
Taking a cocktail napkin from the center of the tray, I pick up a pastry. “Thank you,” I tell her, setting it on my desk.
She circulates through the room as my nine summer school students take their seats and unpack their laptops.
Whitney Patton takes a croissant. “What time did you get up?” she asks Ginny.
“It’s easy to get up early when you don’t stay out late partying,” Ginny replies.
“You don’t have any fun,” Whitney mocks. “You’re so amazing.”
Sounds like banter I would have with Army or Macon.
The students get busy eating, and I notice them sucking vanilla cream from the center.
“What did you do this weekend?” I ask Whitney.
“Partied a little.” She crosses her high-top white Chucks, pulling a thick stapled packet out of her bag. “But I did my homework.”
She lays her book report on top of her closed laptop. I asked them for hard copies rather than submit them digitally. I find it helps other students’ productivity when they can compare each others’ presentations.
Anna-Katherine closes the door, her croissant sitting on her desk, same as me.
“What about you?” Atlas Wade picks apart his pastry. “Did you fall or something?”
Students laugh, checking out my face, and I won’t bother lying. They know a fight when they see one. I was their age eight years ago, and I was just as smart as they are.
I lean back on my desk, giving them time to eat. “I didn’t do anything with my weekend, actually,” I tell them.
At least not Saturday or Sunday.
I don’t have kids. I don’t have a spouse. Krisjen handles the food shopping, and Aracely makes sure the house is clean. The lawn care business has long since stopped being a family affair, new workers taking over once we got our own careers, and my time is mostly my own now.
“Sounds nice,” Sadie says.
“Sometimes it is.”
I see Army running Dex to whatever sport he’s playing that season, and Trace is constantly in St. Carmen, busy with one thing or another.
Macon is chauffeuring Paisleigh to school or a birthday party, and Krisjen is busy teaching Mars to drive.
Liv and Clay are lunching with friends or volunteering their time at some charity or senior center.
Iron and I can do whatever we want, but it usually ends up being sleep or the bar.
Not Iron so much since he came home, though. It still feels like I’m on my own.
Mason Gentry uncaps his water bottle, chiming in, “When is it not nice?”
Like when you’re bored but too scared to change things. Adult decisions are like jumping out of a plane. Once you leap, there’s nothing to do but wait and see if the chute opens.
That’s too heavy for a high school philosophy course, though.
“We talked about freedom last week.” I drift around the room, ignoring his question. “You’re thirty. Free from school. Free from your parents. Free from being a child,” I state their hypothetical. “You can drink, smoke, do drugs, stay out late, sleep with who you want…Are you free?”
“No one’s telling us what to do,” Daisy Martinez offers.
“You’re stranded on an island,” Ginny fires back. “No one’s telling you what to do there, either. You’re not free, though, because you don’t have choices.”
“You don’t have the choices you want,” Atlas interjects. “Like where you’re getting takeout from that night. But there’s also no demands on your time, either.”
Are we free if we have no responsibilities?
Anna-Katherine hops up on the windowsill, her right foot tucked under her left leg, a notebook and pencil on her thigh.
I steer the conversation, looking at Ginny. “Why do you like to get up early?”
She shrugs, her blond ponytail swaying a little. “I like having the house to myself.”
I tip my chin at Whitney. “Why do you stay up late?”
“No one’s bothering me to do things.”
So they both make a different decision for the same reason. They want to be left alone.
Digging in a little more, I turn my gaze to Ginny again. “What’s a consequence of getting up late?”
“I’ll be behind on my day.”
Then to Whitney, “What’s a consequence of going to bed early?”
She smiles. “I’ll miss the fun.”
Atlas joins in her laughter, and I start to piece together the difference in their motivations, but Mason speaks up. “So they’re both afraid, then.”
I look around Daisy to meet his eyes.
“Technically?” he asks. “They’re making decisions out of fear of consequences. That’s not freedom, right?”
Most decisions are made out of fear. We work for fear of poverty. We see doctors to solve health problems before they worsen. Army puts AirTags in Dex’s shoes to track him in case of an emergency. Does it mean we’re not free?
“Freedom is a legal term,” Sadie tells us. “We have the right to think and act of our own will, but we’re not free from consequences or responsibility.”
“I am,” Atlas says almost immediately. “A lot of people are. Do you have any idea how many cigarettes I smoke in these bathrooms and never suffer a consequence?”
But Sadie is quick to respond, “But why do you smoke?”
“Because I like it.”
“Did you smoke this morning?”
“Why, you want one?” he teases.
Everyone laughs, and I continue to walk, passing Anna-Katherine as I stroll to the back of the room.
“Why didn’t you run a few miles instead?” Sadie presses him.
“Because I didn’t want to.”
“You wanted to smoke,” she clarifies.
“No, he had to.”
I look up, meeting Anna-Katherine’s gaze. Everyone turns their attention to her.
Her big, round eyes look timid, as if she didn’t mean to join in the discussion. “I couldn’t eat my healthy cereal this morning.” She offers a tight smile. “I had to have Pop-Tarts.”
“Same, sister,” Mason adds, chuckling.
But the words hit home more than I would like.
I couldn’t deny myself my vices. I had to conquer every new piece of ass that came my way and drink to escape the thoughts I didn’t want to have.
I couldn’t talk to anyone who loved me. I had to hurt others before they hurt me.
I couldn’t swallow my pride and go to my mother. I had to stay on those stairs that day.
“So freedom is discipline?” Anna-Katherine finally asks. “Control over yourself so nothing else controls you?”
I lower my eyes, trying to hide that I have to swallow a couple of times to wet my throat.
It was fun for a while. Doing what I wanted and pushing off anyone who got in my way, because there was more fun right around the corner. To distract me.
After a while, though, I wasn’t doing anything because I wanted to.
I was doing it because I couldn’t stop. We get addicted to the diversion.
Freedom…is having the discipline to do what we know we should.
My throat tightens, and I try to speak, but my voice comes out raspy. “Hypothetical. You’re twenty-five years old now,” I say, leading to the next assignment. “Who’s your mentor?”
Heading to the front of the classroom, I list the discussion points on the board.
“Who do you go to who loves you and will tell you what’s best for you?” I recite the list. “Who will teach you discipline? Not just tell you what you want to hear. Who is the example you measure yourself against? What do they advise you to do with your life?”
I cap the marker again and turn around.
“You can use your laptops for this,” I tell them.
They sit there, hesitant, but the discussion is over. I need time to think, and they need to be quiet.
“AK?” I ask her. “Music?”
She smiles, hopping off the windowsill and turning up the volume before settling into the reading nook with her book.