Who Could Ask For Any More? - Prologue - July
Title: Who Could Ask For Any More?
Part: Prologue
Word Count: 2,721
~
As far back as Jesse could remember, quite possibly since before he’d been born -he’d never thought to ask- his family had lived next door to the Mazzello’s. Mrs. Mazzello baked a lot and constantly smelled like cookies or homemade bread; Mr.Mazzello ran a performing arts school upstate, and as a result of this seemed happier than any normal teacher, smiling and gesticulating wildly almost all the time, like a movie director hyped up on amphetamines. They had three children, two boys and a girl, Mary, John and Joseph. Joe was a perfect mix of both of his parents, always running and laughing and generally making people smile wherever he went.
Now, since Jesse and Joe were the same age, in the same grade at school, by default they’d been pushed together from a very young age. At first, it was by force, as when he was a young child it would often take a good twenty to thirty minutes for Jesse’s mother to detach her wailing son from around her legs. As years passed, Jesse’s separation anxiety lessened, though indefinitely. From the age of five, Jesse had willingly gone over to the Mazzello’s, taking bike rides with Joe through the woods or going out with Joe to walk his golden retriever, Bailey.
Joe was the first and only friend Jesse had ever had. With a prematurely old-soul like Jesse’s, a lot of things frightened him, Doberman pinschers, the dentist, dark rooms and loud noises. Joe was great because not only was he irresistibly kind and friendly, but with those brown puppy-dog eyes, much like Bailey’s, and floppy hair that shone a reddish-gold in the sun, Joe wasn’t too intimidating. Jesse felt comfortable around him and, thanks to Joe, spent his childhood in very much a normal way.
The seventeen year old Jesse sat, legs folded beneath himself, on top of the bookcase beneath his bedroom window, watching as Joe left again, and trying not to cry… again. He could feel the back of his eyeballs beginning to burn and that familiar dread-filled lump, rising, from the pit of his stomach, to take up residence right beneath his solar plexus. Pulling the sleeves of his hoodie down over his hands, he squeezed the cuffs tight and bit his lip hard in a futile attempt to keep the tears at bay. Through watery eyes, colours blurry and running together, Jesse watched as Joe loaded suitcases and a couple of boxes into the back of his dad’s minivan.
Joe slammed the trunk closed, placed his hands on his hips with triumph, and looked up, right at Jesse’s window. Jesse scrambled, trying to wipe the tears away and plaster a smile on his face before Joe managed to see past the reflections in the glass, and through the window, at Jesse himself. Joe saw him alright, he smiled and waved before his father came out and gestured for him to get into the minivan. Moments later, the engine was started and Joe was gone.
Jesse forced himself not to focus on what he was really seeing before him, and dove into the depths of his memories to pull out something good, something that would help him remember that Joe would be back in late July for the Summer. Jesse thought about a time when they were eight, he and Joe had been walking through the woods at the back of their houses, pretending to be explorers when one of Jesse’s feet caught on a tree root, they were small, but he was clumsy. He fell hard, scraping the palms of his hands and rolling himself over to discover that there was a shallow gash his knee -courtesy of a sharp rock that lay on the ground- right below the point where his shorts cut off. It was bleeding.
“Joe! Joe! Joe! Come quick!” He’d wailed, tears already falling, clutching his leg and vaguely wishing that his mom were there too to clean it all up with a baby wipe because there was quite a bit of mud in there.
Joe rushed over and knelt down beside Jesse, hand on his shoulder. “Oh no! Hey. Hey, don’t cry, it’s okay. It’s not that bad. Here, I’ll take you home, buddy.”
An earthy hand encircled Jesse’s tiny wrist, Joe helped him up slowly, flinging Jesse’s arm over his shoulders like an adult helping out his drunken wingman. Jesse’s eight year old self of course had no idea that in just ten years time, he and Joe would be walking, like this, out of another forest. Only that time, Jesse would be drunk, and giggling, and Joe would be rolling his eyes fondly, but that’s getting ahead of things.
“Joe it really hurts, it’s stinging like crazy,” Jesse had said feebly, wincing every time he had to bend the knee of his right leg.
“I know,” Joe replied quietly, not bothered by the fact that due to such close proximity, a little of Jesse’s blood had transferred itself onto his own knee. “But my mom says that it’s okay to get hurt every now and then, because when nice the things happen, they’ll feel even better. I’m not really sure what that means, but it always cheers me up when I‘m sad.”
“Your mom is really smart,” Jesse sniffed, smiling just a little.
Joe smiled back. In his little khaki shirt and shorts combo with an explorers hat hanging from the back of his neck by a string, Jesse couldn’t help but love Joe. Not in that way, of course, as they were eight and anything of that sort was ‘icky’. No, Jesse never loved Joe in that way, not even after he’d come out at sixteen, Joe was just… his best friend in the whole wide world.
Joe helped Jesse back to his house and his mom fawned over him, cleaned him up, kissed it better, and said that Joe could stay over for the night for being “a little hero.” They had milk and cookies before bed, and right before the light went off, Joe said that he’d always be there for Jesse.
“But you’re not, are you?”
Every year since they’d been fourteen, Joe had left at the beginning of September to go to this prestigious boarding school up in Poughkeepsie, leaving Jesse friendless, anxious and alone in New York, in his average public high school where he felt severely under-challenged. He couldn’t be mad at Joe for this, he couldn’t be mad at either of their parents, as Jesse’s mom and dad had wanted Jesse to go to Joe’s school too. They were willing to pay the extortionate fees and everything, but he couldn’t stand being away from his home and his mom and his cats for more than one night at a time. He could only blame himself and fantasise hopelessly about how his life would have turned out if he had chosen to go along too.
Joe was cool. Like, really cool, and not in the common sense of the word. Joe didn’t play quarterback, but during Spring break, which had today reached its end, Joe had told Jesse that he pitched on the baseball team now. Joe didn’t have a girlfriend but he did have a bit of a crush on some girl called Emma, a highly talented budding actress who spent her time drinking latte’s and listening to funk rock. Apparently, her hair “shimmered crimson in the sun.” To Jesse, Joe seemed to take on the form of ‘cool’ that one would usually apply to the guy who sat, casually, at the back of an English class making witty comments about the sexual undertones found in poetry. Joe was cool without having to be a popular, condescending asshole.
Jesse figured that the only reason Joe was still his friend was because they’d grown up together and influenced one another in their weirdness, and grew to accept it. Joe threw his strangeness outwards, he was weird in the sort of way what people admired, he was undeniably funny, a real entertainer. Jesse distinctly remembered that time in fourth grade when he’d jokingly dared Joe to run down the hall with his pants and underwear down. Joe had done it, simultaneously gaining himself a few detentions and a quiet, detached kind of respect from the other boys who just laughed fondly whenever they saw him around school, saying “there goes crazy Joe, he’s hilarious,"
Jesse was too weird for most. He‘d forced his weirdness inwards and ended up as a socially awkward recluse whenever Joe was away at school. He didn't know how to make a name for himself in the way that Joe had. He’d thought about maybe dying his hair a wacky colour, or wearing mismatched shoes. He even considered taking up an awesome -but equally random- musical instrument, like the pedal steel guitar or the lute. Jesse's weirdness was in no way interesting, it was just... weird. Strange, and out of place.
His nerdiness, also, was definitely not geek-chic. Jesse was uncool before being uncool was cool, and even then, he still couldn't get it right. Some of the nerdier guys at his school did alright for themselves, with their horn-rimmed classes and their bow-ties and their colourful argyle sweaters, girls found them strangely adorable. Jesse, however, lived and died in hoodies, jeans and t-shirts, not caring if they were a few days worn or a little wrinkly, so long as they were comfortable, and fit his body, he didn't care for how he looked.
Jesse got up, moved away from his window, walked about his little room, and noted how severely odd he was. Jesse had pictures of his cats, Keith, Tia and Lucy in little frames about the place -he’d given them human names because “they’re people too“. There were pictures of him and Joe together when they were younger, but nothing recent. There were no pictures of him, say, with other friends, hanging out at the beach, maybe at a party, a sports game or a rock concert. Jesse had never done any of those things even when Joe was home. Never had he pulled off a t-shirt at the end of the day to reveal a set of tan-lines, he hardly ever went outside. He lived in books, in atlases, in-between a set of headphones feeding him the compositions of Robert Gershwin, Richard Rodgers and the like.
In the words of Jack/Rupert/Cornelius/whatever the hell Edward Norton's character was called in Fight Club: this was his life, and it was ending, one minute at a time.
This realisation, right here, was what had caused him to trash his room, not in anger, but in a search, he was looking for all of the objects that summed up his mundane life here. His friendless, anxious, obsessive compulsive and oddly naive life. He pulled maps from the walls and tucked them under his arm, held a few CD’s containing the soundtracks from his favourite musicals between his teeth, and piled a few dusty World War II books up on one hand. For the first time in his life he was looking forward, outwards. Every thought he’d ever had up until this very point was parting, he’d spent his life trying to get out of things, get out of meeting people, having fun, being a teenager, and now, he was going to do something about it.
Almost tripping on the way, he ran out of his room, dashed down the stairs and into the back yard to find his parents conversing happily over glasses of wine. He’d caught the toe of his shoe on the threshold of the sliding door and landed, sprawled on the patio, a mass of navy blue hoodie fabric and unruly curls, he’d dropped all of his things.
Panting, quickly snatching his possessions up off of the ground as his parents looked on, more than a little frightened, he flung his arms out so that the maps and books and the CD’s landed on the black, wrought-iron patio table, knocking over his mom’s glass of wine in the process. She jumped back from the spreading scarlet liquid with a high-pitched “Oh!”, but before she could chastise Jesse and ask him what in the hell he was doing, he was off. He was speaking rapidly, hands flailing about the air, shoulders hunched, eyes darting.
“Look at this! This isn’t- this is not what a teenage boy should be. Look,” he picked up a Stalin biography and held it up to his father’s face, then flung it away in a fit of frustration across the yard. “I shouldn’t be reading that, I should be reading... I don't know, something that isn't that! My iPod should be filled with stuff by Green Day and Blink 182, but instead I sing along to the soundtrack of Annie. I have one friend and he’s hardly ever here and when he isn’t, Lucy -my, my cat- fills in as a best friend. I talk to cats, Mom. Is this really what you what you expected when you discovered that you were having a son?” He paused to regain breath. “Dad?”
Worriedly, Jesse’s mom reached out to take hold of his wrist. “Baby, sit down, what’s wrong?”
“I’ve had enough of being a loser!“ He wrenched his arm free and slung himself into a spare patio chair. “I don‘t want to be a child any more, I‘m a four year old mommy‘s boy trapped in the body of a boring teenager with the interests of an ageing college professor.”
“Hey! I’m a college professor, and I’m not a loser,” his dad laughed jovially.
“I know, Dad. Sorry,” Jesse didn’t find this at all funny.
Both of his parents leaned forward, shooting glances at one another wearily. “Where has all of this come from?” His mom asked quietly, as though she feared that speaking any louder would send him off on another fit of unprecedented physical frustration. “Why are you only bringing this up now? We both thought you were happy.”
“I was,” Jesse conceded, looking at her ruefully and trying not to feel awful about the severe look of concern that he’d brought about in her eyes. “I really was, but, I don’t know, I was just can‘t stand listening to Joe telling me about all the great things he does with his new friends. I feel like I‘m a living memory, living nostalgia. For him, I’m just a trip down memory lane. He comes back home to his childhood home to see his childhood friend and we act like little kids together talking about old times and playing Space Invaders on his old Atari. He acts his age, he acts in the way that a seventeen year old should and I don‘t. ”
“Well, Son,“ Jesse’s father began in the delicate fashion his mother had used. “This is really up to you, if you want to grow up, you need to do it. What do you expect us to do about it?”
“I want to finish off the school year here, then do my senior year at Oak Hill, get some independence, you know?”
Much to Jesse’s dismay, his father actually laughed. “What, that prep school up in Poughkeepsie that we wanted you to go to three years ago?”
“Yeah,” Jesse sat up, holding his hands out. “I wasn’t ready to go then, I didn’t want to leave home, I was scared and desperate and addicted to all this normality. Afraid of change.”
“So you want to change things?” His mother asked.
“Yes! That exactly! Joe was just like I am now before he left. Now? He’s telling me about all these friends he has and the parties and the pranks and the fun. I know, I know he’s not trying to rub it in, he’s not like that. I take it like this: He’s extending a hand, I should be up there doing those things, too. I’ve been a teenager for five years now, nearly six, and I’ve got two years left of being a teenager, and hell, I’m going to do those two years justice.”
Thirty minutes of persuasion -during which Jesse promised to keep up with his studies, not smoke, drink or do drugs- later, and his parents had conceded. Things were definitely going to get better.
~
Part One
Part: Prologue
Word Count: 2,721
~
As far back as Jesse could remember, quite possibly since before he’d been born -he’d never thought to ask- his family had lived next door to the Mazzello’s. Mrs. Mazzello baked a lot and constantly smelled like cookies or homemade bread; Mr.Mazzello ran a performing arts school upstate, and as a result of this seemed happier than any normal teacher, smiling and gesticulating wildly almost all the time, like a movie director hyped up on amphetamines. They had three children, two boys and a girl, Mary, John and Joseph. Joe was a perfect mix of both of his parents, always running and laughing and generally making people smile wherever he went.
Now, since Jesse and Joe were the same age, in the same grade at school, by default they’d been pushed together from a very young age. At first, it was by force, as when he was a young child it would often take a good twenty to thirty minutes for Jesse’s mother to detach her wailing son from around her legs. As years passed, Jesse’s separation anxiety lessened, though indefinitely. From the age of five, Jesse had willingly gone over to the Mazzello’s, taking bike rides with Joe through the woods or going out with Joe to walk his golden retriever, Bailey.
Joe was the first and only friend Jesse had ever had. With a prematurely old-soul like Jesse’s, a lot of things frightened him, Doberman pinschers, the dentist, dark rooms and loud noises. Joe was great because not only was he irresistibly kind and friendly, but with those brown puppy-dog eyes, much like Bailey’s, and floppy hair that shone a reddish-gold in the sun, Joe wasn’t too intimidating. Jesse felt comfortable around him and, thanks to Joe, spent his childhood in very much a normal way.
The seventeen year old Jesse sat, legs folded beneath himself, on top of the bookcase beneath his bedroom window, watching as Joe left again, and trying not to cry… again. He could feel the back of his eyeballs beginning to burn and that familiar dread-filled lump, rising, from the pit of his stomach, to take up residence right beneath his solar plexus. Pulling the sleeves of his hoodie down over his hands, he squeezed the cuffs tight and bit his lip hard in a futile attempt to keep the tears at bay. Through watery eyes, colours blurry and running together, Jesse watched as Joe loaded suitcases and a couple of boxes into the back of his dad’s minivan.
Joe slammed the trunk closed, placed his hands on his hips with triumph, and looked up, right at Jesse’s window. Jesse scrambled, trying to wipe the tears away and plaster a smile on his face before Joe managed to see past the reflections in the glass, and through the window, at Jesse himself. Joe saw him alright, he smiled and waved before his father came out and gestured for him to get into the minivan. Moments later, the engine was started and Joe was gone.
Jesse forced himself not to focus on what he was really seeing before him, and dove into the depths of his memories to pull out something good, something that would help him remember that Joe would be back in late July for the Summer. Jesse thought about a time when they were eight, he and Joe had been walking through the woods at the back of their houses, pretending to be explorers when one of Jesse’s feet caught on a tree root, they were small, but he was clumsy. He fell hard, scraping the palms of his hands and rolling himself over to discover that there was a shallow gash his knee -courtesy of a sharp rock that lay on the ground- right below the point where his shorts cut off. It was bleeding.
“Joe! Joe! Joe! Come quick!” He’d wailed, tears already falling, clutching his leg and vaguely wishing that his mom were there too to clean it all up with a baby wipe because there was quite a bit of mud in there.
Joe rushed over and knelt down beside Jesse, hand on his shoulder. “Oh no! Hey. Hey, don’t cry, it’s okay. It’s not that bad. Here, I’ll take you home, buddy.”
An earthy hand encircled Jesse’s tiny wrist, Joe helped him up slowly, flinging Jesse’s arm over his shoulders like an adult helping out his drunken wingman. Jesse’s eight year old self of course had no idea that in just ten years time, he and Joe would be walking, like this, out of another forest. Only that time, Jesse would be drunk, and giggling, and Joe would be rolling his eyes fondly, but that’s getting ahead of things.
“Joe it really hurts, it’s stinging like crazy,” Jesse had said feebly, wincing every time he had to bend the knee of his right leg.
“I know,” Joe replied quietly, not bothered by the fact that due to such close proximity, a little of Jesse’s blood had transferred itself onto his own knee. “But my mom says that it’s okay to get hurt every now and then, because when nice the things happen, they’ll feel even better. I’m not really sure what that means, but it always cheers me up when I‘m sad.”
“Your mom is really smart,” Jesse sniffed, smiling just a little.
Joe smiled back. In his little khaki shirt and shorts combo with an explorers hat hanging from the back of his neck by a string, Jesse couldn’t help but love Joe. Not in that way, of course, as they were eight and anything of that sort was ‘icky’. No, Jesse never loved Joe in that way, not even after he’d come out at sixteen, Joe was just… his best friend in the whole wide world.
Joe helped Jesse back to his house and his mom fawned over him, cleaned him up, kissed it better, and said that Joe could stay over for the night for being “a little hero.” They had milk and cookies before bed, and right before the light went off, Joe said that he’d always be there for Jesse.
“But you’re not, are you?”
Every year since they’d been fourteen, Joe had left at the beginning of September to go to this prestigious boarding school up in Poughkeepsie, leaving Jesse friendless, anxious and alone in New York, in his average public high school where he felt severely under-challenged. He couldn’t be mad at Joe for this, he couldn’t be mad at either of their parents, as Jesse’s mom and dad had wanted Jesse to go to Joe’s school too. They were willing to pay the extortionate fees and everything, but he couldn’t stand being away from his home and his mom and his cats for more than one night at a time. He could only blame himself and fantasise hopelessly about how his life would have turned out if he had chosen to go along too.
Joe was cool. Like, really cool, and not in the common sense of the word. Joe didn’t play quarterback, but during Spring break, which had today reached its end, Joe had told Jesse that he pitched on the baseball team now. Joe didn’t have a girlfriend but he did have a bit of a crush on some girl called Emma, a highly talented budding actress who spent her time drinking latte’s and listening to funk rock. Apparently, her hair “shimmered crimson in the sun.” To Jesse, Joe seemed to take on the form of ‘cool’ that one would usually apply to the guy who sat, casually, at the back of an English class making witty comments about the sexual undertones found in poetry. Joe was cool without having to be a popular, condescending asshole.
Jesse figured that the only reason Joe was still his friend was because they’d grown up together and influenced one another in their weirdness, and grew to accept it. Joe threw his strangeness outwards, he was weird in the sort of way what people admired, he was undeniably funny, a real entertainer. Jesse distinctly remembered that time in fourth grade when he’d jokingly dared Joe to run down the hall with his pants and underwear down. Joe had done it, simultaneously gaining himself a few detentions and a quiet, detached kind of respect from the other boys who just laughed fondly whenever they saw him around school, saying “there goes crazy Joe, he’s hilarious,"
Jesse was too weird for most. He‘d forced his weirdness inwards and ended up as a socially awkward recluse whenever Joe was away at school. He didn't know how to make a name for himself in the way that Joe had. He’d thought about maybe dying his hair a wacky colour, or wearing mismatched shoes. He even considered taking up an awesome -but equally random- musical instrument, like the pedal steel guitar or the lute. Jesse's weirdness was in no way interesting, it was just... weird. Strange, and out of place.
His nerdiness, also, was definitely not geek-chic. Jesse was uncool before being uncool was cool, and even then, he still couldn't get it right. Some of the nerdier guys at his school did alright for themselves, with their horn-rimmed classes and their bow-ties and their colourful argyle sweaters, girls found them strangely adorable. Jesse, however, lived and died in hoodies, jeans and t-shirts, not caring if they were a few days worn or a little wrinkly, so long as they were comfortable, and fit his body, he didn't care for how he looked.
Jesse got up, moved away from his window, walked about his little room, and noted how severely odd he was. Jesse had pictures of his cats, Keith, Tia and Lucy in little frames about the place -he’d given them human names because “they’re people too“. There were pictures of him and Joe together when they were younger, but nothing recent. There were no pictures of him, say, with other friends, hanging out at the beach, maybe at a party, a sports game or a rock concert. Jesse had never done any of those things even when Joe was home. Never had he pulled off a t-shirt at the end of the day to reveal a set of tan-lines, he hardly ever went outside. He lived in books, in atlases, in-between a set of headphones feeding him the compositions of Robert Gershwin, Richard Rodgers and the like.
In the words of Jack/Rupert/Cornelius/whatever the hell Edward Norton's character was called in Fight Club: this was his life, and it was ending, one minute at a time.
This realisation, right here, was what had caused him to trash his room, not in anger, but in a search, he was looking for all of the objects that summed up his mundane life here. His friendless, anxious, obsessive compulsive and oddly naive life. He pulled maps from the walls and tucked them under his arm, held a few CD’s containing the soundtracks from his favourite musicals between his teeth, and piled a few dusty World War II books up on one hand. For the first time in his life he was looking forward, outwards. Every thought he’d ever had up until this very point was parting, he’d spent his life trying to get out of things, get out of meeting people, having fun, being a teenager, and now, he was going to do something about it.
Almost tripping on the way, he ran out of his room, dashed down the stairs and into the back yard to find his parents conversing happily over glasses of wine. He’d caught the toe of his shoe on the threshold of the sliding door and landed, sprawled on the patio, a mass of navy blue hoodie fabric and unruly curls, he’d dropped all of his things.
Panting, quickly snatching his possessions up off of the ground as his parents looked on, more than a little frightened, he flung his arms out so that the maps and books and the CD’s landed on the black, wrought-iron patio table, knocking over his mom’s glass of wine in the process. She jumped back from the spreading scarlet liquid with a high-pitched “Oh!”, but before she could chastise Jesse and ask him what in the hell he was doing, he was off. He was speaking rapidly, hands flailing about the air, shoulders hunched, eyes darting.
“Look at this! This isn’t- this is not what a teenage boy should be. Look,” he picked up a Stalin biography and held it up to his father’s face, then flung it away in a fit of frustration across the yard. “I shouldn’t be reading that, I should be reading... I don't know, something that isn't that! My iPod should be filled with stuff by Green Day and Blink 182, but instead I sing along to the soundtrack of Annie. I have one friend and he’s hardly ever here and when he isn’t, Lucy -my, my cat- fills in as a best friend. I talk to cats, Mom. Is this really what you what you expected when you discovered that you were having a son?” He paused to regain breath. “Dad?”
Worriedly, Jesse’s mom reached out to take hold of his wrist. “Baby, sit down, what’s wrong?”
“I’ve had enough of being a loser!“ He wrenched his arm free and slung himself into a spare patio chair. “I don‘t want to be a child any more, I‘m a four year old mommy‘s boy trapped in the body of a boring teenager with the interests of an ageing college professor.”
“Hey! I’m a college professor, and I’m not a loser,” his dad laughed jovially.
“I know, Dad. Sorry,” Jesse didn’t find this at all funny.
Both of his parents leaned forward, shooting glances at one another wearily. “Where has all of this come from?” His mom asked quietly, as though she feared that speaking any louder would send him off on another fit of unprecedented physical frustration. “Why are you only bringing this up now? We both thought you were happy.”
“I was,” Jesse conceded, looking at her ruefully and trying not to feel awful about the severe look of concern that he’d brought about in her eyes. “I really was, but, I don’t know, I was just can‘t stand listening to Joe telling me about all the great things he does with his new friends. I feel like I‘m a living memory, living nostalgia. For him, I’m just a trip down memory lane. He comes back home to his childhood home to see his childhood friend and we act like little kids together talking about old times and playing Space Invaders on his old Atari. He acts his age, he acts in the way that a seventeen year old should and I don‘t. ”
“Well, Son,“ Jesse’s father began in the delicate fashion his mother had used. “This is really up to you, if you want to grow up, you need to do it. What do you expect us to do about it?”
“I want to finish off the school year here, then do my senior year at Oak Hill, get some independence, you know?”
Much to Jesse’s dismay, his father actually laughed. “What, that prep school up in Poughkeepsie that we wanted you to go to three years ago?”
“Yeah,” Jesse sat up, holding his hands out. “I wasn’t ready to go then, I didn’t want to leave home, I was scared and desperate and addicted to all this normality. Afraid of change.”
“So you want to change things?” His mother asked.
“Yes! That exactly! Joe was just like I am now before he left. Now? He’s telling me about all these friends he has and the parties and the pranks and the fun. I know, I know he’s not trying to rub it in, he’s not like that. I take it like this: He’s extending a hand, I should be up there doing those things, too. I’ve been a teenager for five years now, nearly six, and I’ve got two years left of being a teenager, and hell, I’m going to do those two years justice.”
Thirty minutes of persuasion -during which Jesse promised to keep up with his studies, not smoke, drink or do drugs- later, and his parents had conceded. Things were definitely going to get better.
~
Part One