Strange Bedfellows Part 2

He grinned sheepishly, guiltily. “I was also one of the guys who made fun of the misfits. I may have been an orphan, but I attacked high school, and college, like they were mountains to be climbed, both academically and socially. I wanted to fit in, and I made damn sure I did, no matter what it took, no matter that I left school at three to go back to a foster home or the children’s shelter. People thought I was noble. I wasn’t, Cassandra. I was ambitious, and fairly ruthless. And a real first-class jerk, now that I look back on it all—now that I’m mature enough to stand back and look at the reasons Sally and I ended up in the back of the ‘68 Chevy.”

“Have you ever told Jason any of this? It might help him, you know, learning about your background, your struggle.”

Sean shook his head. “He doesn’t know anything about my childhood—or his own, if you want to get technical about it. I wanted to protect him, protect his mother. No, that’s not true. I wanted to protect myself.”

“You two really have to have a talk. Maybe all three of you should have a talk. A whopping great bunch of talks!” Cassandra’s smile was sweet, and knowing, and decidedly unsettling. “Jason told me his dad is Mr. Perfect. I don’t think it was a compliment, frankly. Did you ever consider that Jason might be trying his best not to be like you, or what he perceives to be the real you?”

“Are you saying that Jason deliberately set out to be one of the misfits?”

She laid a hand on his arm. “Oh, no, no! None of them are misfits! There are no misfits, you see. There are only kids. Some of them just have a more difficult time growing up, that’s all. A harder time fitting in, because they’re already individuals, unwilling or unable to be part of the herd. And they’ll be fine, just fine, once they go to college, get out in the real world. It’s just that a teenager’s world is so small, that the different ones, well, they sort of stick out more, you know?”

“Jason doesn’t exactly fade into the background, I’ll give him that,” Sean said, considering everything Cassandra had said, considering what she hadn’t said. Jason felt it was impossible to live up to his father’s achievements, so he was doing his best to make his own mark, his own way. Was that it? Was that what his son was doing? “There are times, like when I visit the school for assemblies, and see the whole student body in the auditorium, then spy Jason, that I think he sticks out like a sore thumb.”

“I know. If you’re not an athlete, or very pretty…if your skin is more like the ‘before’ than the ‘after’ photo in the acne cream ads…if you understand physics while the rest of the kids are still stuck on fractions…if you’re honest enough to admit that you actually liked reading Shakespeare…Well, for those kids, high school can sometimes be worse than a four-year trip to hell.”

Sean scratched his cheek. “And you’re saying that Jason is one of the individuals—isn’t that what you called them? So why the lousy grades? Why the broken windows in the gym?”

Cassandra stood up and began to pace, obviously unaware of what the sight of her long, straight legs was doing to Sean’s concentration. “I believe Jason was trying to fit in, and hunting for a new way to do it. He’s always been trying to fit in, find a niche somewhere, find an identity. Good grades didn’t do it at his old school, so he started cutting class when he transferred to Burke, acting up in class, deliberately not doing well on his tests. We both know his grades were good, even exceptional, until he transferred here for his junior year.”

“His grades were excellent. I thought he was failing his courses to punish me for taking him away from his mother, although he said he’d wanted to go. It never occurred to me that he was afraid of being unpopular, that he’d ever been unpopular.”

“I think he felt he’d be more accepted if he hid his talents, his brains, so he set about becoming a rebel, and it came back to bite him. Which is why he changed his tactics lately, going out for football, allowing the group that comes here to see his intelligence, his promise, his real personality. As for the rest of it, the clothes, the haircut, the belligerence—well, I believe that to be nothing more than a cry for your attention, although I still find it difficult to believe he broke those windows.”

Sean felt the muscles in his jaw begin to tighten. “Whose attention?”

She stopped pacing and bent down to pick up Festus, who had been threading himself between her legs, meowing. She held the cat’s enormous belly against her face, rubbing her cheek against its fur.

“Your attention, Sean,” she said quietly. “Yours, your ex-wife’s. And, yes, maybe a little of mine, now that I think about it, now that I look back on the way he behaved once he heard about the group that comes here, and why they come here. But mostly your attention, I believe.”

Sean felt sick to his stomach. No wonder he hadn’t wanted to listen to Cassandra’s theories, her explanations. They hurt too much. “Well, he’s damn well got it, I’ll give him that,” he said bitterly. “But why this way?”

“I guess I’d have to be a seventeen-year-old boy to answer that one,” Cassandra said, still standing in the middle of the room, still keeping her distance. “At least he didn’t decide to experiment with drugs, or slit his wrists, like one of the girls did last year when her parents separated and her best friend moved to Vail. That was a tough one, but she’s fine now, doing well in school, coming over here with the rest of the gang.”

She sighed, allowing Festus to hop down to the carpet, for he was beginning to squirm in her arms. “I wouldn’t be a teenager again for anything. They’re all so young, so vulnerable, so very confused.”

Sean sat back against the couch, his legs spread out in front of him. “That’s a hell of a thing, Cassandra—to feel grateful that Jason didn’t try to kill himself. Jason is my son? God, I feel like I’m living with a stranger!”

Cassandra returned to the couch, sitting down beside him once more. She no longer looked quite so young, although she was still the most beautiful, the most desirable woman he’d ever seen. And probably one of the most intelligent. “How did you get past the misfit stage, Cassandra?” he asked, then instantly wished back the words as her golden brown eyes darkened.

“By flunking out of two colleges,” she said shortly, her smile wan. “Did I mention that my parents were both college professors? Dad had a heart attack when I was put on academic probation at the third college they shoved me into—and that’s when I finally woke up. I woke up to a lot of things, a lot of old problems and the new problems I had made in trying to forget them. You see, they were never going to change, my parents were never going to see me as anything but their product, the melding of their exceptional genes. And, at that time, as their greatest disappointment. I so wanted them to see me for who I really was, or who I thought I really was. Except that I didn’t know who that could be—I just knew I wasn’t happy being Cassandra Mercer, daughter of. Cassandra Mercer, superbrain. Cassandra Mercer, plain Jane nerd.”

She laughed softly. “Not that I could change my outside all that much. I’m still the professors’ daughter, even with the both of them dead these past five years. Why, I had to fight down the impulse to wear white gloves to my first employment interview. I still wear my glasses most of the time, although I only need them to drive, and I have a pair of contact lenses around here somewhere. I’m still a whole bunch of different Cassandras, trying to make up one livable whole.