The 15:17 to Paris: The True Story of a Terrorist, a Train and Three American Heroes. Anthony Sadler

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СКАЧАТЬ worry, just fess up to it. I’m sure it won’t be that big of a deal. Just be honest.”

      Joyce arrived home two hours later. Everett met her out front, helped her out of her car, diverted her from the front door, and escorted her instead through the garage, into the laundry room, showing her the house like a peppy real estate agent. “And here we have the newly cleaned floor!” He showed her the whole house vacuumed, spit-polished, candles burning on the mantelpiece, ending the tour by the front door, where Spencer and his cousin were standing sentry, stately as palace guards. Chivalrous as you like … if a little awkwardly close to the wall.

      “Well, will you just look at this house! To what do I owe this wonderful surprise?”

      The candles flickered; Spencer looked at his big brother. Slowly, sheepishly, he stepped forward and revealed the hole.

      The glow on her face disappeared. “Are you fricking serious?” She threw her hands in the air and started yelling, stormed around the house booming threats, came back—“You’re gonna fix this!”—and then went to her room to calm down, leaving Spencer to wallow in the worst feeling possible: having disappointed his mom.

      AS EVERETT LEFT SPENCER in elementary school and moved on to junior high, his nose for trouble began to concern Joyce. She heard about him getting pushed around at school, and more frightening still, about him pushing back. It wasn’t just boys being boys anymore; the boys were becoming men. Other kids were menacing Everett in the halls, drawing their thumbs across their throats when he walked by because he’d dared to shove one of them back. A gang of them came by her house one day before she got home, threatening Everett and goading Kelly, who came out of the house screaming in defense of her older brother, which only emasculated Everett and riled him up even more, pushing him closer to that place where boys do stupid things out of pride. Joyce started to worry about brawls happening at her house as much as in the halls of the school. Everett wasn’t backing down.

      This school was doing bad things to Everett; it was not a safe place for a kid to learn. And even if Everett could handle himself, what about Spencer? Spencer was still small, still sensitive. Joyce was sick with worry about what would happen to her youngest when he moved on to junior high.

      And bullying aside, the public school wasn’t handling Spencer right. Because Spencer was behind on reading, the teacher wanted to dose him up on drugs for ADD. Joyce confabbed with Heidi about it. It turned out the school was saying the same thing about Alek, because—and this was rich—Alek liked to look out the window in class. Joyce and Heidi agreed over coffee that it was unconscionable for teachers to try and medicate their kids.

      When Joyce went to a parent-teacher conference and said she wasn’t about to put her kid on meds (Just because you’re not very good at your job, she’d wanted to say), Spencer’s teacher told her, “Well if you don’t medicate him now, he’ll self-medicate later.”

      That just about put her through the roof.

      “You know, boys with single moms,” the teacher went on, “it’s just statistics, Ms. Eskel. Statistically they’re more likely to develop problems.”

      Statistics? Joyce seethed. How dare this woman look down on her just because she was a single mom and her kid was a little behind? She lit up with a million things she wanted to say to this woman. You know what, she thought, my God is bigger than the world’s statistics, so I don’t really care what any of you say. You don’t get to talk to me like that. When she composed herself, she stood up and pronounced, matter-of-factly, “If you think I’m going to drug my child to make your job easier, you’re sorely mistaken.” The teacher rolled her eyes, and Joyce stormed out.

      And that had been the last straw. Spencer needed a better place. He needed a place where there weren’t kids in the halls who might beat him to a pulp, no teachers who wanted to fill him up with chemicals. She needed a place where the adults had more control of their kids, and where he’d be protected, looked out for, maybe a place that provided some of the mentoring Spencer and Alek missed out on from being separated most of the time from their fathers. But private school was expensive. So she prayed. And when a close friend told her about a small Christian school, she knew she’d been given another miracle. The school was nearby, a five-minute drive, not even two miles from her house. How had she not known of it before? It was like it just appeared in her backyard. The school was inexpensive enough by private school standards that she might actually be able to afford it. Best of all, they had activities all the time. Evenings after school the kids would have constructive things to do and some supervision, and weekends too. The school would be like extra parents.

      So it was agreed. Spencer and Alek would go to a new school. Their prayers had been answered.

      It was almost too good to be true.

4.

      AT FIRST, SPENCER TRIED to get along. He ran for school president. Alek served as his de facto campaign manager. They put their heads together and came up with a progressive platform of free burritos.

      They designed a campaign poster that consisted of Spencer holding an M16 replica paintball gun in front of an American flag, wearing full camouflage and an Uncle Sam–style “I want you” frown.

      Then, to make sure they remained true to their message, the two boys went to school in full camouflage. It was important to take the campaign seriously, because Spencer had big plans to change the world. “I will switch the Coke machines to Pepsi machines,” he said, “because Pepsi is more American!” But on the day the candidates were to address all the voters, his opponent read flawlessly from a beautifully written speech, and Spencer, rattled and nervous, mumbled through his campaign promises so quietly nobody heard a single thing he said. His big plans for more patriotic vending machines went unheard, whispered into his own chest, and the vote was not close. Spencer did not win.

      His political ambitions crushed, Spencer’s hatred for the school grew. The place rubbed him the wrong way. They were too involved. The way they enveloped every part of his life was too much; he had gone from a fatherless home to a place with a dozen new fathers and mothers. It didn’t feel right, even though he didn’t quite know how to explain why it felt wrong. Spencer was small and unconfident, and the teachers felt off to him; they were unlike the teachers at his old school. He didn’t like going to church and school with the same people, under the same authority; it was the mixing of two worlds for which some separation felt natural. People were always watching. They were too interested in him, but seemed to be looking past him, through him, like he had some rotten thing inside he hadn’t known about but they were certain was there. When he bristled and pushed back they punished him, pulled him into the principal’s office and kept him there for hours, which felt like days, insulting his character, invoking God to reduce him to tears and assure him he was shaming the Lord, that he needed to conform because he was walking down a path toward sure damnation.

      “They’re crazy, Mom. I’m telling you, they’re crazy, and you don’t care!” Spencer screamed, but Joyce didn’t believe it, or at least at first she didn’t want to believe it. She knew Spencer needed structure, and she didn’t exactly have a wealth of options. She was pinching pennies to make ends meet and keep the kids in private school; there was only one she could afford, and she couldn’t stomach sending Spencer back to be eaten up and spat out by the bigger kids in public school, while teachers pumped him full of prescription pills. She chalked it up to character building and hoped his attitude would change. Surely he’d soon see the value in it, finally begin to apply himself.

      But all that happened was that he hated it СКАЧАТЬ