Chapter 10 - What he needs
In the time he had been teaching, Jon had only had it happen once that one of his students was the child of one of his coworkers. It was the worst; she was always hounding him about her son. Now, he was that parent. He found himself visiting with everyone of Shawn's teachers in stolen moments before school, after school, during lunch.
Jon's happiness at seeing Hunter's grades improve was so much more intense than anything he had felt for other kids academic improvements. An enormous amount of his job satisfaction had always come from those improvements, and he loved his job. He loved to think he could make an impact in his students' lives, even if only a small one. It was something he and Feeny agreed about wholeheartedly.
But this was so much bigger than that. He was proud of every tiny step in a way he had never been proud, and frustrated at every misstep in a way that had him fighting to keep from losing his temper. He worried to a degree he had never worried.
For what it was worth, though, the kid didn't seem to notice or care. He argued about doing homework with all the flippancy of a child who had no idea how much of his future rode on whether or not he graduated high school—even after Jon told him. He rolled his eyes when Jon reminded him about his curfew, blissfully ignorant to the worry his guardian felt when the time drew near or past each evening, scoffing and looking away when the fear drove Jon to yell and scold and punish.
Jon hadn't known he had the capacity to feel this much. He called Alan about it one evening when the kid was out, asking if it was normal. Alan just chuckled. "You love that kid," he stated simply, and Jon almost wished he didn't.
Jon had grown to fear, more than anything, that Shawn's parents would let him down, leave him with no place to go. But the thought that the kid with someday move out of his apartment and return to the father who had abandoned him so recklessly… the kid would take a piece of Jon's soul along with him, and Jon knew he would never get it back.
It hadn't been this way the first time. It wasn't this intense, anyway. On some level, that made no sense to him, because that first year had definitely been easier, although he wouldn't have said it at the time. The kid had been, more or less, compliant. Still an idiot teenager in his own way, but only a rebel in the most childish and playful sense. Granted, at this point, they were mostly back to that. Resting in the full confidence that he would be home soon, Shawn seemed to almost enjoy staying with Jon, at least when he wasn't in trouble.
Maybe that was the answer. Maybe it was the fact that the two of them were no longer viewing the situation in the same way as each other. Jon had doubted Chet would return, but he had allowed himself to believe that if only he would, if only he made the right choice and came back for his son, then all would be well. Only now was he seeing how naïve that perspective had been. And meanwhile, he was supposed to trust that a few weeks of counseling and parenting classes could make an abusively neglecting father into one good enough to repair the monumental damage done to Shawn.
Not that Jon was anywhere near good enough. It was obvious the kid wasn't even sleeping. He was holding water at school now, which was an enormous improvement, but it wouldn't get him into college. And he wasn't exactly dealing with his emotions. Deep under the facade, under his schemes and games with Cory and his banter with Jon and his overconfident flirting and just-hidden intelligence, he was obviously hurting badly, and Jon couldn't touch that.
Maybe that was the one thing his father would be able to do, without even trying. Just by being there. Shawn was clearly counting the days.
Jon waited until Shawn had been staying with him for about six weeks, and had managed to avoid being grounded or given detention for a week, before he picked a morning and made the offer to take the kid driving after school that day. Shawn has been half asleep at the breakfast table, but at this, he immediately perked up.
"Now, I'm not gonna put my life in your hands if you're not gonna take it seriously," Jon warned. "If you're too tired, we're not going."
"Are you kidding me?"
"Then you better show me you're up for it. I better not hear about you falling asleep in any of your classes today."
"But if I sleep in class, I'll be even better rested this afternoon."
Jon give him a look.
Shawn gave an easy laugh. "Fine, I get it. I'll pay attention."
Jon wasn't sure. He spent the day growing more and more uneasy, his fears coming to a peak when he told Feeny he couldn't stay after school to fill in for a teacher who couldn't make it to supervise detention, because he was taking Shawn driving. The look on Feeny's face echoed everything he was feeling already, and he wished he hadn't said anything.
Shawn was already waiting out by the car when Jon got there. He held out his hand for the keys, but Jon shook his head.
"You're not driving in school traffic."
"You know this isn't my first time, right?"
"I'll take you out to a neighborhood no one drives in."
"This really, really isn't my first time."
"Get in the car."
Shawn sighed, dropped his backpack in the backseat, and gotten to the passengers seat.
Jon drove out to a quiet neighborhood, pulled into the parking lot of a church—empty on a Wednesday afternoon—and gathered his courage before handing the keys to Shawn and unbuckling his seatbelt to change sides. Shawn grinned, which was a sight that Jon usually loved to see, except it always made him look younger and more mischievous, and that wasn't the way Jon wanted to be thinking about the person who was going to be operating a 2-ton guided missile while he was in the passenger seat.
Jon buckled his own seatbelt, and Shawn buckled his. He adjusted the mirrors and the seat, and he turned on the car.
"Now," Jon said. "You know how to shift the gears?"
"Yeah. I mean, it's an automatic, right?"
"Yeah, but do you know how to take it out of park?"
"I've done this a million times."
"Right." Jon took a deep breath. "OK then."
Shawn released the parking brake, put the car in reverse, and looked over his shoulder to back up.
Jon found himself gripping onto his seat, waiting for them to suddenly takeoff at wild speeds. Shawn switched into Drive, and he drove to the exit of the parking lot.
"Are you sure you don't want to practice in here first?"
"Jon, I've been on the freeway."
"Really?"
"I'm gonna be 16 in a few weeks, I'll be ready for my test." He pulled out onto the road.
And drove at the speed limit.
Slowly, Jon started to release his breath. The kid stopped at stop signs, he drove smoothly, he checked his surroundings. He didn't speed or swerve. It was the last thing Jon had been expecting from Shawn's driving.
"You're good at this," Jon said, trying not to sound surprised and completely failing.
"Well, yeah. What, did you think I wouldn't take it seriously? People die in car crashes. I'm gonna be driving Cory around, I would never want him to get hurt. Besides, I wanna pass my test on the first try."
Jon's breath caught, and he finally relaxed. "That's a very mature way of looking at it. I'm proud of you, Hunter."
Shawn smiled a little, but he didn't say anything. His hands gripped the steering wheel a little tighter.
Jon would have to keep in mind that he might need to be careful with those words, no matter how much Jon thought the kid probably needed to hear them.
"Hey, Jon?" Shawn said. "I have a hard time with unprotected lefts, is there somewhere around here we can practice?"
Jon wanted to ask why Shawn couldn't apply the same maturity and self-awareness and effort to his schoolwork, or come to think of it, literally any other area of his life. But that could wait. Today proved something to Jon: Shawn had it in him to work hard and apply himself. And safe driving mattered, in a completely different way compared to how schoolwork mattered.
But he kept his thoughts to himself. Instead, he just said, "Yeah, a couple of blocks down. Just keep going."
"Thanks."
Jon smiled to himself and settled back in his seat. Today, he could be what the kid needed.
