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This is why I do it. Because it’s an escape some people desperately need.
He’d never really put it into so many words like that before, and he knew some would laugh at him for even thinking it. He didn’t care. He wasn’t out to change the world, he was in this business because sometimes people needed to forget about that world for a while. He had a knack for putting himself into a part in a believable way, and he used it.
Knack, my ass. You study like a crazy person, Thorpe, to figure out who your character is. That’s why they listen to you when you say he’d never do that.
Tucker’s words echoed in his memory, spoken the day that, to their shock, the director of the episode they were working on agreed with him and ordered a change in a fairly major scene.
“Wait, wait,” Jeremy exclaimed excitedly. Jackson refocused and saw Tris had the remote control in her hand and was aiming it at the screen. “You have to see the scene in the middle of the credits.”
He smiled at that and walked into the room. “Skipping the credits?” he asked his sister in a tone of mock outrage.
“Only because this is my third time through,” she said dryly.
He laughed and sat down next to Jeremy, who was still glued to the screen, awaited the admittedly funny outtake they’d put halfway through. When it finally did actually end, Tris suggested ice cream for all, and Jeremy agreed with some enthusiasm. Another change for the better, since the boy’s appetite usually required a lot of coaxing, to the point where he was at the bottom end of the scale of what he should weigh for his height and age.
“Oh, by the way,” Tris said as she came back with three bowls of their unanimous fave, rocky road, and Jeremy dug in fast, “I presume you’d be available to take Jeremy out to the Baylors’ tomorrow?”
He blinked. Sat there with the spoonful he’d just taken melting in his mouth. Swallowed it hastily. “What?”
“I called to see if they’d be okay with it.”
“You did?” The image of himself sitting in the other room, staring at his phone screen, shot through his mind. And here Tris had simply done it. Done what he hadn’t been able to do. Which, in a tangled way, said a lot more about him than her.
Tris tilted her head to look at him in that way that warned him she knew her brother all too well.
“And they said it was okay,” Jeremy exclaimed excitedly. “But I have to go to bed on time, so I’ll have lots of energy to ride Pie tomorrow.” With that the boy gobbled the last bite ofhis ice cream, scrambled down from the couch, and headed for the hallway and the bathroom. A moment later he heard water running as the boy brushed his teeth.
“Mrs. Baylor answered,” Tris said. “I’d always heard about her, but never actually talked to her before.”
“From what Ms. Baylor told me, she’s quite something,” he said, as neutrally as he could manage and, he hoped, without any emphasis on the formal name. “Adapting, never giving up.”
“Yes. But we talked more about the fact that she’s a private tutor.”
Jackson drew back slightly. “She is?”
“She was a teacher here at the middle school before her mishap—that’s what she calls what most would say was a disaster—but she said she finds she likes working with individual students much better.” Tris gave a wry smile. “I can see the appeal.”
He knew she had days when dealing with a roomful of kids felt overwhelming. But she was good at it, and he knew it was what had gotten her through the worst part of her grief after David had died. He, on the other hand... He tried to remember where she had been at this point, two years after the fact. He couldn’t really remember, but he knew it was likely better than how he was doing at that stage. Not that he hadn’t accepted it had happened, but he wasn’t handling it so well. If he had been, he would have brought Jeremy here a lot sooner, because the change in the boy in just days had been... well, remarkable.
“—do you think?”
He tuned back in, calling himself an idiot in his mind for tuning out yet again. “What?”
Tris looked at him as if she knew exactly what had happened, but kindly only repeated her question. “If you’re going to stay awhile, what do you think about having her tutor Jeremy? He’snot middle school age yet, but he’s smart enough, so it might be good for him. And she’d be willing to tailor a program for him.”
“You already asked her?”
“With the understanding that it was up to you, of course. You said you thought you’d stay awhile, but if it’s only awhile, then enrolling him in school here formally would be a problem. And he already wants to go there to ride, so I thought—”
“It’s okay,” he assured her. “And it sounds like the perfect solution.”Except for having to deal with Nicole Baylor regularly.
“She’s not cheap,” his sister warned.
“Neither am I,” he said with a wry smile.
“I know,” Tris said softly. “You’re always willing to pay people what they’re worth. And more.”
He shrugged. She rolled her eyes in that sisterly way of hers. “Anyway, you should talk with her tomorrow, see if you like her, and think it will work. And she said they could probably coordinate with some riding lessons for Jeremy, as a reward for hard work kind of thing.”
