Dylan

26. Mess With The Bull, Get The Horns

Dylan slumped on the couch and picked up the remote control.

'So', he said, as he clicked, 'another week with nobody speaking to me, no invitations for the weekend, and Kris patrolling to make sure nobody hassles his freak brother and damages his popularity.' He looked at the screen. 'Plus, Sick, Sad World has been preempted. How fitting an end to the week.' Heaving a huge sigh, he clicked the remote control to turn the television off again. 'I suppose I might as well finish reading that Gardner book.' Just as he pulled the book from his bag, his father walked in and addressed him, making a bad attempt to fake nonchalance.

'So, what's the book, Dylan?'

Dylan raised his head with a scrutinising gaze as he gave voice to his thoughts. 'Dad taking an interest. Warning sign. Or he's looking to get away from Kris.' As his father reacted with anxious fidgets, Dylan said, 'I have to read it for school.'

'Really? Uh … How are things going at school, generally?'

'Yes, let's talk about school. It's not bad enough without being reminded. And on that same general theme, did you know that Mom's in the kitchen trying to tweak her recipe for kitchen sink stew?'

A shadow of anxiety passed across Dylan's father's face. 'Oh, uh—I might just go and check on how she's doing', he said, and left the room again.

Dylan's mother's 'kitchen sink stew' was, despite the name, distinctively good and a mainstay of her catering business, but at regular intervals she displayed a propensity to tinker with the recipe, the results varying from the unfortunate to the apocalyptic.

When his father had gone, Dylan returned to On Moral Fiction.

There was no way Karen Johnson had managed to understand On Moral Fiction.

There was no way Karen Johnson had managed to read On Moral Fiction.

There was no way Ms FitzPatrick could have expected things to go well when she asked Karen about Gardner's message, but somehow that didn't stop her.

Karen couldn't think of anything to say except to describe her own feelings about books.

'I like books to be the right size to build forts from them. I used to do that all the time. I mean, when I was a little kid, before I got into football. Stories are really more for little kids.'

With a sigh, Ms FitzPatrick bowed to the inevitable and asked Dylan to explain what Gardner had in mind.

In a dull monotone, Dylan said, 'The unexamined life is not worth living.'

'That's an idea you connect with Gardner's message? Very interesting, Dylan.'

'It's something Socrates said.' Dylan paused just long enough for Ms FitzPatrick to prepare to speak again, and then he cut her off. 'Socrates was put to death for the things he said.'

Ms FitzPatrick gave a nervous laugh and began to explain the assignment she had for them, to write a report on a book, focussing on the moral dimensions of the story.

'Stories with morals?' asked Karen. 'They really are for little kids.'

Ms FitzPatrick stifled a sob.

On the list of books Dylan had been given to choose from for the assignment, he found nothing that he hadn't already read. When he realised this, after class, he came back to the classroom to explain the situation to Ms FitzPatrick.

'Oh, dear!' she said. 'We'll have to find something else for you then, won't we? I hope you don't mind. No, wait! Instead of reading another story, why don't you write your own story! That's something special you can do, write a story with a moral dimension!'

Dylan chewed his lip, as he contemplated the predictable unfairness of being assigned a penalty for being better educated than everybody else. How was that supposed to encourage him to live his life more conscientiously? 'A story of my own?' he said. 'What kind of story?'

'Hmm. That's a good question. You should have some guidance. Here's a thought! How about you write a story with characters who are fictionalised versions of people you actually know! What do you think about that?'

'People I actually know? People I actually know? You don't actually know a lot about me, do you?'

'Come on now, Dylan! I have faith in you!' Ms FitzPatrick made a pumping motion with her forearm to add emphasis. 'You can do this!'

Dylan stared at her, wondering what this woman could possibly be thinking. Then, after a moment, he said, 'You know, just maybe I have an idea.'

Ms FitzPatrick smiled sunnily and said, 'See, I knew it!' Dylan didn't react.

Hank paused outside Dylan's door, listening, but heard nothing. For the last couple of days Dylan had stopped talking to himself; Kris confirmed it. On the other hand, Dylan had been spending even more of his time than usual alone in his room. He still seemed to be avoiding Rod. Hank knocked carefully on the door and then gently pushed it slightly open.

Dylan looked up from a notepad, with an expression that showed irritation, but only the irritation of somebody who'd been interrupted in the middle of an important task, an expression that felt familiar to Hank from the number of times he'd worn it himself.

After a moment's silence, Dylan said, 'Well? What is it?'

'Working hard?'

Dylan looked back down at the page in front of him. 'Assignment for school.'

'Oh? Is it going well?'

Dylan looked up again. For a moment he said nothing, looking at Hank with an unrevealing face. Then he sniffed the air and said, 'Better than whatever that is I'm smelling.'

Hank sniffed the air too. 'Jacquie?' He turned and left, running for the kitchen. 'Jacquie, what are you doing now?'

Dylan paused for a moment to think about the structure of his story. He knew he wanted to use the passage he was in the middle of working on, but he wasn't sure how to position it in relation to the scenes he'd already written.

He put down his notepad and started typing on his computer keyboard again.

John Storch cleared his throat nervously. He looked in Tina's direction, then skittishly away again.

'Tina', he said, 'I mean, Ms FitzPatrick—or may I call you Tina?'

'Please do, John', she said, leaning towards him. For a moment the tips of her fingers made contact with his forearm, until he recoiled.

'Tina, you know I like to think I've learned some lessons from the failure of my marriage.'

'I admire that about you.'

'Well, it's not for me to say how much success I've had in unlearning my cultural indoctrination. Perhaps sometimes I still lapse into the old habits of an unreconstructed male chauvinist. That's why I'm so grateful that I know you. I know I can trust in your candour and high principle. You wouldn't let me get away with doing the wrong thing.'

Tina blushed slightly. 'I'm honoured you should think of me that way. I hope I can live up to it.'

He cleared his throat again. 'Tina—do you think it's possible, maybe, for a man and a woman to find a way, somehow, without just falling into the traps of all the old stereotypes—do you think they can, perhaps, if they really—'

Before he could finish his sentence, they were interrupted by the entry into the faculty lounge of Antoinette LeBeau.

'Excuse ME', she said loudly with her usual bizarre stress pattern. 'I hope I'm not interRUPTING anything!'

John Storch leaped to his feet, increasing the distance between himself and Tina. 'No, no, not interrupting anything. I mean, not anything that can't wait. I have to go and prepare some lab equipment. Sorry, Tina, we can finish this later.'

Antoinette LeBeau's eyes followed John Storch as he hurried from the room, and then returned to Tina.

'Did my EYES deceive me, or were his trousers showing—'

Dylan paused to think about exactly how he wanted to phrase the next sentence. As he did so, he noticed that he'd just received a new email. He figured it must have come either from Ellen (who, slightly to his surprise, had kept in touch since they'd bonded over their shared attitude to Kris and to the counter-cultural past of the Brocklethwaite and Breger parents) or from Lurleen (who, also slightly to his surprise, had kept in touch since they'd met at Edwin and Bree-Anne's wedding). He'd emailed both of them to mention the project he was working on. He'd become used to discussing school assignments with—somebody—and who was he going to discuss them with now? Not with either of his parents, that was for sure, even though his father kept asking him about how 'things' were going at school.

He thought for a moment about how he might respond to an email about his assignment. It was coming along nicely, he thought. He had plenty of ideas now for ways of driving home his message so that even Ms FitzPatrick would get it.

It would be a long time before she'd even dream about giving an assignment like this to a student, especially—and this was the important part—to him.