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CHAPTER FOUR

  morningstar68 02:33:05: it can’t happen any earlier than samhain.

  michaela666 02:33:44: that’s weeks away. he’s got too much time between now and then.

  morningstar68 02:34:14: There’s no way to prepare the vessel adequately before then. even this is rushing things.

  michaela666 02:34:58: are you sure? time is of the essence in this, as I’m sure I don’t have to tell you.

  morningstar68 02:35:08: you don’t. but I have to say, I’m not excited about this turn of events. are we sure we have to use her? couldn’t someone else be the vessel?

  michaela666 02:35:48: you’ve known this was her destiny since she before she even existed. I saw her in the vision, when I saw him.

  morningstar68 02:36:24: I know. I know. but it can’t happen before samhain. can that work?

  michaela666 02:37:01: I guess it will have to. it’s the best we can do.

  Jason, Cameron, and I sat at the dining room table, facing my parents. Considering Eric’s nose was broken, he’d had to go to the emergency room. And because of that, everyone had found out about the party at the Nelson farm, including my parents. They were less than happy about the fact that all three of us had snuck out.

  I’d expected them both to be livid. I’d expected them to yell and possibly throw things. However, they just seemed very sad and disappointed. This was kind of worse than their anger. It made me feel guilty and ashamed. Plus, I was worried about Jason. If they punished Jason, he might leave and never come back.

  Because I didn’t want to look at my parents, I looked at Cameron and Jason instead. They were on either side of me. Cameron was inspecting his fingernails, looking about as guilty as I felt. Jason however, held my parents’ gaze, his face blank. He didn’t look worried or guilty. Then, of course, he didn’t know my parents. They were pretty good at making you feel the way they wanted you to feel. They didn’t tell you how to feel or that you were wrong. Instead, they just laid out all the possible consequences of your actions. I hated that. It made me feel so... responsible.

  I just wished they’d get it over with already. All this sitting in silence was getting to me. I knew my parents weren’t talking because they wanted me to contemplate what I’d done wrong. It was working. I felt wretched.

  Finally, I couldn’t stand it anymore. “I was the one who made Jason come to the party,” I blurted out.

  My mother and father just looked at me.

  “He wouldn’t have even been there if it wasn’t for me,” I said. “I totally talked him into it.”

  Seeming to follow my lead, Cameron spoke up. “I’m the reason that Jason got in the fight with Eric. I kind of picked a fight with him. It’s not Jason’s fault.”

  “None of this is Jason’s fault,” I said.

  Jason looked down the table at us, raising his eyebrows. “Well,” he said, looking at my parents, “I did consent to go to the party. And I am the one who broke Eric’s nose. So, I guess some it is my fault.”

  What was Jason’s problem? Cameron and I were trying to take the fall for him. Couldn’t he see that?

  “I’ll understand if you guys don’t want me to stay here anymore,” said Jason. “That might be the best thing for everyone.”

  “Jason,” said my mother, “let’s not get drastic.”

  “Of course we want you to stay,” said my father. “Believe me, this isn’t the first time one of our boys has gotten in a fight.”

  “Right,” said Cameron. “And this one didn’t even involve knives.”

  Aaron, a boy who’d lived with us a year ago, had gotten in a knife fight at school once. He’d gotten expelled. My parents fought to keep him, but the state took him away anyhow. He still kept in touch sometimes. We all visited him in jail last Christmas. Apparently, he got in a bad bar fight (amazing, since he wasn’t even eighteen, let alone twenty-one) and the other guy didn’t survive. Aaron was serving time for manslaughter. Poor Aaron. If my parents had been able to keep him, maybe...

  “Thanks for the perspective, Cameron,” said my father.

  “Listen,” said my mother, “you all know—well, Cameron and Azazel know—that we want to encourage you to make your own decisions. We’re not here to impose a rigid order on you. These are your lives, and it’s your job to make them into whatever you want them to be. However, we do try to provide boundaries for you.”

  Oh, God. Not this speech. Please not this speech.

  My mother continued, “We feel that these boundaries can help guide you. We feel that they can open you up to options that you might not consider otherwise. While it’s a perfectly valid choice to live in the moment, and to live for fun, we feel that there are other valid choices, and we feel that since you’re very young, you might not think of those choices.”

  “And,” said my father, picking up where my mother left off, “once you’ve made a series of certain kinds of choices, it can be difficult to decide to make different ones. You can rack up all kinds of nonproductive consequences that get in the way of a productive life.”

  My head was swimming. Why couldn’t they just be like normal parents and say that what we’d done was wrong and now we were going to get punished? It all amounted to the same thing anyway. This was just psychobabble. It was rationalization.

  I stole a glance at Jason. His forehead was wrinkled as if he was trying very hard to concentrate, or if he was very, very confused. I didn’t blame him. My parents’ reasoning was complicated.

  “I feel,” I said, “that we’ve all seen what kind of nonproductive consequences happen when we sneak out. Jason got punched. I got in a fight with Toby. And we all had to ride home with Lilith, and her car is very small. To that end, I don’t think we need any more punishment. We’ve all learned our lesson.”

  “We’re not going to punish you,” said my mother.

  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?”

  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. 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... 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. 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.