First Draft Chapter 8

I heard a clicking sound and I knew it was the door opening.  I rolled over quickly, away from the wall.  David bolted upright from his sitting position.  As a figure stepped through the doorway, I stood up as well.
He was tall and menacing.  Everyone here was tall and menacing.  He looked at us with a piercing gaze, and though I tried to, I could not stand looking back at him.  I averted my eyes and looked at the ground instead.  David chose to look at the ceiling.
The Strate unlocked the door and swung it open violently.  The door creaked loudly in protest at the rough treatment.
Yes reader, your suspicions are correct.  I was in jail.  After having been apprehended in Strate Park, David and I found ourselves put into this jail cell before we knew what was happening.  The Jail cell was dirty and grimy.  It stank of human filth, and a lonely ray of sunlight shown through the window into an otherwise dark room.  And this was how we had spent the second half of our day, in sharp contrast to the surroundings that had filled the first half.
David and I had been placed in the same jail cell, and that was the only redeemable quality about the situation.  And so in David’s company I spent the rest of the afternoon, and that evening, and that night.  The fact that we were in jail, despite the fact that jail itself is a rather boring reality, was enough to get our hearts pumping, and neither of us were able to get a lot of sleep.  We stayed up talking about every thing we could think off.  Anything that ever happened to either of us in our lifetime, no matter how insignificant, was revealed.  I talked to avoid boredom, but I felt comfortable telling David everything.  It was the next morning before I began to drift off to sleep, and even then I only slept for a few hours before finding myself wide awake again.
The Strate came forward and roughly grabbed me by my shirt.  He gave me a pull and my body followed his hands and I was yanked out of the jail cell.  The Strate pointed to David, and motioned for him to stand next to me.  David followed obediently.
In silence, we followed the Strate through the door and out of the jail.  Oce we were outside, the Strate turned to us.  “You boys are free to go,” he said.  “I trust you’ve learned your lesson.
Yes sir, oh yes sir, oh we won’t do that again sir, no sir we’ve learned our lesson.  We apologized profusely, and he sent us on our way.  One night in jail, that was it?  Apparenlty that’s how much Strate Park was worth.
We rushed with light hearts back to David’s house.  David suggested, and I whole-heartedly agreed, that I should not enter his house.  Instead I grabbed my bike, still in the place I had left it, and sped home.  I had had enough excitement for a while.
I had eaten only minimally while I was in prison, and so immediately headed into the kitchen upon arriving home, to get some food.  A note was on the kitchen table.  It was unmistakably my fathers hand writing.

“Jonathon,
Don’t you dare leave this house until I get home.”

So he knew.  No real surprise there.  He certainly had plenty of sources.
“Jonny?  Jonny is that you?”  Abel’s voice sounded from upstairs.  Abel was about the last person in the world I wanted to talk to right now.  “Who’s there?  Jonny?  Somebody?”  I heard the sound of small feet scurrying down the stairs.  I resigned myself to the fact that I would have to talk to him.  Abel ran into the kitchen.
“Jonny!”  Well, bless his little heart, at least he was glad to see me.  Abel dashed across the room and hugged me as tight as he could.  “Jon!  I was so worried about you.  Did they hurt you in jail?  I was so worried.  Dad was so worried.”  Yeah, I could picture that actually.  I felt guilty for making him worry.
“Well, I’m alright,” I said, gently freeing myself from Abel’s grip.
“But what was jail like?  How did they catch you?  Is David alright?”
I didn’t really feel like answering those questions, so I just ignored Abel and turned to the cupboard, scanning for food.
“You’re in big trouble you know.”  Yes, I knew.
“I know Abel.”  From the tone of my voice anyone else would have realized I did not want to talk about it.  Abel didn’t always pick up on these things though.
“Dad says you’re a big disappointment.”
I turned sharply on him.  “Abel, I don’t want to here it,” I yelled.
“But he was really mad at you.”
“Shut up Abel!”  In anger at this unwanted messenger I grabbed him and shoved him against the wall.  Immediately I could tell I had been too rough with him.  His eyes filled with tears.  I had probably caused his head to collide with that wall.  At once I felt remorse.  “Abel, I’m sorry.”
“Leave me alone,” Abel shouted out in wounded anger.  He ran past me, heading outside with his tears.  I let him go.
Abel was cross with me for most of the afternoon for treating him so roughly.  However, he never could hold a grudge for very long.  I avoided him while his anger was still festering, then once he seemed sufficiently calmed down, I offered him the food I had made as a peace offering.  He accepted, at first sulkily, but we were soon friends again.
“You know though,” he said eventually, “Dad’s really going to yell at you when he comes home.”  Somehow, Abel must have thought that I didn’t understand.
“I know,” I said quietly.  “Don’t talk about it.”
“Are you scared?”
“I’m not looking forward to it,” I answered.  “Please Abel, don’t talk about it.”  And this time Abel listened to me.  He probably didn’t want to get his head banged into the wall again.
It was about three hours later when my father came home.  Ideally, I would have liked to have been elsewhere when he got home, but I didn’t want to get my father more upset by disobeying the note.  I went in my room when I heard my father entering the house.  Although my bedroom door was closed I strained my ears to hear what was going on downstairs.  I heard the muffled deep voice of my father, and the muffled high voice of Abel answering him, but I could not ear what either was saying.  I waited and waited.  Was my father deliberately postponing the confrontation just to keep me nervous?  Eventually I heard a knock on the door.  “Come in,” I said.
My father opened the door.  “Good evening Jonathon,” he said calmly.  “And you are you doing tonight?”
“I’m good.”
“Good, and how was prison?”  I was surprised by the calmness of his voice.
“It was okay.”
“Did they hurt you?”  The concern in my father’s voice touched me.
“No, not very much.”
“Step into the light.”  My father motioned me, and when I was in the light, he examined my face.  There were a couple of bruises above my left eye.  He gently touched them, and I flinched.  “They did this?” he asked.  I nodded.  “Right after they caught you?”  I nodded again.  “With their hands or with their clubs?”
“With their hands.”
He frowned, looking closely at the bruise.  “It might not be a bad idea to have it examined anyway.  I’ll have the doctor come by tomorrow.”
“It’s not a big deal at all,” I protested.
“It never hurts to have these things checked out though.  Do you have bruises anywhere else?”
A couple on my side,” I answered.  I lifted my shirt so he could see them.
“With their hands?”
“With their hands.”
“They don’t look bad, but it never hurts to have these things checked out.”  I nodded, letting my shirt fall back down.  “You know, the Duke himself sent a message as soon as he heard you had been arrested.  He instructed that they not lay a hand on either of you.”  I could picture that pretty easily.  David and I had been knocked around at the station a bit, where our names were taken and sent to the filer.  The filer, when checking my identity, must have realized who my father was and told Old Flash.  Flash would then have sent a message to the prison telling those brutes not to give us the routine beating.  “He also arranged for you to be released today.  You should really be grateful to him.”
“I am.”
“You know he’s quite fond of you Jonathon.  He thinks you’re a brilliant young man.”  He tried to smile, but his eyes wouldn’t help in the deception.  Failing, he shook his head and walked to the other side of the room.  He looked up.  “I’m really disappointed in you, Jonathon.”  He looked up and just stared at me, and I could tell I had really hurt him, and I felt an urge to say something in response.
“I’m sorry.”
In anger, he clenched his hand into a fist and struck my desk.  “Don’t say that!  Don’t say it because I know you don’t mean it.  You always say that Jonathon, but it keeps happening.”  He meant of course my conflicts with the authorities at school.  I had never been caught for something on this scale before.  “And now,” his voice rose, as if to symbolize my increasing depravity, “And now you’ve gotten yourself in trouble with the State.  What were you thinking?  What in the world would posses you to go into that park?”  Why did he even ask?  We both knew he wasn’t going to understand, and he didn’t want to understand.  And yet my silence would not get me out of this question.  “Jonathon, answer me.”
“I wanted to see what was inside.”  Why try and be more elegant that that?  It wouldn’t do any good.
“That’s it?  That’s why you endangered your future?  You wanted to see what was inside?  Did it ever occur to you that there might be a reason why the Duke kept everyone out?  You think you can just make up your own rules?”  What was the Duke’s reason for keeping us out?  We weren’t hurting the park.  He sat down in my chair, his head collapsed in his hands.  “Jonathon, you can’t do this.  Your future is too important.  You understand, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
His hands worked their way further up into his hair.  “No you don’t Jonathon”, he said quietly.  “David can get in trouble at school, and run around on the streets, and go to jail.  It doesn’t matter for David, because David is going to end up just like his father anyway.  A nobody.  A man who can barely make enough money each week to keep his house.  All your friends will end up like that.  But I’ve given you the chance to do something more.  You’re going to be somebody Jonathon.  You want to be somebody, don’t you?”
I was torn.  I wanted to be well off.  I wanted to be respected.  I wanted to be famous and have lots of money.  These were all things that appealed to me, but I did not want to work for Flash.  I did not want to live my father’s sycophantic existence, doing everything Old Flash did.  Dressing up everyday, and going to work early in the morning, and coming back in the eveing, and spending all night in the study going over papers.  These were not things that appealed to me at all.
“Yes.  I do.”
The answer seemed to satisfy him.  “You’re a good kid inside, I know you are.  Maybe the problem is you’ve got too much time on your hands.  I could arrange something maybe, something that would be good experience for your future.”  My heart quickened.  I did not like the sound of this.  “I’ll see if I can arrange something for you.  Okay?”
The worst punishment he could have given, and he thought he was letting me of easy.  “Okay.”

The next day found me back in town.  David and I had agreed to meet at a certain corner.  We both felt it was unwise for me to go directly to his house.
I biked in.  David was already standing at the corner.  “Well, you look healthy,’ he said to me.  “Your father decided not to skin you after all I see.”
“Oh, David I’ve got a feeling it’s going to be much worse than that.  What about your place?”
David shook his head.  “Man, you would have thought I’d killed somebody.  You wouldn’t believe my mom.  I didn’t think she had that many tears in her.”
“But they let you out today?”
“My dad said spending the night in jail was punishment enough.”
After talking some more, David and I decided to embark over to Icarus.
Dedalus had built his family’s house himself.  The architecture was unbelievable.  Dedalus seemed to disregard the laws of physics when building the thing.  It was as if the whole structure was daring gravity to knock it over.  It started out in a small base, and then spread out in every direction, perhaps that is a better way to say it.  A simple hallway might escape from the small house and extend out over the ground, and one wondered what was keeping this hallway from breaking off and falling down.  A couple of these extensions even twisted upwards in the air.
And the colors this house was decorated with.  Unbelievable.  Blood red was splashed all over the base, moving upwards to bright purple.  Pink, orange, yellow, green and gold covered the various wings of the house.  It was one of the city's oddities.  It was built before I was born, but I have many times heard stories of how Dedalus had overseen the whole thing himself and was often gesturing wildly to the poor workers and shouting that they were doing everything wrong.
Icarus came to the door at our knock.  "David!  Jonny!" he shouted out.  "Come on in boys."  We followed his gesturing hand inside cautiously, somewhat worried about what we might find.  "I sure am glad to see you boys.  Out already?  I heard you were in jail.  Sit down, tell me all about it."  And so, David and I related our experience and Icarus shared with us his escape.
At the conclusion of both tales, Icarus came in with new information.  "Hey, I've been having a few talks with my dad, and I think the next time we go I might have that hook thing figured out."
"What do you mean," I asked.
"Well the next time we go in we won't have to leave the hook behind.  Instead, we'll just--"
"Whoa, whoa, whoa.  Hold on a second Icarus."  It was David talking.  "Icarus, we just spent the night in jail.  In jail.  We're not going back in that park."
Icarus almost seemed surprised by our refusal to return to the calamity.  "But we promised ourselves we'd go back to the lake.  Don't you guys want to go back?"
"You go right ahead Icarus," I said.  "You're not the one who spent the night in jail.  David and I have absolutely no desire to get caught again."
"But we won't get caught again."  Icarus leaned forward.  "Listen, the last time we were there we wandered all over the park.  That was stupid.  We won't do that again thought.  We'll go to the lake and not any further.  There's nobody out there."
"Somebody could come out there," David ventured.
"It took a whole pack of them to catch us last time," Icarus said.  "And we'd be able to hear if a whole pack of them was coming."  The logic seemed faulty to me, but Icarus was on a roll, and so I did not interrupt.  "I don't want to go to jail either, but that place is too wonderful not to go back.  We have to see it again."
"You realize we got lucky," I said to Icarus.  "The next time we get caught it could be for a lot longer than a day."
"But we won't get caught again."
"How do you know?" asked David.
"Because we won't.  We won't let ourselves get caught again."  Icarus threw up his hands in frustration with us.  "Fine.  If you don't want to come you don't have to, but I’m going back.  I'm not going to stay away now that I know what's in there."
I got up to leave.  "Okay Icarus, go back.  I'm not going back to jail."  I started walking towards the door.  David was confused by my sudden exit and stayed where he was.  Icarus ran to catch up with me.  "Come on man," he pleaded.  "Imagine never going back there.  This big beautiful lake that nobody's using and we won't ever go swimming in it again."
"Icarus!"
"Don't you want to go back?"
I did.  I couldn't imagine never going back.  What's more, I could not imagine Icarus having all that fun without me.  "I'll think about it," I said.
By the end of the week, the three of us had returned to the park.