He’s seventeen, but Friday night he killed another kid. Accident or not, there was a dead body lying on the snow, and he chose to lift Corson’s body up, put him in the car, send it careening down that slope, instead of facing up to what happened. That was his decision, and right or wrong, he is going to have to live with it. He wishes he had David John’s certainty that Jesus will help carry the burden, that Jessup will be forgiven. He doesn’t know about that. He’s only seventeen.
Seventeen. He glances up to where Jewel is waiting impatiently for him. Her hair is still pulled back and braided, the ribbon a flash of color in her hair. She’s eleven, old in some ways, but painfully young in other ways. Has he been selfish, he wonders, focusing on getting himself out of Cortaca? Worrying about applying to universities and where he can play football, sacrificing his body in the hopes it will be a ticket out, studying late into the night and going into the library early, thinking about what kind of a future he might have, when leaving means leaving Jewel behind? And leaving her to what? To this? These people, this church?
Seventeen. Deanne can tell him he’s old enough to make his own decisions all she wants, but he can’t help but wonder: What happens if he makes his own decisions, if he walks away? Does he know better than Earl, than Brandon and his money and his New York City lawyers? Does he know better than David John? Because David John is damn sure that the only thing people are going to care about is laying blame. That’s what happened with him and Ricky, and he doesn’t want history repeating itself.
And if he can trust anybody in this world, he has to be able to trust David John. His stepfather would never do anything to deliberately hurt him. He owes his stepfather unwavering trust. Loyalty. David John has always done what he thought was best for his family.
Has he?
If that were true, Jessup wonders, would he be standing here?
For a moment, Jessup thinks about just jumping off the end of the diving board, letting himself sink to the bottom. The pond is easily fifteen feet deep there, cutting deep from the slopes. He could stay underwater for the rest of his life, dark and cool, quiet, safe, where nobody can touch him.
What’s he supposed to tell his girlfriend? She says he’s seventeen, says he’s old enough to make his own decisions, but that’s such an easy thing for her to say. No decision she makes has any consequence.
They’re all like that. Not just Deanne but all of her friends, too. Megan and Brooke and their boyfriends, Josh Feinstein and Stanley, are just as bad. Victoria Wallace, too, all of them, Alyssa Robinson, none of them able to imagine a future that doesn’t work out. Parents with good educations and good jobs, doing everything they can to make sure their children are a step ahead. It isn’t that their parents love them any more than David John and his mom love Jessup and Jewel, it’s just that when those parents sacrifice for their kids, that sacrifice puts a lot more in the till. All those other parents and kids shooting for the stars, never realizing that they are already standing on the moon.
Not a single one of them knows what it is to have something held out of reach.
It is easy for Deanne to say he’s seventeen and he can make his own decisions: she thinks that to jump is to fly, can’t understand a world of falling.
If she were here right now, watching him, she still wouldn’t understand that if he steps off the edge of this dock he’ll sink and never come back up.
Seventeen, but all Jessup can think of is David John carrying him off the football field, holding him on his lap all the way to the hospital, knows that however old he is, there is a part of him that will always be that kid, and right or wrong, he’s going to trust David John. Has to.
Texts Deanne back:
I love you.
Doesn’t wait for a response. Just puts his phone back in his pocket, walks up to where Jewel is, takes her hand, heads back to Earl’s house.