the losers club | completed

14. deep truths

in which there's more getting to know... and screaming.

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    "TOO MANY ABSENCES." Jack admits to the crowd. He laughs dryly and shakes his head.

    "You guys know why I'm a 'Mama's Boy'?" He asks them. They don't reply, but shrug instead.

    "It's not because I chose to be one. I mean, you must be some kind of doozie to choose to hangout with your mom over your friends.. unless you feel bad or something."

    "I never met my dad," Jack says. "I've always been attached to my mom. Because she's all I have. She's all I've got, now. And I guess that just gets in the way of me being able to make friends. Because I just have this thought — this dumbass thought — that if I have her, then I don't need any friends.

    "And I don't know, I guess this semester has just been tough. She told me that my dad's still out there and I've become curious.. y'know, as to where he is and everything but...

    "I constantly worry about my mom, and what she'll do when I go off to college. Thinking that she'll be alone, not knowing what to do or who to turn to.

    "And I know that's bizarre because.. I'm only a junior. But my time's running up. So that's why I've been out. She.. she works at home so I pretend like I'm sick just so I can spend time with her."

    Jaeden lays a hand over Jack's as the kid begins to tear up. Jack looks over at Jaeden and smiles weakly, then wipes away a tear with his other hand.

    "I was going to say this after Chosen spoke but," Jeremy speaks up.

    "I mean, it's like me with my grades.. like, when I.. when I step out of myself kinda, and when I, when I look at myself you know? And I see me and I don't like what I see, I really don't."

    "I'm not following." Chosen says, looking confused.

    "What's wrong with you? Why don't you like yourself?" Sophia asks Jeremy.

    "'Cause it's stupid... it's 'cause I'm failing shop. See we had this assignment, to make a ceramic elephant, and um.. and we had eight weeks to do it and we're s'posed to, and it was like a lamp, and when you pull the trunk the light was s'posed to go on.

    "I got an F on it. Never got an F in my life... When I signed up, you know, for the course I mean. I thought I was playing it real smart, you know. 'Cause I thought, I'll take shop, it'll be such an easy way to maintain my grade point average—"

    "Why'd you think it'd be easy?" Finn asks. Jeremy's current expression turns into more of a surprised one.

    "Have you seen some of the dopes that take shop?"

    "I take shop," Finn says slowly. "You must be a fuckin' idiot!"

    "I'm a fuckin' idiot because I can't make a lamp?"

    "No, you're a genius because you can't make a lamp."

    Then Jeremy says out of the blue: "What do you know about Trigonometry?" Finn narrows his eyes.