The Last Tour {COMPLETED}

Chapter Twenty-Four: Too Hard

Chapter Twenty-Four

Too Hard

"This Shad Theton boy," Luke Sunthrow said, smiling and shaking his head as he turned over a sheet of lined notebook paper, one among many in a heap of homework he was grading in his favorite armchair.

Jackson Gillahend, who had been quietly dusting off some book shelves in the room, glanced over at him. "What about this Shad Theton boy?"

"He's so dang smart, you know?" Luke sighed, grinning from ear to ear. "And rather than go be a doctor or a lawyer or an engineer...he wants to go to college to major in music and theater arts."

"Well if that's what he wants to do, that's what he wants to do, I guess," Jackson replied, turning back to the book shelf.

"Yeah, but you can't get a good job with a major like that. At least not in your major area. It's way too narrow and competitive. He's never going to make it as a musician or an actor, so he's going to end up in some dumpy school teaching bratty high school students."

"Like you?" Jackson laughed lightly.

"What part of the words 'lower level job experience' do you not understand?" Luke asked.

"I didn't need lower level job experience to get my job," Jackson said with a shrug. "They hired me no problemo."

"Yeah, that's because you're good at convincing people you know what you're doing even if you don't," Luke decided. He shifted his red pen between his fingers, then put the lined sheet aside. "Anyway, he's getting it from Jade. Happens to know a very successful musician quite personally, so he thinks he can do it too. Problem is, it doesn't work like that. If Jade actually wanted to, he could probably launch a career for Shad single-handedly, but the kid is too dumb to realize he even has that ability. No, it's just amazing how much influence one stupid kid can have in a school. Not only is he throwing out his own education, he's manipulating other people's educational decisions."

"Is Jade actually stupid?" Jackson asked, lowering his dust cloth and turning towards Luke.

"I mean yeah," Luke replied with a shrug. "He's slow as heck when he's in class, and then he doesn't show up and somehow expects not to be expelled? How does that equation work out in a normally functioning brain?"

"Well he hasn't been expelled, apparently," Jackson pointed out.

"He will be, though," Luke said darkly. "The only reason he's been kept in the school this long is because his manager-band-leader guy has been putting a lot of 'political' pressure on the school to keep him in. But I hear Fehham is really down to single straws with this kid."

"But there's something wrong with him, Luke," Jackson said softly.

"Yeah, believe me—I know that," Luke sighed disgustedly. He shifted through the pile of papers and sighed again, then drew a random one out.

"I don't think he's stupid. He didn't seem stupid to me. He seemed distracted," Jackson said.

Luke shrugged. "Sure. He's got a whole music career to think about—anything besides school, right?"

"Does he have some kind of abuse in his background?" Jackson asked unexpectedly.

Luke dropped his pen and ran his hands through his hair. He groaned, then perched his chin in his hand. He frowned slightly. "There are a lot of people who think his family might be kind of unstable...violently unstable, I guess." He sighed. "Jade would come into school bruised up, sometimes. Rumor was, he'd come in with actual broken bones to his previous schools—like broken bones that hadn't been set or put in a cast or—like—he hadn't been to a doctor at all." Luke shook his head. "I don't find that very believable. Frankly, I don't believe any of the domestic violence stories. They just don't make sense, at this point. Maybe when he was a little kid—I can see that possibly. But he's not a little kid anymore. And he has money. If it was bad at home, he would have left years ago. Back to the very first month he joined Eclipse. He would have been out of there. So at this point..." Luke shrugged. "Seeing as though some of them are definitely untrue rumors, I guess I'm inclined to assume the rest are as well."