The Freshman Ch. 18

The conversation turned to Cecilia's life and interests. She talked at length about her research and preparing for the upcoming visit of the Danubian Prime Minister Vladim Dukov, and finally mentioned her correspondence with Kimberly Lee of "Socrates' Mistresses".

"I love that group! But I haven't seen their music for nearly a year. So they're still around?"

Cecilia explained about the breach of contract suit and the fact the band's music could only be purchased in Upper Danubia. Jason's grandmother responded by asking if Cecilia could get her a copy of the group's latest music.

"I 'spose so, Mrs. Schmidt. I'll see if I can get Kim Lee to send you the band's CD's. They're pretty good about helpin' out fans who can't get their music."

As the afternoon progressed, the two women found out they had a lot in common, in spite of their very different backgrounds. Jason's grandmother was deeply impressed by her guest and clearly signaled her approval of the relationship.

"You're a good kid, and it's pretty obvious you're going far. I can see that in you. And I want to thank you for all the help you've given Jason this semester. I don't know if you realize how much it's helped him, and I, for one, am very grateful for the time you've spent with him. It makes me really happy to see it, because, as you know, his father was convinced he'd flop in college. I'm glad to see my son proved wrong. It's nice to see Jason straightening himself up and putting his life back together."

The words "straightening himself up and putting his life back together" stuck in Cecilia's thoughts. She wondered if that comment had anything to do with Mr. Schmidt's "Heather Jones" remark from the day before. It became obvious there was something in his past that Jason had not wanted to tell her.

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Later that night Cecilia and Jason could feel the oppressive neighborhood close in on them as the older couple took them back. Jason's grandmother decided to accompany them back to her son's house, using the need to pick up a couple of dishes as justification for going. The truth was she felt it would be a good idea to go in with them and make sure everything was calm at least for the first few minutes they were settling in. She also wanted to signal her approval of Cecilia, and in doing so offset her daughter-in-law's vehement opposition.

Fortunately it was quite late and Jason's mother already had locked herself in the Master bedroom. Jason's father was watching a football game in the living room. Seeing his mother walk in with Cecilia silenced whatever comment he might have wanted to make to either of them. He didn't have that much to say to her, but got up to retrieve the dishes she wanted. As soon as the older couple was out the door, he announced that he was planning to take Jason and Cecilia back early the next morning, so he expected them to be packed up and ready to leave as soon as he was awake.

The next morning they left in the pre-dawn cold of a late fall morning. The reason for the early departure became evident as soon as Jason's father turned on the car radio, a big snowstorm was expected later that afternoon and it was very likely roads would start closing by sunset. Mr. Schmidt would drop off the two students at the university, and then head over to a studio apartment he rented near his downtown office and weather the storm there.

The detail of the apartment added another mystery to the relationship between Jason and his father. Mr. Schmidt had not only his job, but also a second residence, in downtown Chicago, less then 20 miles from the university. However, Jason never mentioned anything about that. Had he even seen his father's apartment? Had he ever gone over there to visit?

As she watched the fields of southern Wisconsin transform into the suburbs of northern Illinois, she tried to comprehend all that she had learned that weekend. She had some of her questions answered, but now there were others she needed to resolve. Something just was not right. Like separate pieces of a puzzle, Cecilia began to ponder how the clues she had picked up about Jason and his relationship with his parents fit together. There was the Heather Jones comment and Mr. Schmidt's insistence that Jason had no character. There was his grandmother's comment about Jason "straightening himself up and putting his life back together". There was the fact that Jason's father treated him with absolute contempt. He paid Jason's bills, but otherwise ignored him. And there was the fact that Jason did not have a car, never drove in Wisconsin, and made no mention to his parents of driving Mike's car during his first dates with Cecilia. She began to wonder if he wasn't supposed to drive.

Cecilia had thought about asking Jason about Heather Jones, but decided not to. Mr. Schmidt had told her to ask, but she felt she couldn't trust anything Jason's father had to say. She decided to avoid his advice and not ask directly, but instead see if she could find out anything on her own.

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When Mr. Schmidt dropped the two students off at the dorm, he brusquely said goodbye and sped off to his own refuge, that studio apartment downtown. He planned to spend the night with an employee of his firm's coffee shop. He needed to get both her and their dinner safely settled into the apartment before it started snowing. Sunday the city would be shut down and Monday traffic would be completely disrupted. Not that it mattered to Mr. Schmidt. His work was a five-minute walk from his apartment. He would be at his desk on time Monday morning, ready to issue reprimands to employees who came in late due to the traffic problems. As he always put it: "The company's not paying you to sit in traffic. We're paying you to be at work on time." The fact that his subordinates didn't have money for an apartment close to work wasn't his problem.

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Words could not describe how happy Cecilia was to be back safely in her dorm room. She fought back the urge to get on her knees and kiss the floor. Oh...she would sleep well tonight, in her own bed, in her own small space on the planet, her own tiny, quiet refuge. Maybe it wasn't much, but it was hers.

The first thing Cecilia did was get on the Internet. Four days of messages were waiting for her attention, including a couple of e-mails from Kimberly Lee. That reminded Cecilia to ask about CD's for Jason's grandmother. After she typed out her explanation about the need for the CD's, she decided to share her experience about the argument with Mr. Schmidt and his views about the Danubian Prime Minister. That led to an explanation of the complete difference between Mr. Schmidt and his mother and the entire dysfunctional nature of Jason's parents. She concluded with:

"I can't believe how much hatred there is in that family, and what's weird is that they hate each other for no reason. They don't have any of the problems my family had when I was growing up, but they're just as miserable, or maybe even more miserable. The members of my family in New Jersey all got on each other's nerves because we were jammed together in that small apartment. I don't think anyone in my family actually hated anyone else, at least not until I got ready to take off for Chicago. We just got on each other's nerves, and that wasn't the same as what's going on with the Schmidts."

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As soon as she sent the e-mail to Kimberly Lee, Cecilia decided to try to find out about Heather Jones. She began searching the name on the Internet by itself, but of course came up hundreds of responses. She began narrowing the search by typing the name with local county names and the names of the towns close to where Jason lived while in high school. Finally she found something, a news article from about a year before. She read:

Two teens charged after fatal crash

Carterville Daily Press - Dec 10 10:34 AM The Carterville District Attorney's Office decided to press charges today against two teenagers involved in last week's fatal crash that resulted in the deaths of three local high school students. The teenagers, Matthew Fox, Heather Jones, and Kate Simpson were killed during a collision that local police believe was the result of drag racing. The two teenagers facing charges are William Davis and Jason Schmidt.

Carterville County Sheriff's Department Spokesman Raymond Wright announced that the charges would include manslaughter, reckless driving, and driving under the influence. He added that the investigation was ongoing and additional charges were pending. He concluded that the Sheriff's office hopes to prosecute the two teenagers as adults.

"There's a lot more to this than a simple drag racing incident. Those kids were driving under the influence, and it wasn't alcohol. We can't go into details right now because we're still investigating. We're going to be interviewing kids at the school next week, and we're asking parents to tell their children they need to cooperate with us. There's some serious stuff going on here, and we need everyone's cooperation and support."

Detective Wright reminded the press that last week's tragedy was the third such incident resulting in a fatality since the beginning of the school year. "Let this be a lesson to the community, you've just got to watch your kids. A teenager is not an adult and..."

The rest of the article did not directly talk about Jason, so Cecilia quit reading. She highlighted the text to copy into a blank word processing document and saved it. She was not particularly surprised or shocked, because she had known that something terrible must have happened to her boyfriend last year. So this was it, reckless driving that resulted in a fatal crash. It explained a lot, but not everything.

Manslaughter, reckless driving, and driving under the influence. Pretty serious charges, and yet Jason was not sitting in jail. Just how did he get out of it? That was the next question she wanted to answer. She continued searching

Within a few minutes she found a couple of articles about the wreck itself. Cecilia knew enough about life to realize the accident was the predictable result of rich kids with too much time on their hands and too little supervision. There was a group of teenagers who had taken over a back road to drag race, do wheelies in a nearby field, and play "chicken". The weather was relatively warm for that time of the year, so a group of about 20 students gathered to waste a Thursday night in the countryside. The teenagers did not have any alcohol, because they did not need it. Instead, they were using ecstasy.

By midnight the group had expanded to about 40 students and already had wrecked one car. From that rollover there were no injuries, oddly enough considering the damage done to the car. But the dares were getting more outrageous. At about 1:30 Jason Schmidt and William Davis, at the urging of their respective girlfriends, decided to race. Both cars had sunroofs, so the two girls decided stand up through the openings, lit two flares, and held them up during the competition. So, two teenagers, high on ecstasy, with their two girlfriends, also high on ecstasy, barreled down the road. It was Matthew Fox who added the final touch to the impending disaster. He was coming down off his own high and had decided to head home after fighting with his girlfriend. He was unaware of the race as he incoherently turned out onto the road.

The disaster happened in an instant. The two racing vehicles rammed Matthew Fox's car on the driver's side, killing him instantly. Heather Jones and Kate Simpson were thrown from their respective cars, their bodies tumbling across the pavement as Fox's vehicle burst into flames. The airbags in the two racing cars deployed, saving Jason and William from serious injury. In fact, Jason was not injured at all, because he was wearing his seatbelt.

Acting on nothing but instinct, the two dazed racers stumbled out of their cars and away from the fire, which was fortunate. Moments later the two colliding cars burst into flames as well. The combined fire lit up the entire area with ominous orange light as the combined smell of burning gasoline, burning rubber, and Matthew's burning flesh permeated the air.

There was nothing that could be done for either Heather or Kate. They were as dead as could be; their prostrate bodies lying horribly twisted and disfigured on the cold pavement. The girls' two flares continued to burn further down the road, having rolled a very long way from the crash-site.

How fast it all had happened! There was nothing left to do except call Emergency Services. Many of the spectators panicked and fled, some of them nearly colliding with incoming fire trucks and ambulances. Jason and William, their minds addled with ecstasy, simply stood on the road watching the firemen douse the flames, wondering if this was real or just a bad trip. Shortly afterwards they were at the Carterville Community Hospital Emergency Room, being examined for injuries pending a trip to the police station.

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Cecilia calmly copied the text from the articles and saved it into separate documents. There were some pictures as well, including yearbook photos and mugshots of Jason and William Davis, as well as a couple of police photos of the crash site taken the next day. She tried to disassociate herself from the horror Jason must have endured as a result of his stupidity. Right now she was collecting information. The reaction would set in later, once she had all the facts. She continued looking, trying to find out why Jason had not gone to jail. Finally she came across the following:

Drag racing teen indicted for drug dealing

Carterville Daily Press - Jan 29 11:57 AM The Carterville District Attorney's Office announced indictments today against former Carterville Central High School student William Davis, 17 and his brother Mark Davis, 20, for their role in distributing ecstasy among students in two Carterville-area high schools.

The District Attorney's Office announced that the charge of possession of ecstasy with intent to distribute against William Davis would be added to the charges of manslaughter, reckless driving, and driving under the influence, stemming from the crash last December that resulted in the deaths of three local teens. The DA's office also announced that Davis will be tried as an adult and prosecuted "to the fullest extent of the law."

Davis' co-defendant, Jason Schmidt, pled guilty to reckless driving and driving under the influence. In exchange for the plea and his testimony, the District Attorney agreed to drop the other charges pending against him, which included manslaughter. Schmidt will lose all driving privileges until he is 21, perform 200 hours of community service, and receive counseling until he graduates from high school.

When asked about the difference between the treatment of the two defendants the DA responded. "I'm convinced the Schmidt kid was duped. He's basically a nice kid that just fell in with the wrong group, but he is going to need to think about where he's going with his life and get some counseling to get over this.

"As for Davis, that's a different story because the group was getting the ecstasy from him and his brother. We got him with 130 doses of ecstasy and 8 ounces of marijuana, and he was on probation for a prior. The brother who got him the stuff was out on parole, so we're going to nail them both.

"What gets to us in the DA's office is that these all kids are from good families. They're not a bunch of bums. But, you give 'em too much down time and throw in some drugs, and, well, you end up with a tragedy like what we had out on Miller Road..."

Once again the article diverged into a moralistic lecture to the county's parents. Apparently the local officials liked to do that, preach to the community, but unfortunately they were right. Indeed, what was Jason doing out on a country road at 1:30 on a Thursday night? Of course, Cecilia knew the answer, because she had met his parents.

Oddly enough, what angered Cecilia the most was not what happened, nor even the fact that Jason had kept it from her, but instead the detail about his driving. Throughout the semester he had placed both of them at risk by driving to their downtown dinner dates in Mike's car. The driving most definitely would stop, Cecilia would see to that. If it meant no more fancy dinners in downtown Chicago, well, that's the way it would have to be. Jason had no right to place them at risk like that, driving with no license, even if his goal simply was to make her happy.

She pondered what to do with the information. She now knew Jason's secret. Yes, it was a pretty bad secret, but she no longer was sure she wanted to confront him over it. She badly wanted him to come clean and confess to her. She knew it would be extremely important that he work up the courage to do it on his own, instead of her having to drag it out of him. She knew that would be vital for their future as a couple, he absolutely had to face up to what he did and admit it to her.

Cecilia Sanchez thoughts moved to her own dark secret, a horrid memory that came back to her when she was discussing her life with the Schmidts. There was one detail she left out, an incident that, more than anything else in her squalid life as a teenager, defined who she was and what she wanted from life. Her own secret was the second reason she was reluctant to confront Jason about the wreck. How could she attack Jason about trying to deceive her about his past, when she was doing the exact same thing to him?

She turned out the light and stared out the window while she waited for him to call. As she watched the snow build up on the ground outside she thought to herself:

I guess it's only fair that me and Jason end up together. Both of us got blood on our hands.