Freewill by Chris Lynch Read Free Book Online Page B

shore, or people who’ve been hanged. He does, however, have a nice, fat face.
    â€œGreat,” Mr. Jacks says weakly.
    â€œThanks, Mr. Jacks,” you say, backing out of the office quickly. “I’ll just get back to work then.”
    â€œHold on,” he says, dropping the gnome onto his desk hard, as he comes to shut the door. “I haven’t even given you your next assignment yet.”
    â€œDo I really need one? I mean, can’t I just go back to doing what I feel like?”
    â€œWell,” he says, “I’d really rather see some more of . . . your best stuff. Frankly you seemed to be losing your way for a while there.”
    Ah.
    There it is.
    Your way.
    Can’t be losing that.
    Not again.
    That’s why you are where you are, isn’t that it? It’s not because somebody might have topped somebody and then did himself. It’s not because one day you had parents of a sort and the next day you didn’t. That stuff happens to people every single stinking day, and you don’t get framed for it.
    No, you’re here because of you, Will, not because of anybody else. Because you lost your way once.
    And how many chances you suppose you get with that? Two? Yes, two sounds about right, doesn’t it? We can’t let you get lost again. You hear? You hearing? Who are you listening to? We can’t let you get lost again. Listen to what you’re hearing.
    Lost a second time means you don’t come back. Do you understand? Lost twice is gone for good.
    â€œAre you listening? Will? Are you listening to me?”
    Who are you going to listen to? Who’s a boy going to listen to?
    â€œI didn’t lose anything, Mr. Jacks. I just wanted to do something besides gnomes and furniture.”
    Apparently—and surprisingly, considering the population he works with—Mr. Jacks does not have a great gift for handling situations like this, situations like you.
    He puts his hand on your shoulder. “We really need you making gnomes and furniture, Will. The world needs something from each of us, and what the world needs from you is gnomes and whirligigs and furniture.”
    If he had been joking, it would have been very funny, and relaxing. He wasn’t, and it wasn’t.
    You are walking out the door as he tells you, “So no more of those things you were sculpting, okay? And the rest of them, just leave them be. We’re not going to make an issue of the ones that have gone missing, but in exchange you don’t remove any more school property. Fair enough?”
    â€œFair enough,” you say.
    You haven’t a clue what that even means, do you? Fair enough. Is anything fair enough? It’s like there’s this arrangement where we acknowledge that we won’t ever have fair , so we’ll just settle for fair enough . And it’s never enough, is it?
    You walk out into the workshop and it comes to your eye as if it is in neon. It has been there all along, since the beginning of time or at any rate since the beginning of yourtime in this place but you never quite noticed it before. But you must have. The words have been in there, burned in your head, all along, all during your confinement. The sign that looms—carved capably in wood, of course—above the shop door. You walk under it every time you come into the class and you walk under it every time you go out again and you work almost directly under it when you are working.
    BE NOT IDLE.
    Well, of course. Isn’t that what shop, shops, workshops are all about? Alternatives to the devil’s workshop, right? Busy hands. Flying woodchips for snow, falling over fevered young brow.
    Except, what idleness do we mean?
    You know what they mean.
    â€œFair enough,” you say out loud. “Fair enough. I won’t be idle. Not anymore.”
    So you go, or anyway, you attempt to go. Marching straight across the room, not stopping at your station, not cleaning