And now he was in a prison cell, on the second floor of his house.
And the worse thing about this cell, he realized, was that he had turned the key on himself. He had to get out of here somehow.
As he paced, his eye lighted on the telephone, and he stopped in his tracks.
Ah, he thought. Dad.
“Well,” Jason said, “I’m bummed. I sort of had a fight with Mom.”
“Have you apologized?” said Frank Adams.
This was not the initial response that Jason had hoped for. “Let me tell you what it was about,” he said.
“Okay.” Frank sounded agreeable enough, but over the phone connection Jason could hear his father’s pen scratching. The pen was a Mont Blanc, and had a very distinctive sound, one loud enough to hear over a good phone connection. Frank was working late at the office, which was normal, and Jason had called him there.
“Mom says I have to restrict my Internet access to one hour per day. But the Internet is where all my friends hang out.”
“Okay.”
“Well,” Jason said, “that’s it.”
“That’s what the whole fight was about?”
“There was a lot more about karma, and how yours sucks so bad you’re going to get washed out to sea along with my friends, but keeping me offline is what it all came down to.”
“Uh-huh.” There was a pause while the pen scratched some more. Then the pen stopped, and Frank Adams’s voice brightened, as if he decided he may as well pay attention, “It wasn’t about your grades or anything?” he asked.
“No. My grades are up.” The Cabells Mound school was less demanding than the academy he’d been attending in California. Also far more boring—but that, he’d discovered, applied to the Swampeast generally and not just to school.
“So if it’s not interfering with your schoolwork, why is she restricting your Internet access?” Jason’s dad was very concerned with grades and education, not for themselves exactly, but because they led to success later on. Frank was big on hard work, dedication, and the rewards the two would bring. Jason’s mom, by contrast, thought of this goal-oriented behavior as “worshiping false, non-integrative values.”
“She wants me to spend more time doing stuff here. But there’s nothing to do here, so—”
“She wants you to try to make friends in Missouri.”
Jason could not understand how his parents knew these things about each other. Were they telepathic or something?
“Well, yeah,” Jason said. “But there’s, like, no point to it. Because the second I’m eighteen, I’m checking out of this burg.”
“You’ve got a few years till then,” his father pointed out.
“But I’m going to be spending as much time in L.A. as I can between now and then.”
“Jason.” His father’s voice was weary. “Where are you going to be spending most of your time between now and your graduation?”
Jason glared out the window and realized he was trapped. “Here,” he said. “In Missouri.”
“So isn’t it, therefore, a good idea to get to know some people where you live? Maybe date a few girls, even?”
Jason never liked it when his father started using words like therefore. It meant he was doing his whole lawyer thing, like he was talking to a witness or something. It was as bad as when his mother talked about negative thoughtforms.
“I don’t mind making new friends,” he said. “But I want to keep the ones I’ve got, too, and I can’t do that unless I stay in touch with them.”
“I will speak to your mother about your Internet privileges, then. But I won’t do it for another week or ten days, because I want you to soften her up between now and then, okay? Try to make an effort? Take someone home? Play a game of baseball? Something?”
Jason glared at his reflection in the blank computer screen. “I’ll see what I can do,” he said.
“Good.”
Jason made a grotesque face into the computer screen. Snarled, bared his canines, made his eyes wide. His distorted reflection grimaced back at him like a creature out of a horror film. “I was wondering,” Jason began, “if I could come and stay with you after you and Una get back from China.” Jason heard a page turn over the phone, and then heard his father’s pen scratching again. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” Frank said. “I’m going to be working sixteen-hour days to catch up on the work I’ve missed. I wouldn’t really have a chance to spend time with you. It wouldn’t be fair to Una to have to spend all her time looking after you.”
“I wouldn’t bother her. I can just hang with my friends.”
“You’ll still be able to visit in August, like we planned.”
“I could house-sit for you, while you’re gone.”
Frank’s pen went scratch, scratch. “I don’t think so,” he said. “I don’t want to leave you alone in the city all that time. What if you got into trouble?”
What if I didn’t? Jason wanted to respond. “Or I could fly to China and join you there,” he said instead. His father gave a sigh. Jason could hear the pen clatter on the desktop. “This is my first vacation in almost ten years,” Frank said. “I’m a partner now. It used to be that partners took it easy and waited for retirement, but that’s not how it works anymore. Partners work harder than anyone else.”
“I know,” Jason said. He remembered the last vacation, ten years ago in Yosemite. He didn’t remember much about the park, he could only remember being sick to his stomach and throwing up a lot.
“Una and I have never had much time alone together,” Frank said. “We’re going to be meeting her family, and that’s important.”
And a step-kid, Jason thought, would just get in the way. Una, whom Frank had finally married a few months ago, was half Chinese. The Chinese part of the family was scattered all through Asia, and Frank and his new bride were going to travel to Shanghai, Guangzhong, Hong Kong, Singapore, Bangkok, and Kuala Lumpur, seeing the sights and meeting the relatives.
Jason made another grotesque face into the computer screen.
He did not dislike Una, who had made a determined effort to become his friend. But she troubled him. For one thing, she was young enough, and pretty enough, for him to view as desirable. That she sometimes figured in his fantasies made him uncomfortable. For another, her moving in with his dad made it that much less likely that Jason would himself be able to move in with Frank. And thirdly, she was monopolizing Frank’s first real vacation in a decade, and going to places Jason very much wanted to see.
“I wouldn’t get in your way,” Jason said. “I’d just go off and, like, see stuff.” Frank’s pen kept scratching on. “You don’t do that in Asia,” he said. “Besides, we’re going to be spending most of our time with a lot of old people who don’t speak English, and you’d be bored.”
“No way.”
Frank sighed again. “Look,” he said. “We need this trip, okay? But we’ll go to Asia another time, and maybe you can come along then.”
In another ten years maybe, Jason thought. He made a screaming face into the video monitor, mouth open in a hideous mask of anguish.
“Okay,” he said. “But you’ll talk to Mom about the Internet, okay? Because if I can’t visit China, I want at least to visit their homepage.”
“I’ll do that,” Frank said. His tone lightened. “By the way, I bought your birthday present today. It’s sitting right here in the office. I think you’re going to like it.”