Jesus Jackson Read Free Page A

then, we agree…right?”
    â€œRight. So we can be friends.”
    Henry let an awkward, unpracticed smile make its way across his face, as if it hadn’t occurred to him that I’d ever want to be his friend, or that anyone would ever want to be his friend. “Good,” he said. “Okay. Yeah, good.”
    After homeroom they gave us a tour of the school, which was followed by another assembly (this one thankfully less eventful than the last) before they freed us for the day just after lunch. Nearly nauseated by all of the praying (made tolerable only by sharing snickers with Henry), I decided to take a little tour of the woods behind the school, having been told once by my brother that this was where the upperclassmen went to smoke, drink, make out, and engage in all of the other activities that just might make St. Soren’s bearable.
    Henry followed me for about fifty paces beyond the milling crowd of freshmen before asking where I was going.
    â€œExploring,” I told him.
    â€œUmm…why?”
    I turned around to stare at him, wondering how sustainable our friendship would turn out to be. “Why not?”
    â€œBut what about the bus…,” he began, though I’d already turned to walk away. If we were going to be friends (and I hoped we would), he’d have to step up to a little mischief, and fast.
    In all honesty, I expected to make my little exploration alone. But to my great surprise, a little further along, I heard the shuffling of Henry’s gargantuan backpack come speeding up behind me. “So what’s back here?” he asked.
    â€œI don’t know. I think it’s where everybody does drugs.”
    Henry stopped so fast he almost tripped over his feet. I’m positive that if I told him we were going to attend a virgin sacrifice by a Satanic coven, it wouldn’t have elicited such a horrified response. “You’re…going…to….”
    â€œI’m joking,” I lied. “Relax. This is just where the upperclassmen hang out.”
    His attitude didn’t change; not much, at least. Whatever small amount of his trust I’d earned was, at this point, all but lost.
    â€œWhatever,” I said. “Go back and wait for the bus, if you want.”
    Henry clenched his jaw, clearly upset by my challenge. But he was unable to stand up to it. “So, there’re no drugs back there?”
    â€œCome on now, man, there are drugs everywhere in this corrupt world of ours. Are you coming or not?”
    After a moment more of consideration, he dropped his guard and followed me. We both smiled as he matched my pace across the lawn, neither of us aware in the slightest of what we were getting ourselves into.
    ***
    So let me preface this next scene by saying that, at this point, my general view of humanity was that it was all a useless, phony, hypocritical cancer upon the Earth, providing nothing of any good to anyone, while it went about causing endless pain and suffering to every living species on the planet, itself included. Out of the six billion of us walking around on this wretched stretch of sand, there was only one exception in my mind: Ryan.
    It didn’t matter that I hadn’t actually seen very much of him in the past few years (since he’d started St. Soren’s, he just seemed to get caught up in the whole high school thing). I mean sure, he was my older brother, and I loved him. But more importantly: I trusted him. I knew him. So when Henry and I stepped into the hostile situation we were about to find in those woods, it was Ryan that I first thought of. It was Ryan that I hoped would save me.
    This was how it happened:
    About twenty feet inside the tree line we rounded a small stone wall to find a group of four football players, padded and uniformed and covered up and down with grass stains and dirt, standing in a little clearing and looking nervously all around. At their feet, just a few yards