Freewill

by Chris Lynch

Genres: YA Family

Synopsis

A rash of teen suicides haunts a teen with a murky history in this Printz Honor–winning novel. Will was destined to be a pilot, to skim above surfaces. So why is he in wood shop class? He doesn’t know—or maybe he just doesn’t want to admit the truth. When local teens begin committing suicide, their deaths all have one thing in common: beautifully carved wooden tributes that appear just after or before their bodies are found. Will’s afraid he knows who’s responsible. And lurking just behind that knowledge is another secret, so explosive that he might not be able to face it and live…

Release date: March 4, 2014

Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers

Print pages: 160

Sample

Freewill

FAITH

“Nice table.”

“What?”

“I said, nice table, that. Pretty work. The inlay is classic. And it’s strong, huh?”

He stands on the table, adding eighteen inches to his height. He bounces up and down on his toes, testing the table’s strength and adding, taking away, adding and taking away, an additional two inches. He hops down, to where nature put him. Five foot seven. Do you know this one’s name? No, you don’t. Don’t and won’t.

“But it doesn’t look it. That’s what’s really nice about work like this. Real strong and functional, but with delicate lines. Nice, nice work.”

He is sliding his hand over the highly polished finish of the nice, nice work in question.

“Thanks. But it’s not mine,” you say.

“What? What are you taking about? Of course it’s yours.”

“No. Sorry, but it isn’t.”

“Yes, it is. What are you, jerking me around? I been sitting here three feet away from you for two weeks watching you do it.”

Watching you. Watching you? Two weeks watching you.

“You just finished it yesterday morning. It’s just dry today. It’s nice work, why you want to pretend you didn’t do it?”

You look at that table, and you agree. It is nice work.

“Two weeks?” you ask. “Does it really take somebody two weeks of life to make something like that?”

“Fine. Be that way.”

The surface of the table is the size of a chessboard. Your classmate has left it to get back to his own knotty-pine creation which he says is a bookshelf, but you know is for videos.

Why are you here?

Whose table is that?

Why are you in wood shop? You are meant to be a pilot. How does wood shop get you any closer to being a pilot?

But here you are. And you do not like to be idle. Devil’s workshop and all. You don’t know why you are here but you know you are, and you are meant to be doing something so you might as well.

Why would somebody spend two weeks of his life on a table big enough for one small lamp, one can of Pringles and one glass of water and nothing else?

And why would another somebody spend two weeks watching him?

Beautiful plank of blond oak. Four feet long, two feet wide, two inches deep. Little table maybe means nothing, but this is a beautiful piece of wood.

“This is a beautiful piece of wood, Mr. Jacks. May I?”

“Yes it is, and yes you may, and what’s more I have fifteen others just like it stacked up in the storage. Sweetheart deal, fell from the sky, and you shoppers are the beneficiaries.”

You stroke the piece of wood as if it were an Angora cat. You could do that stroke up or down or sideways or swirls all day long if you wanted to and never pick up a splinter. It is a magnificent piece of wood.

“That mean you’re finished with that table now?”

“ ’Scuse?”

“The table. You filing it?”

Your classmate takes this as his cue, sliding on over beside you. “He says it ain’t his, Mr. Jacks.”

“Well it’s not, if he’s finished with it. It’s the school’s. Just like that video rack is going to be if you ever complete it.”

“It’s a bookshelf, sir.”

“Right.”

“You done with the table, then?” Mr. Jacks, just like the video-shelving guy, takes an up-close-and-personal inspection of the table in question. “Nice finish. I can see myself. Extra credit when I can use myself. Smooth, strong, clean edges. Fine work, as usual.”

The kid is laughing in a way that makes clear to everybody that he doesn’t find anything funny. “He says it’s not his, sir.”

“It’s not mine.”

“No, sorry to say,” Mr. Jacks says, “but it isn’t. I wish I could let you guys keep some of your stuff, but the rules are the rules. We keep them through term, then we donate.”

Mr. Jacks takes the table up and walks it off, to where they take the wood that has been made furniture and is thus no longer of any use to the class.

“Mr. Jacks.” You are looking ever closer at that beautiful blond board and all its fine grains.

“Huh? Oh, ya, knock yourself out. But it better be great, using my star lumber.”

“Great,” you say. An answer. “Great,” you repeat, a question, a promise, a further question.

•  •  •

Why do you do it? What is the driver? You don’t know.

“What are you making there, Will?” Mr. Jacks asks.

You release the trigger on the handsaw, raise your protective glasses. “Not sure, really.” The rest of the class continues with hammering, planing, chipping and slicing with pneumatic tools and raw muscle power, so that you have to strain to be heard. But this is not new. It is standard and barely noticeable, to have to strain to be heard.

“Well, it’s rather important that you know what you’re making. Otherwise, how can I judge whether you’ve made it or not when you’re done?”

You look up, and try to smile. You do smile, successfully if not radiantly. “Faith, Mr. Jacks,” is what you say.

“Faith,” he says. “Faith. You mean I’m just supposed to trust you, that you’re doing something worthwhile with your time and my wood and the school’s machinery?”

“Well. Well, I suppose that’s what I’m saying, sir.”

Mr. Jacks looks all around, for comic effect, the way teachers do in regular classrooms when they want to emphasize that a student has said something fairly ridiculous. But this is not the regular class, nobody hears or notices what is going on between you two, and Mr. Jacks has to give an answer all on his own.

“Okay,” he says. “You haven’t botched anything so far. So I guess you’ve earned a little faith.”

Is it? Is it faith if you’ve earned it? Isn’t faith putting trust in something for no good reason? Maybe you should ask.

Or maybe you shouldn’t. Since you have no idea what it is you’re doing, or why.

•  •  •

This means you.

Asking you. Is there a voice in your head, directing you what to do? Is that how it gets done, what gets done?

If so, why do you listen? Is it authority because it is in your head? Or is it in your head because it is authority?

“Gran? Hello? Pops?”

Nobody is home. This is not all that unusual, they are largely functional people still, and do go out from time to time. But they were supposed to be home this afternoon. That’s how it was supposed to be, and you really prefer things to be the way they are supposed to be.

Funny, when you find things to be not to your liking you try to force them to be otherwise.

“Gran?” you call again, louder. “Pops.” The house is small. It is easy enough to know when no one is in it, and yelling louder doesn’t conjure them. Neither does standing frozen in the doorway.

Go on. Step inside. There’s no other way. There will be a reasonable explanation. Check the refrigerator. The refrigerator. There wouldn’t be a note anyplace else, and you know that. The grandparents are not thumbtack people, they are magnet people. You know that. And do you see any metal walls around here? Go on, go to the fridge.

Will. Went to bocce ball. Beautiful day. Come on down. Love, Gran & Pops.

And here’s the thing. You do it once more, don’t you. Like the note is lying to you or something. Like there is some kind of conspiracy.

“Gran?” you call. “Pops?”

•  •  •

She is so right. It is a magnificent day. You stare up searching for a cloud and see but one anemic-looking excuse for a wisp of a nothing probably a thousand miles away in the sky. The rest of what you take in is such a deep and hard crystalline blue, like a swimming pool, that you feel drenched in it after staring up for only one minute. One minute is a great deal of sky-staring for most people. It is nothing to you. The clack of bocce balls against one another plays as the soundtrack.

“So how was it today?” Gran says, first grabbing, then pulling on your arm as if you were a window shade and she wanted you down.

“Sorry, Gran?”

“Shush,” Pops says. He is lined up, staring down the improbably perfect crew cut of the bowling green. His size-twelve feet are tight together, his elbows bent, the ball resting just under his chin. He is stooped over as he addresses the ball, but truth be told he would be stooped over anyway. Pops is a stooped-over man.

“It was good today, Gran.”

“Shush, I said. Did you hear me say shush? This is a critical shot.”

He shushes you a lot, doesn’t he? Does he like you, do you suppose? Or does he tolerate you? Those are the choices anyway, right? Like or tolerate? Love wouldn’t come into it, would it? No, you don’t suppose love would . . .

“Started on a gorgeous piece of wood today, Gran. Even without doing anything to it, it’s a thing of beauty. It’s too good to be furniture. It should be growing in your garden, but of course, it can’t. So I’m going to set it free.”

Pops drops his ball right there on the perfect green ground. Slowly he turns to face the two of you, wife and grandson, sum total of family. “Did you even hear me, Will?” He gestures toward the little cluster of black balls down at the other end of the pitch. Like, if you see them, you will comprehend. “I told you what a critical shot this was, and you know I can’t bowl properly if you two are conversing.”

Do you like him, Will? Or do you just tolerate him? Or does it even matter? Don’t suppose it does. You’re essentially . . . what would they call it . . . a circumstance, until—god willing, as they say—you turn eighteen at least.

“Are you listening to me, Will?”

“Oh, Pops, take your shot, after all.” Gran calls Pops Pops. You like that, don’t you. And she doesn’t take him always so seriously. You like that, too. She does manage to be very kind, doesn’t she?

They are kind to you. Kind people. Kindly. They didn’t have to take you in. Or did they? Love? Is it love? Charity. Somewhere in the Bible, doesn’t it indicate that they are both the same thing? Does that matter to you either way?

Pops bowls, finally, after taking a good long time lining himself up again. Twice as long as he needed, that’s for sure, but he had to be dramatic about how you had inconvenienced him, and then he must have put a mighty backspin on the thing because it took about a month to reach its destination where it nestled snugly among its colleagues.

“Pretty shot, Pops,” you say.

Pops is pleased. He is rubbing his hands eagerly as he walks back to you. “Ya, wasn’t bad, huh? You playing today, Mister?”

You look up, at the sky, down, at the almost grainless surface of the lawn, left, at the creamy well-kept skin of Gran’s face under her sensible massive sun hat, and finally right, at the bronze road map of Pop’s gnarly mug.

“Sure, I’m playing,” you say.

“Good,” Pops says, clapping his hands loudly and rubbing them together hard enough to light a fire. “I’m gonna kick your ass, boy.”

He always says that, doesn’t he? Funny. But wouldn’t you really like to know how much of it is play and how much of it is spastic honesty?

“Ya Pops,” you say. “You are going to kick my ass, I know it.”

That’s what you always say, too. Is that what you want to say? Wouldn’t you like to say something else? How would it feel?

Better? Might you feel . . . better? Would you like that?

•  •  •

“Hmm,” she says thoughtfully.

“Hello?”

Angela is standing over you. You are sitting. If you were standing, she would still be standing over you. She is tall, hard in a track-star way because she is a track star, and has a closely cut orange Afro probably an inch thick all around. Has she spoken to you before? You know her name, though, don’t you. Haven’t bothered knowing any of the others. What’s the use, after all. But you haven’t been able to not know Angela.

“You’re Angela, right?”

“Right.” She is talking to the woodwork. “Hmm.”

“Hmm.”

“So what does it do?”

“Do?”

“Do.”

“This?”

“This.”

“Um. Doesn’t do anything, far as I know.”

“So what’s it gonna be then, when it’s finished?”

You are both staring at it now, as if it were one of those alien patterns in a wheat field, or a crying Virgin Mary statue.

“It already is what it’s going to be.”

“Which is?”

We all wait.

“I don’t know.”

“Oh come on. What does it mean?”

What does it mean? Do you think it means something?

Does it have to mean something?

“Everything means something.”

“Oh. Okay. Well maybe that’s true. And maybe this means something. But if it does, then I don’t know what.”

“You might not know what. But I bet you there is an answer.”

“So why are you making a pole?”

“Shut up. It’s not a pole, it’s a coat tree. Just doesn’t have any branches yet.”

“Sorry.”

Angela is leaving. Back to work. Done with you.

“I like your hair.”

She stops, does a half turn. “Thanks. Didn’t do it for you, however.”

“I liked it better when it was yellow, though.”

“Well I think I’ll keep it like this just the same.”

“Do you know what today is? May fourteenth? It’s one year ago today Sinatra died.”

She waits for you to make any sense at all. She’ll be waiting a long time for that, won’t she.

“Sorry about that, but I’m still sticking with orange.”

“How do you figure, a guy as rotten as him, could do something as moving as ‘Summer Wind’? Is there any sense in that, do you think?”

Is there any sense?

Angela shrugs.

She goes back to honing an already well-honed trunk of a limbless coat tree.

She is back.

“So why does it look like a penis then, huh? Why you sitting over here quiet like a monk, working on a big ol’ penis all this time, huh?”

Angela is a tad piqued. Not unpleasant. But piqued still.

You look seriously, closely, at your work.

“Does it, you think? Look like that? I don’t really think it does. Does it though?”

“Yes.”

“So that’s why you were talking to me?” You look at your thing. “Because I offended you?”

“Yes.”

“Well I don’t think that’s what I’m making. No, now that I look at it, I really don’t think that’s what I’m making.”

Funny, how Angela looks at you, at you, the same way she looks at the piece. You are a study.

“Fine. Maybe it isn’t.”

You are looking at each other now a very long time. Nothing much comes of it, though.

She walks.

“See ya.”

“Mr. Jacks. Mr. Jacks, I’m done here. Would it be possible to start on another one of those nice pieces of board in your stash?”

“You’re done? With that?” Mr. Jacks is marching over now, with a sense of purpose. He’s staring burn holes in the wood and you know what he wants.

He wants what. And he wants why.

But you can’t give them to him.

It’s not as if you invented it, whatever it is, anyhow, is it? Does anyone else know what they’re doing? Or why? Do you think that stops anybody from doing what they do?

Take a look at what people do, Will. Go ahead. Look. See if any of it makes any sense. He can’t make you do what nobody can do. He can’t make you explain.

Jacks is standing over you now. You and yours. Lips pursed, finger pointing.

But then he goes limp. As if he has played the scene out in his head, he has seen where it does and doesn’t go. And is drained by the effort. He knows why you are both here. He knows both your limits.

“Go ahead, take another board,” he says.

•  •  •

Why is it you should do the shopping? Not that you mind doing the shopping, you don’t, at all. It’s the why that nags. That is, it’s their shopping. Do you have some kind of cosmic debt because you have been stuck with them? Isn’t that, isn’t this, life? You are theirs, are you not? Theirs? You didn’t kill anybody. Did you? Did you, Will, kill anybody?

Of course not. So why do you owe them? Why should it be that you are treated like an imposition? What does it mean? That you don’t belong? That you don’t belong there? That you don’t belong to them? That’s a shame. That’s a dirty damn shame. Tough break, kid.

“Hello,” Angela says. She is half-buried in a survey of the comparative unit prices of Green Giant and store-brand garden peas. She waves a can, then gets back to business.

“Hello,” you say, a little startled. You continue on.

Next aisle, breakfast cereals.

“Hello,” you say, as if you have not already said it.

Angela is walking with her mother and a bulging cart. Mother looks much like daughter, and not all that much older, either. Good skin. Not as tall and muscular. Softer. Walking into a dance, you might very well make a run for the mom.

“Hello,” Angela says, grinning like people do at nuts.

Next aisle, pastas, rices, sauces and whatnot. No mother. Angela.

You burble at her. “I just never figured, I guess, you to be doing the shopping-type stuff, y’know.”

“And I never figured you, to be eating, y’know, food-type stuff.”

Angela laughs first at her own joke, which gives you the green light to laugh too. She’s peeking now, and poking at your cart while you look all over nervously, as if she is poking around your underwear rather than your produce.

“What is with all this creamed corn, All-Barn, prunes . . .”

“My grandparents. I shop, for them.” You pull your cart back away from Angela slightly, protectively.

She gets the message. “Sorry,” she says. Sounds insulted. “Didn’t mean to go there. Just making conversation.”

You edge your cart back toward hers, offering another peek. Clumsy. Bump.

She smiles. “Thanks, anyway, but I’ve had enough thrills for today. See ya.”

“See ya.”

And she is gone and you are standing, like a cardboard whatever parked in front of an unmanned display selling old-folks groceries. You sneak a look over your shoulder, catch her rounding the corner, and snap into gear.

She has skipped the next aisle, but you are ten feet of the way up before realizing, so you continue on, make the turn, and start a slow-motion pursuit through cosmetics and toothpaste and deodorant.

What will you do though? You don’t, do you? You don’t do, do you? Do you even know why you are following her?

You slow down. Slow down some more. Angela’s mother rounds the corner, looks at you, and you know the look. The I’ve-seen-you-and-now-I’m-seeing-you-again-too-soon-and-what-do-you-want-with-us look. Fact of life, you make people nervous. You see it, and you wince. Angela, apparently, sees it too. Looks at her mother, follows her line of vision, traces it back to you.

“Hey,” she says. “You following me? Or are you lost?”

And you don’t even have an answer for that soft line, do you?

“Sorry,” you say, and busy yourself pawing through the medicated shampoos for old flaking scalps.

You can’t see, because you are intensely trying not to see, but you can hear, somewhat. Angela’s mother is nervously asking what on earth you are. Angela is, in fits and stops, trying to tell her.

Might be nice to hear, what you are.

Might not.

“What are you doing?”

“Sorry, Angela. Sorry.”

“Do stop apologizing. Just, like, what are you doing? Are you okay? ’Cause, you don’t seem it, you know. And you are scaring my mother.”

“Oh. Damn. Should I speak to her?”

“Ah, no. Thanks anyway. But are you following me for a reason?”

“I’m not—”

“I don’t date guys, just for the record.”

“Just for the record, neither do I—I mean, that’s not, I’m not like that . . . I don’t date, like, anybody, so you don’t have to worry.”

“Didn’t say I was worried.”

No, she doesn’t look worried. You don’t worry her. That’s good. More than good, that’s it. Can you think of anyone else you don’t worry?

“I should finish the shopping,” you say.

“Ya, so should I. Don’t you hate it?”

You’d like to say you do. Just to be agreeing with her. And to approximate the normal behavior of a seventeen-year-old guy.

“I kind of like it, really.” You shrug. Perfect for you, you know. The shrug. Even if it isn’t what you mean. What do you mean, Will?

•  •  •

“See, this is what I mean,” Mr. Jacks says as the two of you leaf through the photo album. “Where did all this go?”

You have no idea where it went, or where it came from in the first place.

“I don’t know what to tell you, Mr. Jacks.”

“You recognize it, though, right? I mean, that desk there,” he points, madly flips pages, “that corner cabinet,” flip, flip, flip, “and of course these . . .”

These are the worst of it. These are so grotesque you cannot believe it.

“What are you laughing at, Will? They are beautiful. You have every reason to be proud of work like that.”

Every reason. Except one. You don’t have the primary reason to be proud of work like that. You don’t remember doing work like that.

“Yes, Mr. Jacks. Sorry.”

But you cannot stop staring at page after page of this garish nightmare that you are supposed to be so proud of. Angela wants to talk about penises? She should have a look at this gallery of freakish penile gnomes so carefully sculpted and hand-painted in loving detail down to the laugh lines spiking out of their charming soulless eyes. And whirligigs, with their fantastical shapes, improbable forms, and propellers to nowhere. Scores of them, all the work of an exceptional craftsman who must have worked hundreds of hours on them.

Who was you.

Why?

All those hours. All that concentration. All that dedication to craft.

Why?

“Why?” you blurt.

Good boy. For once. That’s the stuff. If you’re going to listen to voices, why not listen to your own?

Alas, Mr. Jacks doesn’t get it. Doesn’t get why you asked why. Doesn’t get the important part anyway. The important part is the complicated part. Is the hard, hard part. It’s not Mr. Jacks’s job, to get that part.

“Why,” he repeats calmly, “is that, I think it is better for you to keep that kind of variety in your work, rather than what you are now doing. You will advance much further in woodworking by broadening your—”

“I’m supposed to be a pilot, Mr. Jacks. How did I wind up in wood shop? What good does wood shop do for a pilot?”

That is the stuff. Why indeed. Go on, go get it.

Mr. Jacks takes a good long sigh. That is never good, is it? He leans far back in his squeaky wooden chair, behind his well-turned hard pine desk, looking like one of the important administrators of the school except for the smell and faint dusting of wood powder that is settled on everything in the office including Mr. Jacks himself.

“I am sorry, Will, for what happened to your folks. I am truly sorry, for what has been dealt you. But we have to move ahead . . .”

Do you like that we, Will?

“. . . The requirements, for your program, can’t be any different than . . . somebody else’s. In fact, it’s even more important now, that I don’t let you slip through the cracks. You are not a pilot, and never were. The aptitude tests don’t lie, okay? And the tests indicated that . . . you don’t have the skill set, for a pilot. As I understand it, Will, you don’t even drive, is that correct? Most guys your age can’t wait—”

“Surfaces,” you say, stopping him dead. “Surfaces . . . are what I don’t like. Doesn’t mean I couldn’t operate a car or a boat or a motorcycle if I wanted to. I just . . . see myself flying above stuff, you know, Mr. Jacks? That’s what I’d be better at. That’s all.”

That’s all. Is that all? You expect he’ll hand you your wings now?

He nods. He is good at nodding. From practice, and from wanting to nod, agree, understand. Even if he doesn’t.

“The assessment said you would be good with this kind of work, Will. And you are.”

You wait. Wait for what, Will? He said his bit. That’s his bit. Do you want to say yours? Do you think he’s right? Do you think anything is right?

“I’m a pilot, Mr. Jacks, not a woodworker.”

Jacks gets frustrated, bangs his index finger hard off one photo after another. “You used to be a woodworker. Used to be an excellent woodworker. Do you mind telling me just exactly what it is you’re doing out there now?”

He is pointing toward the door that leads from his office to the classroom/shop, where all the other students are most likely inching closer to get a listen. You should run over and throw the door open to catch them, Will. Would you like to do that?

“I don’t know.”

He sighs again. “Will, there are four of them already. You gotta know what they are.”

You shake your head. It is a strong move, your head shake. The only strong move in your bag, wouldn’t you say?

“Honestly, Mr. Jacks. I don’t.”

He stands up. Walks around his desk, over to the wall where pictures of the finest works of wood from the cream of his students of the last ten years are represented in carefully arranged photographs. He looks like he’s shopping for something that he has misplaced, but as everyone knows he spends hours on end going over that wall. You know he is merely stalling. He doesn’t know what to do with you. It’s not the woodsman’s job, to know what to do with you.

Nobody knows what to do with you.

“Will you do something for me, Will? I’d like you to make me a nice gnome. Would you make m