Chapter 3
Limits
Two slim figures skated up and down the street in the gathering dusk, the squeaky wheels of their roller blades making small wrinkles in the Sunday evening stillness. Neither Jessie nor her friend Izzie had been on skates in years, and Izzie wanted to know what exactly they were doing out here, sliding around in the dark and apt to break their wrists. Jessie had skated ahead twice to dodge the question, but Izzie finally cornered her into a driveway and repeated it. Jessie sat down on the rock retaining wall and stole a glance at the lit windows of her own home, three doors down. “I just needed to get out of the house,” she said quietly, “that’s all.”
“Come on, girlfriend,” Izzie cajoled, “it’s me you’re talking to, and something’s wrong. Trouble with your new stepdad? Oh, that is the worst. I remember back in the third season of This Lonely House, Giselle’s mom married this wrestler from Crete named Hector, and he seemed nice at first, but then he, like, started bringing all his wrestler friends over and they wouldn’t eat anything without, like, a ton of garlic peppers....”
“It’s nothing like that, Iz – he seems like a good man and I’m glad for Mom to have him.”
“Then why are we freezing our toes and risking our necks out here in the street when we should be at your house catching the season premiere of Stardust In My Eyes on your forty-two-inch plasma TV?”
“That’s actually part of the problem, sort of.”
Izzie gasped. “No! Don’t tell me your new dad won’t let you watch anything but cartoons! Dr. Mezzigo did that to his family in the second season of Nightmare, and he totally ended up dead.”
Jessie rolled her eyes. “No, there’s no rule about TV. Yet. But they’re using the room right now. Anyway, I’m not sure I want the Sergeant to see me watching something like Stardust until I get a better idea of what he’d say. He doesn’t seem to watch any TV himself.”
“That is so weird, you calling him ‘Sergeant’,” Izzie noted with an abrupt shiver. “Anyway, if he doesn’t watch TV, what are they using the room for? Devotions?” The cackle died in her throat. “Oh no. It is devotions. Oh my.”
“Hey,” Jessie interjected, “I have no problem with devotions. My mom was a church person before. If she wants to be again, that’s fine. I’ll even go with her if she likes. I’ll even sing hymns, out of a book, if that’s what she wants.”
“But they didn’t go this morning, right?”
“The Sergeant is starting out slow,” Jessie opined perceptively. “I think he and Mom have much more in mind for us, but they don’t want to hit us with it all at once.”
“So what are you going to do?” Izzie asked. “Cave? Or resist, like the kids on Crazy School did?”
“What I’m not going to do is ruin my mom’s happiness,” Jessie asserted. “I think the Sergeant can be worked around. I hope.”
“Looks like your two kooky brothers have been working around him real handy.” Izzie gestured to the side porch of Jessie’s house, where Chris and Moe were high-fiving their stepfather as they pranced out of the kitchen. They certainly didn’t look to be celebrating the passage of a new rule.
“I gotta go home now,” Izzie said. “You wanna come watch Stardust with me?”
“Can’t. One of the Sergeant’s new orders is no going to other people’s houses without checking first.”
“Check, then – it looks like they’re through with devotions.”
“Just go on, Izzie. Maybe another time. I know what I’m doing.”
“Whatever, then. See you at school.”
Jessie crunched through the yard in her skates and walked up behind Chris as he tossed a football with Moe in the waning light. “So what were you guys so happy about?”
“We’re going camping!” Moe called out loud enough for the whole neighborhood to hear. “Next weekend already! We’re going to sleep in hammocks, and Dad’s going to show us how to make a fire and catch fish and lots of things!”
There was that dangerous word again, Dad. She might have known Moe would follow his sister’s example before long, but she heartily wished he wouldn’t. The more the two nine-year-olds called the Sergeant that, the more he would act like it was true – about all of them.
Inside, she found the Sergeant helping her mother with the late dishes. She cleared her throat. “Did you guys have a good time tonight?”
“We did,” her mother said with a little glow. “I wish you could have joined us. Katie and Moe did.”
Jessie ignored the invitation with a smile. “Sergeant, I need to talk to you about my phone.”
“Yeah, let’s talk about that.” He put the last glass into the cabinet, swung the towel over the drainer, and sat down in a kitchen chair. Jessie sat down on the edge of a chair at the other end of the table, her feet twisted about the wood frame.
“If your phone hadn’t been destroyed,” her stepfather began, “I wouldn’t make this an issue.”
That was an ominous start, Jessie thought.
“First, I personally don’t think that any member of this family really needs to have a smartphone.”
Jessie blinked in pure shock. How could anybody not need a smartphone?
“I don’t have one,” he continued, “and your mother doesn’t have one either. She provided those phones for you and Chris at the time simply because you wanted them. Now, if you really want another smartphone, we’re not going to stop you from getting one. However, you would need to find a way to pay for both the phone and data plan yourself, which I don’t think would be feasible for you.” He paused and read the resentment boiling in Jessie’s eyes. “I do think,” he went on, “that you need to be able to communicate on the go for safety purposes if nothing else. So here’s what we will do: Your mom and I are willing to buy you a prepaid cell phone, and we will pay for the first 100 minutes and fifty text messages each month. Beyond that, you can use as much as you want, but you will need to pay for it yourself.”
“I see.” Jessie’s voice was flat with a suppressed outburst. “All right. Good night.”
With that she tried to whirl from the chair, but caught her entangled foot in the woodwork and fell across the dining room in a great pile of crashing furniture and furious teenager. Bounding up with an “I’m all right” before the Sergeant could move to help her, Jessie steamed upstairs to her room. She closed the door very carefully so that no one could claim she slammed it. Then she silently went to pieces.
Of all the people Jessie resented tonight, the greatest focus of her wrath was her brother Chris. His unthinking stupidity had destroyed both her phone and her carefully-built first impression on Friday, convincing the Sergeant immediately that he was dealing with a bunch of wild and helpless children. But his attitude tonight was worse. He should be thinking about the beating she saved him from on Friday, not to mention the one she was going to bail him out of tomorrow. Yet there he was outside right now, happily tossing the football and dreaming about the upcoming camping trip with the new family hero. Maybe she would just take her sweet time getting him that fifty bucks on Monday. That should give him something to think about.