WATTYS LONG LIST. He's got three polyamorous, pole dancing moms and his world is the stuff of which teen boy fantasies are made. But when he falls for a feisty cancer patient who is about to die, he truly learns how to live.
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I took JJ to school. Literally.
Yes, Jean Jacques DeVilliers walked the harrowing halls of my dear DeGrazia High.
And he was mesmerized from the minute we drove into the main lot. In fact, the massive lot itself stunned him. He read a lot more into it than most people would. All the right things, too.
"It's like a shopping mall," he said. "Or a factory, really. This oppressive...Industrial Revolution sort of feeling. Very Dickensian."
"Prison's what it reminds me of," I said. "There's barbed wire on the cyclone fences, out by auto shop and all that. Supposedly to keep the equipment from being stolen."
Those bottomless black eyes of his were soft. Sad.
"What sort of message does that send? Day after day?" he asked me.
"You just feel...like nobody gives a shit. That's why they tear it up so bad, sometimes. Tryin'a let people know we're still here. It perpetuates the stereotype, of course, but..."
"Why didn't you take it to heart? When so many others did?"
I gave a little snort and said, "I skipped whole years of school, as a kid. Slipped through the cracks and the safety nets. The few they have."
"Fortunate."
I smiled and said, "Truant officers didn't think so."
"Well, those of us who know you, know better," he said. "What didn't learn may have saved your life."
He looked around the lot again and said, "This would only teach you to accept defeat. Despair..."
"Sure you wanna stay?"
He smiled quietly and said, "I must know this, too. About you. We talk about your childhood, or lack of it, but...seeing it is..."
"Pretty bad, huh?"
He watched a bunch of loud dudes with ridiculously saggy pants walk by, taking hits off a joint and cussing up a storm. Their eyes were ruby red. Vacant.
And he said, "Quite the contrary. It makes me respect you all the more."
"Well, buckle up," I said.
And he smiled and gave me a firm pat on the shoulder before hopping out of the car.
I'd arranged to have the tokidokis actually stand in a parking space by the Attendance Office, to make sure we could park. No matter how many times they expand that thing, it's always full. Which is weird because DeGrazia's attendance rates are probably the worst in the whole district.
They were there, though, my little fan club. And when we pulled up, they got all squealy and squirmy. Jumping up and down and carrying on. So cute.
