Jason Tally is the main character of The Only Road a manuscript by Emily Wright. This is his missing chapter.
Meet Jason; 1986
Before he felt the thick point of folded paper tap his shoulder, there was a rustle at Jason’s ear. It was a note. No doubt from who. That was as predictable as its contents.
A bad feeling nudged his insides when behind him, a page had been torn from a coil notebook. When the freshly frayed edges had caught on his collar he recognised that bad feeling for what it was, a warning.
No way was he looking back over his shoulder. Feigning interest was never the way to go regardless how cute the girl. Instead, he casually raised his hand and pinched the note between his fingers. It slid from the wispy clutch of brightly coloured fingernails. The giggling that followed was silenced by a dramatic throat clearing from the front of the class.
Several minutes went by and the persistent breathy whispers grew louder. Better to open it before the valley girls behind him created a scene; a classic strategy where they appear obliviously innocent of any wrongdoing while he, the boy, takes the brunt of the instructor’s wrath.
Green ink jumped from the page, bouncing into giant bubbly letters. Simple periods and dots were replaced with looping circles and exclamation marks leaped into balloons and hearts. The unnecessary animation made his skin itch and Jason surpressed a groan from nausea.
“Jason, I’m thinking of having a party Saturday night!! You should come, bring your friends. Cammy!”
Their anticipating stares were burning holes into his upturned collar. All he did was nod. It was subtle but he was confident that his message would be received. The gaggle of giggles which followed was grating. Chicks.These games were so immature, but then again so was school. Popularity has its price.
A knock at the classroom door started his spine straight. Willing it not to be who he assumed it to be, Jason sat perfectly still. Mr. Wallis, the eighth-grade teacher walked along the front of the classroom. Reaching the door in three long strides to greet their visitor, Mr. Wallis’ eyes flicked to Jason. Before he could dismiss this a discreet finger curled at his teacher’s side confirmed Jason of his dreed.
Curses turned swampy on his tongue for this tired routine. For a feeting moment he actually thought that maybe he had dodged it this year, his senior year. Gathering his books, Jason slid out from his desk and drudged to the front of the class as if wading in muddy water. Not wanting to attract any more attention, he said nothing when he joined the low speaking adults. Mr. Wallis dropped a heavy hand on Jason’s shoulder and he resisted the urge to brush it away.
“Mr. Tally, this here is Dr. Chin and she would like for you to go with her for the remainder of this afternoon.” Mr. Wallis said with a note of encouragement.
Jason complied. The beginning of the school year was always bittersweet. Although it was nice to get pulled out of class and fluff off a few hours doing pointless tests, it was not so easy returning. Everyone always had questions. It was a complete waste of time. Centering him out like this made it extremely difficult to blend back in with his class. If the nature of these tests was ever found out by his peers, it would mess up his status. Stupid kids were rarely popular. The class clown was one thing but, no one hung out with a known dumb ass.
He liked her, well, better than the last few anyway. Dr. Chin was pretty; youthful with midnight hair and thick full bangs that fell over her brow. There was a determination in her step, one that demanded the lead which was threatened merely by her size. Jason got a kick out of towering over her. There were only a few adults to which this applied. Within a few years, Jason would be eye to eye with his tallest teachers and instructors. That day could not come soon enough.
As they approached the tiny room at the end of the hall, amusement tickled a laugh at the back of Jason’s throat. It did not escape but he could not help but smile. When the door failed to open more than a few inches Dr. Chin threw her sholder into it and nearly bludgeoning herself with it ricochet. The balk she let out was both endeering and rediculous as her competence took a nose dive.
“Come this way.” Jason said, tipped his head and started down the hall.
Her sigh of annoyance was less than subtle. All of her funny little noises were in stark contrast to her no nonsense persona.
Down the hallway of shiny floors and glass cabins there was a massive entrance to their right. Above the expansive opening, highly polished gold letters read Tally Library. Dr. Chin slowed as she took in the sign.
Once inside, they immediately went to the left where doors to small empty conference rooms lined the wall. Jason stepped into the first one and flicked on the light. Along its perimeter were boxes of books. Rising behind the stacks was a blocked door. The one Dr. Chin had originally wanted to use. Again a little note of irritation came from the doc.
The far too congested room had an oval table and five over-sized black vinyl chairs. It smelled of stale coffee and fresh ink. Curious, Jason scanned the clutter and spotted a photocopier crammed among the boxes. Dr. Chin waved a delicate hand over the table to indicate that Jason should take a seat. He suspected that this gesture was a way to resume order. She could have it, for the now anyway.
Dr. Chin proceeded to move two chairs extremely close together and place her soft brown briefcase in one before sitting in the other. It became abundantly clear that she had strategically positioned herself at the head of the table where, ironically, her frame was devoured by the massive furniture. She opened a pair of silver-framed glasses and set them on the table by her elbow. Once she re-positioned them three more times, she clasped her hands and looked up unaware of his scrutiny.
“How have you been, Jason?” She asked with sincerity but aggressive eye contact.
“Good.” He said with growing skepticism. “How are you?”
Even at thirteen, Jason had a flair for charming people to distraction and he was grateful for the opportunity to flaunt his skill and conceal his intention to stall the inevitable.
“I am very well thank-you. What did you do with your summer?” Her voice remained cheerful and casual.
He was more than happy to procrastinate by entertaining the pleasantries. “Hung out with friends, went to a few parties, chilled by the pool, you know, not much.”
She tilted her head and pushed one side of her mouth into a sardonic smile as if waiting to hear a specific answer. “No summer job?”
“Nah.”
“Did you do any reading?” She asked moving only her lips.
Jason lifted his eyebrows and shrugged. “Nope, didn’t do that either.”
“Do you know why we are here?” Dr. Chin tapped the table between them with a tidy fingertip.
“I can guess.” He chuckled. “I do this every year. You are going to do a bunch of tests that you will call exercises.” He made air quotes. “You will make notes and I won’t get to know how I did.”
Nodding, Dr. Chin began fishing into her briefcase. Booklets and papers were arranged methodically around the table with precision. Once placed she touched the tops of each in order.
“You’re wasting your time.” He knew his warning was pointless. “Don’t take it personally, Doc but I don’t care about any of this.”
Finally, she pulled out an aluminum box that intrigued him until he recognized it as an archaic stopwatch with a large face and two black knobs on the top.
“Really? You’re going to use that thing? Here, why don’t you just use mine?” Laughing, Jason tugged at his extremely rare and new Swatch, preparing to remove it from his wrist for her to use instead.
To his chagrin, Dr. Chin shook her head and raised a palm to suggest for him not to bother. “This will be just fine.”
“1965 called, they want their chess timer back.” Jason’s joke was met with a blank stare and he wrangled in his laughter with a choked cough.
If her lack of personality was meant to be intimiating, it was working.
With one last compulsive touch to the clock and each paper pile, she looked directly at him and said, “Shall we begin?
Stretching out, Jason unfolded beneath the table and crossed his ankles. Safety pins lined the inside of both pant legs, molding the denim to his long athletic frame. It was the newest style. Everyone was customizing their jeans the same way. The irony was not lost on Jason. He knew that it fed right into his need to fit in and was more than a little embarrassed when Dr. Chin seemed to study the pinched fabric all the way down to his wool socks shoved into black Birkenstock sandals.
When he threaded his fingers together and tucked them beneath the back of his head Dr. Chin lifted her eyes to his. He stared right back. This game was easy. Jason was confident that he could stare anyone down. When Dr. Chin blinked, satifaction pulled his face into a grin. Then she leaned to one side and crossed her legs. Placing her elbow on the arm of her chair, she perched her chin on her slightly curled fingers. There she sat just looking at him expectantly.
Well, this was awkward. Squirming, Jason’s chair was suddenly slippery and uncomfortable. Neither said a word. Under the weight of her stare, he faltered like an eight-year-old. The good sense he was born with finally lashed out and gripped his insides. His innate need to be liked was threatened. Heat broke out across his cheeks and instinctively Jason began to straighten up. She said not a word, just nodded with patient appreciation. Damn, he lost out to the silent treatment.
The next ninety minutes were long and humiliating. Pressure was added, thanks to the boxy timer that sat ominously between them ticking. The needling sound pecked at his patience and caused his lunch to twist in his stomach. The doctor was much wiser to his ability to distract and compromise results than any other before her. In the past, Jason was capable of faking a coughing fit or asking simple redundant questions to botch the accuracy of the ticking timer that made him sweat. He did not like to read and despised reading to others. He once had the Heimlich maneuver painfully performed on him because he had pretended to choke just before having to read aloud to his entire class.
It was last year actually. Upon receiving the three-page student agreement, the teacher announced that the class would read the handout aloud. Everyone would be assigned to read a paragraph designated by where they sat. The mere word ‘aloud’ blurred Jason’s vision and restricted his breathing.
The desks had been arranged in two ‘u’ shapes; one inside the other. Jason sat in the middle of the outer structure. Feverishly, he counted the kids to his right, hell bent to predetermine his appointed paragraph so that he could rehearse. In a dizzying frenzy, Jason read and reread his part over and over. By the time his heart was no longer thundering against his chest, he had the words nearly committed to memory. Breathing normally and seeing clearly, Jason was finally confident enough to follow along with the rest of the class. He quickly realized that his teacher had unexpectedly gone the opposite way around the outer horseshoe. Ergo, he had memorized the wrong paragraph. Before he knew it, all eyes were on him. He was next to read and the text was foreign to him. The words on the page shimmered and swam. Jason’s heart began to race.
Without thinking, he threw his body onto the floor and with remarkable believability began heaving and convulsing. There was mass hysteria throughout the classroom. Girls were screaming and at least one was crying. He never imagined that he would take such spontaneous and dramatic measures to dodge reading aloud. Surprising even himself as he flailed on the floor he had not taken the time to muster up an exit strategy. It was beyond him to predict that Randy Booker, the captain of the basketball team and avid Boy Scout, would pick him up like a rag doll and begin thrusting giant fisted hands into his chest. When Jason was squeezed and almost impaled by the mammoth embrace from behind, throwing up was more or less involuntary. Still, this was the preferred outcome. A little vomit dribble on his shirt and down his chin was still better than reading aloud.
Needless to say, reading was not his strongest subject by any means. He was, however, adamant that a true depiction of his abilities would not be evident under such intense testing and scrutiny. Normally these sessions were a joke; in his mind they proved nothing. Then, Dr. Chin exchanged the reading cards for ones with numbers. They too were painfully stressful and nerve-racking for Jason.
“I am going to show you a sequence of numbers now. You will have ten seconds to study it and then, once I place it face down, try to repeat it back to me as best as you can. Okay? Simple enough?” She asked in a slow and clear whisper complete with deliberate condescension.
The first card she introduced had a three digit number. After ten seconds he recited the numbers back. For the first time since he had been dragged to these sessions, Jason realized that each exercise was meant to be progressive. As the student completed a stage they moved up. Once the student was unable to complete a stage the exercise was over and the instructor recorded the result. In the previous reading cases, Jason was only doing activities two and three times suggesting that he had not completed or moved up very often. Dr. Chin could not hide her astonishment when she ran out of number cards. The last one she held up read 1057 8864 2497 5234 1876.
Ten seconds later Dr. Chin placed the card face down and nodded at Jason who said “1057 8864 2497 5234 1876”
“Twenty numbers! Jason! That was a twenty number sequence. You just rhymed it off like it was your home phone number.” She was genuinely excited by this result.
“Is that good?” He asked, more than a little confused.
It was not like him to have his ego stroked in these sessions and was uncertain how to respond. They usually ended with him feeling dumber than a shoe horn.
“No, that’s pretty incredible. I have never seen anything like it.” She beamed at him.
“Well, words I can’t stand but I have always been good with numbers.” Jason stretched and stifled a yawn.
“What do you mean? Like math?” Dr. Chin asked, taking a thoughtful interest in the new direction of their conversation.
“No.” He said, chuckling at her relentless focus on acedemics. “I mean like, I don’t have to write phone numbers down. I know sports stats and players numbers by heart. I guess I just have a good memory when it comes to numbers that’s all.”
“Oh, I think it is much more than that.” She said.
“Yah? Like what?”
“Well, I cannot say for certain. But I would like to ask you some more questions of a different nature.” She pulled a notebook out of the pile and placed it in front of her.
“As long as I don’t have to read anymore, shoot.”
Opening the notebook, Dr. Chin then uncapped a fountain pen and put on her glasses for the first time throughout the session. She was ready to write. Pen poised. Eyes cast down. “Were you ever injured as a child?” When he did not answer she restated the question. “Any head injuries, major concussions, extremely high fevers?”
Heat crept up the back of his neck as a familiar burn scorched through his thoughts. It was just like a suit doling out the tests to want to probe into his past in search of something to blame his messed up perception on. What good would any of this do? Who was this supposed to benefit? Jason felt like an idiot. He almost fell for it, almost let his guard down. As if he could trust Dr. Chin. She was just like the rest; judging him, wanting to research him to find out what was wrong with him. Anger bubbled up and Jason’s grip on the situation steeled.
“What are you getting at Doc?” His said.
She failed to pick up on his hostility and refused to change course. “Do you remember ever having a head injury or serious concussion or meningitis?” Dr. Chin pressed on distracted by pages before her. She flipped through another book clearly trying to reference something.
Jason fell silent with smoldering fury. Finally, Dr. Chin pulled her nose from her notebook annoyed by the delay and met his glare. With a small gasp, it was as if she had realized she had offended him too late. Or maybe, for the first time saw Jason as a person not a subject to be studied.
“Are you for real right now?” His temper blazed and he bolted up. “You’re asking me if I was dropped on my head as a baby. If I have brain damage? You are just like the rest of them. I’m outta here.”
“Jason, I didn’t mean to suggest…”
The sharp jab of propriety stopped him at the door. “Tell me we are done here,” he said the creaking of the knob within his grip.
She nodded sheepishly. .
“By the way, you have a serious case of O.C.D. and the sensitivity of a python -which you might want to work on, especially if you plan on pursuing a career working with kids.”
With that, Jason stormed out of the room. For the briefest of moments he had felt smart, capable, even proud of himself. What was he thinking?
Then there is Nicole….
