Disclaimer: I have no claim whatsoever to these characters.

This is the fourth story in my 'Right Now, In Cascade' series, aka my 'Teen Sentinel' series (Chiefly, Sunday at the Camp, and Tumble). But I'm now about a year behind, and not every story is going to be about the kids, so - take you pick. I think about it as 'Chiefly and its sequels.'

This story is a E. L. Konigsburg pastiche, because it's fanfic and I can. No Jim, no Blair, but some OCs I've become very fond of, plus William, who's doing his best.

Many, many thanks go to bardicfaerie and MASHFanficChick for betaing. My sentences were about 3x longer before. :-)

From the Rather Orderly Files of Mr. William T. Ellison
by Helen W.

February 3, 2007

William T. Ellison
178 Cedar Springs Court
Cascade, WA 98009

Grace Ellen Ellison, Esq.
Fenwick, Ellison and Yu
11 Broadway, Suite 301
Cascade, WA 98013

Dear Grace,

You've asked me justify the instructions I gave you during our telephone conversation this morning. (Actually, Grace, your language surprised me. I hope you don't talk that way to any future grandchildren of ours.) Since it's my money, I don't concede that I owe you any sort of explanation, especially after you called me a "crazy old coot." (Do I have that right, my dear? I don't think I've ever heard talk like that from a lawyer of mine before.)

Still, I think it would be useful to write out an account of recent events, if only for my own records. Also, I may be requiring more of your services (or those of some of your friends in the jurisprudence trades, if my needs exceed your areas of specialization), so it's perhaps best that I stay on your good side.

So here's the story. Looking over it, I think I did a rather good job. Perhaps a second career as a writer awaits me!

For the sake of the tale, I've taken some liberties. Obviously I don't know the exact course of conversations I was not a party to – or of the ones I was, for that matter. And I make some inferences regarding the boys' states of mind at various times. But 45 years in business has taught me something of how we humans think and act; and I've talked extensively with the boys involved, together and separately.

I suppose the tale begins when Mr. and Mrs. Todd and Jody Wagner, of Walla Walla, removed their son, Jason, from the Center for the Study of the Acutely Sensitive (abbreviated CSAS) last month.

Now I am assuming, based on your earlier reaction, that you've never heard of the place. Don't you ever read anything beyond the business section? Regardless, I'm sure you are familiar with Blair Sandburg; he's that friend of Jim's who has made a career of studying your stepson. They lived together for years. Ringing any bells?

Well, the CSAS (they pronounce it see-sas, or just call it "the camp") is Dr. Sandburg's brainchild. It's located up in the wilderness north of the national forest, near Greenwood. It's basically a cluster of cabins where people with acute senses, along with their families, seem to be finding a bit of peace, with the help of a small staff of surprisingly-well-credentialed idealists Dr. Sandburg has assembled. Jim, I understand, is up there quite a bit, mostly working with the teens and young adults who have found their way there through various paths.

Jason came to CSAS in September, 2006, when the Wagners, thanks to a change in their health care benefits, found that they were able to dump him on Sandburg's doorstep, get in their SUV, and head back east. When Jason arrived at CSAS, he was in rough shape, he's told me – essentially incapable of interacting with the world without being overwhelmed by it. Remember that time I decided to give Jimmy half a Tylenol 3 with codeine after he twisted his ankle sliding into third? Must have been back in 1970 or 71. Well, as I understand it, Jason was worse off, and all the time. (Thank God Jim was, all in all, a pretty normal boy!) So Jason had never been able to attend school consistently, and apparently the Wagners had never done much in the way of homeschooling him. Maybe even that would have been impossible for him.

I think it's safe to say that CSAS was made for Jason Wagner; he absolutely thrived there. After just a year-and-a-half he was functionally literate, could make acceptable small talk, and could toss a ball around. He quickly found friends among the other teens associated with CSAS, becoming particularly close to Jonathan Coleman - a name you should make note of, because he also features prominently in my tale. Jonathan is, or so he claims, a normal kid – no enhanced senses. His family maintains a house in Vancouver, but has been living at CSAS on account of Jonathan's little sister, Jenna. Jonathan has been a junior at Cascade Academy since September, after a year of being essentially homeschooled at CSAS.

Unfortunately, Jason's progress at CSAS wasn't enough for the Wagners, or so they say. My theory is that they had preferred an alternate placement all along, just hadn't been able to get anywhere else to take him. Whatever their motivation, they showed up at CSAS late last month, declared themselves completely unsatisfied, and removed Jason from the program. Since Jason was still over a year from his 18th birthday (he turns 17 in a few weeks), it's my understanding that they needed nobody's permission but their own to do this; please advise me if I am mistaken!!

Blair Sandburg wasn't present when the Wagners came for their son – he sees patients here in Cascade several days a week – and by the time he found out anything was up, the Wagners were long gone. The assumption of Sandburg and his staff was that the Wagners had simply taken him back to Walla Walla, but Jim put a bit of an APB out on Jason just in case, and last week he turned up in the emergency room of Cascade General accompanied by staff members from the Dawson School.

You may not have heard of the Dawson School; it's the place where Todd Harris, whom I know from the country club, sent his middle son, the arsonist. It's located just south of town, where that old minor-league ball park used to be. I think there was a roller rink across Rt. 31 from the property in the early 70s? Anyway, it's something between a military school and a reform school for boys with behavioral and learning problems. Apparently they do a decent job of addressing learning disabilities, and I'm the last person in the world to say that there aren't plenty of boys who could use a dose of what the Dawson School serves up. I know Todd Harris was quite happy with it. But it seems everyone except the Wagners – including the Dawson School - agrees that Jason Wagner is not such a boy.

The injury that brought Jason to the ER, by the way, was a black eye. At the time he was examined, the hospital staff also noted incipient bruising on the left side of his torso. In short, it looked to them like he'd lost a fight. The Dawson staff claimed he'd walked into a door. Jason was, according to the report, cooperative but docile and uncommunicative. Since his wasn't a clear case of abuse, and Jason is only a bit over a year shy of legal adulthood, no authorities were contacted by the hospital immediately, though they did file a report, which is how Jim heard of the visit. Of course Jim promptly called Blair.

Now, up until Jim's call to Blair last Tuesday, Jonathan Coleman (who, you will remember, goes to school here in Cascade) had been unaware of Jason's departure from CSAS, presumably because nobody had wanted to be the bearer of bad news. But when word got around that Jason had shown up hurt at Cascade General – well, that was too much for the other kids, especially one Lenny Ki.

Lenny is one of Blair Sandburg's original patients, a boy with heightened senses and a chip on his shoulder the size of Mt. Rainier (or so I surmise). Jason and Jonathan agree that Lenny disliked Jason from the start, seeming to think that he made kids with enhanced senses look bad. (Most of the children and teens at CSAS attend public school in Greenwood, or take classes at North County Community College, so there's a bit of outside social pressure to pass for normal, something that Jason even now cannot do.) Jonathan tells me that, whatever his feelings about Jason, Lenny knew he'd have a lot to account for if Jason was being abused and Jonathan was kept in the dark. And that there was probably a bit of 'There but by the grace of God' going on in Lenny's head as well.

So being a youth of great judgment and moral acumen, Lenny stole the Coleman family car and drove straight to Jonathan's dorm room. (Yes, dear, THAT Lenny Ki. No, I don't know where he is, and neither do Jonathan or Jason.)

Lenny's first words to Jonathan were, "Jason's at the Dawson and we're going to break him out."

And that's what they did. They parked the Corolla in front of the Dawson School and walked the perimeter fence, Lenny listening for anything of use and Jonathan trying to exude wholesomeness.

It took them a good 20 minutes, but finally Lenny raised a hand and Jonathan froze, didn't even breathe while Lenny listened to a pair of adults discuss whether they should keep with the IV fluids they had going into 'the Wagner boy' or investigate tube feeding.

Yes, tube feeding. Can you imagine being sixteen (Jonathan turns seventeen in July) and standing outside in the chill and the damp hearing that your best friend was so far gone that his keepers wanted to feed him through a tube into his stomach?

Jonathan lost it a bit, wanted to march in and demand that they give him Jason. Or maybe go back to Cascade Academy and round up the soccer team and have them storm the place. Lenny suggested that they wait for the night-shift to take over before invading enemy territory, though, so they did a quick run to Home Despot for some wire cutters and to Store 24 for coffee and snacks (remember, m'dear, growing boys!) and hunkered down in some bushes.

"Can you hear him?" Jonathan asked Lenny early on. Lenny couldn't, but admitted that Jason's hearing was acute enough that he might be able to hear them, so Jonathan started whispering, "We're coming for you, Jase, just hold on, we're coming," over Lenny's objections. Jonathan, you must understand, was afraid Jason might just give up and die if he didn't have some hope.

Lenny heard curfew being enforced at 10, and by 10:30 the campus was almost silent. The boys moved the car as close as they could to where Lenny thought Jason was, and Jonathan started snipping chain-link, bottom to as high as they could reach. Then they peeled it back and went through.

Yes, it was that easy - apparently the school opted for in-building motion detectors instead of doing anything electric with the outer fence. Something about having a hard time maintaining anything fence-based because it dips into an area which floods periodically.

So they got through the fence and tried the closest door, which was locked. It being winter no windows were open, so Jonathan decided the direct approach would be best and they found the staff break room and banged on the window. One of the school nurses - Jill Kingover, LPN, to be precise - thought they were Dawson students. She let them in the closest door, only realizing once she'd gotten a good look at them that she'd never seen them before. But by this time Lenny'd figured out which direction to head and had taken off, Jonathan right behind him.

The infirmary shared the building's first floor with a bunch of administrative offices, all empty this late of course. The only other souls on the floor were Randall Harwick, a Dawson grad who's working on a Masters of Public Health and moonlighting overnight in the infirmary; a student who'd twisted his ankle that afternoon and was staying in the infirmary because he couldn't manage the stairs and the elevator is unreliable; and Jason Wagner.

I'm afraid Lenny was a bit rough with Harwick, who is actually a bit larger but wasn't taught hand-to-hand by my first-born. (This may end up costing us some money, by the way; whom do I call about that?) Jonathan ran right past where Joe and Harwick were tussling, to Jason's bed, where he lay, thinner than he'd been over Christmas break, hair shaved to a buzz cut, skin almost opaque except for bruising on his left cheek.

Jonathan would have thought Jason dead, except for the straps on his arms and legs. Who ties down a dead person? (You may ask, who keeps a corpse in a boarding school infirmary? But Jonathan wasn't thinking his clearest.)

Jonathan made short work of the straps, but wasn't able to get a response from Jason; his friend just lay there, eyes closed, breath (now that Jonathan had calmed down enough to look for it) shallow and slow. Jonathan would have thought him asleep, except that he couldn't rouse him.

Neither Jonathan nor Lenny have any training in people porting, so Jonathan just grabbed Jason's upper torso and Lenny got his feet and they charged out the way they'd come in. As they passed Jill Kingover, Lenny knocked her cell phone out of her hands, but that was the extent of their interaction with staff of the Dawson on the way out, as Harwick was busy calling the police. Then they were running across the muddy lawn and through their hole in the fence (something else that is going to cost me).

What got Jason's attention was the cold air. It was near freezing, and he was wearing just a thin cotton tunic. Then a bit of the fence scraped him - not even the rough-cut part, that was all rolled up - and suddenly THERE HE WAS, outside barefoot and almost naked in Cascade in February. He got his feet away from Lenny and tried to stand, but that didn't work out too well on account of his having lived off a saline drip for the past few days. (Probably he hadn't had real food since the fight - could you please get all his records from Dawson? I don't really think there's much point to litigation against the school, but depending on how the Lenny Ki/Randall Harwick thing goes it wouldn't hurt).

Jason says he might have run back into Dawson, he was so scared and confused, and he'd always been a bit afraid of Lenny. But Lenny grabbed him and pulled him into the back of the Corolla and Jonathan jumped behind the wheel and they tore off.

And headed straight to my house. Because - well, you're going to love this. Let me draw this out.

It was a few minutes past 11. I'd just turned off the local news and bid Sally goodnight when I heard a knock at the front door. I peaked out the door prism (is that what it's called? Funny I've never thought about it) and saw a teenage boy in a Cascade Academy jacket. Sally, who'd followed me to the door, asked if she should call the police - she's never really recovered from that business with the Fosters a decade ago - and I shook my head no, but whispered that she should fetch her cell phone and go to another room.

Then I opened the door, and asked, "Yes? Has there been an accident?" There was a tan Corolla of uncertain vintage across the top of the driveway, so that's what I thought had happened: This lad had gotten turned around and hit a light post, or driven over the front rose bushes. With Cascade Academy so close, it happens - kids think it's Cedar Springs that goes through to Academy Way and not Cedar Grove, then they try to do a three-point turn and hit something, even though the circle must be 80 feet wide. New drivers!

Sorry, I've digressed.

The boy - picture Jim at 16, but jaw a little less square, hair a little sandier - shook his head. "Are you William Ellison, Jim's dad?" he asked, then, after I'd said yes, "Good, because we need an expert on sentinels."

Yes, he'd come to me because he thought that I, as the father of Jim Ellison, was a sentinel expert! I of course told him that he had the wrong person, but that I'd happily give him the number of Blair Sandburg, a noted expert on such people, whom I knew personally. (It only later occurred to me that, though they aren't precisely secretive at CSAS, the term 'sentinel' is not in the general parlance, and the boy was far too young to remember that flurry of publicity surrounding Jim and his senses years ago.) But he said, "It's an emergency. The police are probably looking for us so we have to get my friend some place safe. They were going to kill him!"

"Who? The police?" I started mentally composing an email to Jim on the perception of his department by the prep school community.

But he said, "No, my friend, he was at Dawson and they didn't know how to treat a sentinel and we had to get him out!"

Of course I knew the name Dawson from Todd. And though I'd never met a sentinel who wasn't either Jim or my first wife, both of whom are pretty hardy people, I could imagine that there were some circumstances that some with enhanced senses might find difficult. More to the point, I was pretty sure that the boy wasn't trying to carry out some sort of home invasion scenario, so I decided the best course of action was to get him inside and settled down and then I could figure out whom to call - his school, his parents, the police, whomever.

"Alright, come in," I said, and he turned and waved toward the car and an Asian boy emerged towing a skinny, Caucasian kid with a crew cut, who looked about to bolt save for the grip maintained on his arm.

"Damn," he said to the universe at large; then, "Please wait," to me, and darted to the road to extract the skinny kid.

"Later," said the Asian boy. They touched fists (Jonathan assures me this was not some sort of gang thing) and then the Asian boy drove away. The sum total of my interaction with Lenny Ki, let the record state.

"I'm Jonathan and this is Jason," was the introduction I finally got as he propelled his friend past me into the house. "Where should we…?"

I showed them into my study because the sofa in there is deep enough to sleep on comfortably, and I got it after I gave up cigars, unlike the furnishings in the living room. Jonathan got Jason seated and drew my blue and white afghan over him, then knelt in front of him. "You're safe here," he said. "Mr. Ellison will know what to do."

"Hurts," said Jason. "Inside."

Jonathan turned to me. "Water, please. He's extremely sensitive to dehydration. His parents poisoned him with Acetaminophen and wrecked his kidneys."

"Jon…"

"Sorry, sorry, I'm not mad at anyone," Jonathan told him; then, to me, "The water, please? Filtered, if you've got it. Not carbonated. Nothing weird."

I found myself in the kitchen drawing a glass of water from the in-door dispenser. Sally was at her desk in the corner (don't make that face, Grace; Sally wanted a small desk in the kitchen, we put a small desk for her in the kitchen) going through coupons (again with the face, my dear. Sally likes to use coupons. What can I do about it?) and gave me her don't-you-remember-the-world-is-dangerous look. I told her we had houseguests, one of whom might have the same range of sensitivities as Jim and Mary Margaret, and set her to fetching the freshest blankets and such in the house.

When I got back to the study, the boys were as I'd left them. Jason didn't acknowledge me so I handed the cup to Jonathan; he moved to sit beside Jason, took the other boy's hand and somehow got his fingers around it, then helped him bring it to his lips. Jason took several sips, then shook his head, and Jonathan set the cup aside.

"That will help," said Jonathan, and Jason nodded.

"Does he need a doctor?" I asked; then, directly, "Jason, do you want me to call a doctor? Not go to the ER - but I know several MDs."

Jason ignored me, but Jonathan considered this for a moment. "That's good to know, Mr. Ellison," he said. "But - I'll know if he gets worse. This isn't really all that much different than how he was when he came to CSAS."

"You mean, Blair Sandburg's facility."

Jonathan nodded, and, sitting there next to Jason, told me the basics, pretty much as I outlined them above, and how he'd come to find out that Jason was at Dawson. Shortly into the tale Sally joined us, draping blankets over both boys and then settling in to listen.

"But why come here?" I finally asked. "Are you sure Dr. Sandburg wouldn't be a better choice?"

"After what they let happen - I don't trust anyone not to give Jason over to his parents, or wherever they might choose to dump him, sir."

"Do you trust my son? Jim can be - surprisingly compassionate."

"Sir, I don't know if you've ever noticed, but most people are idiots who do what they're told. The most you can do is mitigate the damage they do."

I was going to protest, but Jason actually chuckled - the first sign of true awareness I'd seen - so I stopped myself.

Jonathan smiled broadly at Jason's reaction. "He's thinking that I hide my contempt well, most of the time," he said. "I didn't say I didn't like people."

"Where's Lenny?" Jason asked Jonathan, softly and maybe a little fearfully.

"I don't know where he's headed. We decided it was better that way."

"He's not coming back?"

"He's a friend, Jase. He wouldn't hurt you."

"Anyone can hurt me."

Jonathan deflated, and I thought, yes, you've had a rough day yourself, but an instant later he'd resumed his previous demeanor. "We can change that," he said. "We can make you better. Mr. Ellison raised Jim! He'll tell us what to do." Then, "It's past time for sleep. Lay down."

Sally handed Jonathan a pillow she'd brought downstairs and Jonathan moved to guide Jason down and lifted his legs onto the sofa. He then turned to me. "I'm going to do a little guided imagery. Privacy would help."

Finding ourselves taking orders from Jonathan again, Sally and I left, and I sent Sally off to bed; it was past 1. I settled into the living room and leafed through a magazine, and Jonathan joined me a few minutes later.

"So," I said. "What precisely do you think I can do for you? For your friend?"

Jonathan dropped into the blue easy chair and let his head fall all the way back, looking, for a moment, like most teens - like someone who isn't quite sure where his limbs are or what he should be doing with them. Three breaths later, he'd repositioned his body forward. "I want to learn everything you know about sentinels," he said. "I want to know everything about how you handled Jim when he was our age."

I hated to dash his hopes, but had to say, "Jim was never like Jason."

"That's good to know," said Jonathan. "Why not?"

"I don't know," I said.

I couldn't tell him the truth, Grace. I couldn't tell him about the murder, and how I - acted in ways that resulted in Jim spending many years without his gifts.

Yes, I see them as gifts. For years I've wished I'd heeded your advice and supported Jim in the ways he's special. Or simply told you what he'd said he'd seen the day Karl Heydash was killed. I think, if I'd just had someone to talk things over with, I might have figured out how to direct the attention of the authorities toward Mick Foster without involving Jim. But you and I were in a bit of a rough patch then, weren't we? We hadn't been good at marriage and we hadn't yet become good at divorce.

That's all water under the bridge, of course; but you see how I couldn't just pour it all out to Jonathan just then.

Jonathan weighed his response for a bit, and I realized he'd classed me as one of his idiots. Well, so be it, I thought. Finally he said, "Perhaps you could show me everything. If you can't tell me what you did - I might be able to figure it out for myself."

"You want to see my files?"

"Just the stuff on - well, actually, I don't know what I'm looking for, but I'll know it when I see it. I'm good at…" He shook his head. "I'm about to start chanting my resume at you. I must be tired."

"Do you want to use the guest room?"

"No, I want to stay close to Jase. Ms. Wong gave us plenty of pillows and blankets. We'll be fine."

I was awoken several hours later by a sharp, brief scream; I ran into the study to see Jonathan kneeling on disarrayed blankets talking calmly to Jason; talking, but not touching. "We're okay," Jonathan said, and I left them.

When I next awoke, it was to the smell of coffee; unusual, because Sally usually waits for me to stir. In the kitchen, I found she and Jonathan had already downed half a pot. "I can entertain the other boy," Sally told me as she poured me a cup, "if you and this one want to get to work."

"Do you think there's anything to find?" I really didn't want to give Jonathan any sort of false encouragement.

"You won't know until you look," she said. "Who knows? Jim turned out well."

"Do you think you can handle…" and I gestured toward the study.

"It should be fine," said Jonathan.

And it was. Jonathan and I went upstairs into Jim's old room - I've never bothered to redecorate - and I gave him a brief family history. My early marriage to Mary Margaret (Blair Sandburg classifies her as parasentinel, did you know?). Jim's birth and MM's breakdown. The divorce; meeting and marrying you and having Steven; moving to this house. OUR divorce and Jim's occasional contact with MM over the years. The year he spent living with her, her second husband, and his children in that crowded house on Birch Road before heading to college.

Then I spread my files from the 1960s and 1970s out on the bed. Everything pertaining to Jim - school records, team pictures, medical records, all that stuff that you advised me not to keep around. But it doesn't really take much space to store, and space isn't a commodity I'm short of anyway. I also opened up the files on other things - documents from our marriage and divorce, everything to do with Mary Margaret that any doctor or facility ever sent me, legal documents from our custody disputes. Jonathan now knows more about you, I, and MM than I'm sure any of us remember.

We paged through papers all day. Midmorning, Sally called up that Jason had woken up, and Jonathan bolted downstairs, but Jason was sitting up and sipping tea by the time these old knees carried me into the study. Jason himself said hello and thanked me for letting him "crash" on my sofa. He seemed - well, not fine, exactly, but not on the verge of catatonia.

"It's not a problem," I said, wondering if that was at all true, and wondering what my responsibilities were. "I'm assuming you are both over 18, for all our sakes." Yes, I know I shouldn't put this into print, but it's best if I tell you everything.

"I'm over 18," he lied not at all convincingly. "We both are."

"Would you *like* me to call your parents?" I asked.

"No," he said, then, "But Jonathan's parents, they've probably been called by his school, right?"

"Last night, most likely; we have a final room check at 10:30," agreed Jonathan.

"You can't let them worry," said Jason.

"Forget it," said Jonathan. "They stood aside when your parents took you from the camp. They didn't give me a call then; I don't owe them a call now."

"It wasn't like that," said Jason. "They wouldn't have thought it was…" He shook his head. "They treat you and your sister like you're the most important things in the world. How could they know that my parents weren't like that. That they couldn't deal with me."

"My parents can wait," said Jonathan.

Jason let Jonathan steer him to the downstairs half-bath, and he washed up a little under his own power. Then Sally made him a bowl of Rice Krispies (Jonathan vetoed the Froot Loops - yes, I still stock Froot Loops) and Jonathan and I headed back upstairs.

"He's doing well," I commented to Jonathan. "I half-expected him not to let you out of his sight."

"Well, I'm not out of his hearing," said Jonathan.

We came back downstairs at lunchtime and had sandwiches; dinner was roast chicken (we were most fortunate that Sally had done the weekly grocery shopping the day before!). Sally and Jason spent the day playing cards and board games. It was surprisingly non-eventful; pleasant, even.

By 7 p.m., though, we'd pretty much been through all my papers, and Jonathan was flagging. Then he found the stash of correspondence between yours truly and MM from when Jim moved in with her that year, her pleading for grocery money and of course me telling her that she and Jim had made their beds, they had to lie in them.

"When did you make up?" he asked.

"My first wife and I have never had much to do with each other, though I now see I was being very petty," I said. "And Jim… well, a few years ago a case of his brought us into contact, and we cleared the air a bit after that."

"You mean… you dumped him? You were like Jason's parents? No way!"

"I don't think I did a bad job when he was young, not really," I said, and I meant it. It wasn't always easy to find shampoos and such he wouldn't notice, as I'm sure you remember, but MM had been doing it her entire life. And you, when you were here, did what you had to, as did Sally. And even I could be taught to read a label.

"I treated him like any other kid," I said. "When something didn't work, we modified things a little - like the pool at the country club made him itch terribly, so he took swimming lessons at the Y instead. That sort of thing. He really was fine. He was a difficult teen to raise, but that was - a clash of personalities, I guess you could say. Nothing to do with his senses."

"Then we have nothing," he said, then, "Oh, shit, he'll have heard that," and headed downstairs.

Jason and Sally were in the study, as they'd been most of the day except for meals. A partially-played game of Othello sat on a low table we'd moved into the room for the day, but clearly Jason had given up on it; he looked terrified when we came in.

"Have you looked at everything?" Jason asked. "Mr. Ellison, are you going to make us leave?"

"Are you comfortable here?" I asked, and he nodded. "Then you may stay as long as you wish, or until someone discovers you're here," I said.

Jason bit his lip and closed his eyes.

"What happened at the Dawson?" I asked. "If they were abusing you, that really must be stopped, and we can see that charges are brought."

Jason shook his head, and Jonathan said, "This can all wait."

"Not necessarily, not if they're hurting other boys there," I said.

"They didn't…" Jason started, then, "The first few days weren't too bad. My roommate ignored me. They made me go to classes, and I didn't understand what the teachers were saying, but - it wasn't awful. But then they made me run, in the cold, and I couldn't breathe that much cold air, it was like knives… And they thought I had asthma so they gave me some medicine and I don't remember what happened for two days after that, but I got bruises on my arms somehow. Then a day or two later I zoned looking at this one dude in the cafeteria and I guess he told me to stop and of course I didn't so he punched me in the face."

"That's how you ended up at Cascade General," I said; Jonathan had been silent the whole time Jason spoke.

"I couldn't zone again, you know? I didn't know who I'd be looking at or what I'd be doing. Nothing was safe, so I just stopped. I don't remember much after that until Jon and Lenny took me through the fence."

He paused and Sally handed him a glass of water, from which he took a shaky sip.

"I can't go back there," he said.

"Would you like to go back to CSAS?" I asked.

"I don't… CSAS costs a lot of money. And if my parents don't want me to be there, I can't be there."

"What do you want?" I asked.

"I want to be normal," he said.

"You don't have to be normal," said Jonathan. "You can be extraordinary."

He turned and left the room; I followed, and blocked the door to the half-bath as he was shutting it. "Stop," I said, "Don't run away from him."

"I'm NOT," he said. Tears had started, and he grabbed a handtowel and pulled it across his face. "Everyone else. But not me."

"Yes, you are," I said. "You know what I did to Jim? When he was twelve, I drove his senses away, made him 'normal,' when he was never meant to be. Because he scared me. Instead of being present, accepting him as he was - and accepting myself as I was for that matter - I let my ideal of how things should be destroy my family. Again and again. I destroyed both my marriages - and I destroyed Jim.

"I think you're smarter than me, but you and Jason are not bound by blood. So if you're going to save him, your first step is to drop the detachment. Trust me on this. It may have a place in this world, but not here."

"Jason likes certainty. He needs certainty. So that's what I give him."

"He needs understanding, friendship, and someone watching his back. He doesn't need a puppet master."

"You don't understand," he said. "You don't know him like I do."

"You came here for answers, that's my best one," I said.

He pushed past me, but headed back into the study, hallelujah. Sally retreated as he sank onto the sofa next to Jason, and she and I watched from the doorway.

"I'm sorry," said Jonathan. "You don't need me running out on you like that."

"You're not perfect," said Jason. "You don't think you have to be, do you? You know, I'm messed up, but Mr. Ellison is right, you don't have to hide from me. Doesn't work, anyway; I can always hear you."

We left them like that, talking in the study.

The next morning, both Jonathan and Jason were sharing a pot of coffee with Sally when I made it down to breakfast. Jason looked incredibly restored - even the bruise on his cheek was barely noticeable - and Jonathan seemed more relaxed than I'd seen before.

"We're ready to think ahead a little," said Jonathan. "We're thinking our first step should be talking to Officer Jim and Dr. Blair and having them contact Jason's parents. We really have no idea what they're thinking or what their goals are. And I'd like to see how that guy Lenny beat up at Dawson is doing."

I nodded. "I know several judges. And on the off chance Jason lied to me about his age I might be able to get temporary custody, in light of obvious injury suffered at Dawson and Jason's parents' lack of judgment in placing him there."

"That… that would be pretty great," said Jason.

Jonathan reached over and pushed his shoulder, the first non-necessary physical contact I'd ever seen between the boys.

This is where you come in, Grace. I would like a small trust fund set up to give Jason Wagner some financial independence from his parents. I would like custody of the boy; I've already phoned my favorite judge, Troy Washbough, and told him to expect a rather unusual request from you. And, like I asked above, could you see how much the business at Dawson is going to cost us?

I think the ideal set-up would be for Jason to live here while Jonathan continues to attend, and live at, Cascade Academy. Surely a home tutor couldn't be too hard to arrange, but that's a bit down the road. Jason could even see Dr. Sandburg when he's here in Cascade, if that would be of any benefit.

The thought of Jason staying up in Jim's old room amuses me greatly.

Sincerely,
Your fond ex,
William T. Ellison

* * * THE END * * *

All feedback welcomed, here or at helenw at murphet dot org.