Rock Chick Reborn (Rock Chick #9)(36)

But now I saw that there was no way I’d understand who I was, what I wanted and how to get it.

Hell, I wasn’t sure I knew any of that now.

But then, I was a kid.

Why did I expect so much of myself?

I found the room and knocked on the open door, my eyes to the handsome, somewhat disheveled man sitting behind the desk.

At my knock, he looked up at me, and I was relieved when he smiled.

“Miz Jackson,” he greeted.

“That’s me,” I answered, taking a step in.

He stood. “Thanks for coming.” He gestured to the student desks in front of his own. “Please come in.”

I walked in farther as he looked down, shuffled papers around, grabbed some and rounded his desk.

“Have a seat,” he invited, and as I took a seat at one of the student desks, he didn’t return to his own. He sat at the one beside mine. “We met at parent-teacher conferences last winter.”

“I remember,” I told him.

“Sorry to take your time, but I thought this was important,” he said.

“What was important?” I asked.

He offered the papers he had in his hand to me.

“My students turn in their papers online. I printed this one out. It’s Roam’s report on the escalation of American involvement in the Vietnam War.”

Slowly, I reached out and took it.

When I did, I felt my heart start beating faster because in the top left corner, it said:

Perspectives of American Military Action in Vietnam

American History

Mr. Robinson

By Roam Jackson



Roam Jackson?

Roam’s last name wasn’t Jackson.

Mine was.

“Do you go over your boys’ homework, Miz Jackson?” Mr. Robinson asked.

I looked from the papers in my hand to him. “Sometimes. When they ask me.”

He dipped his head to the paper. “Did you read that?”

I looked down at it, forcing my eyes to anything but the words Roam Jackson.

There were no marks on the paper. No grade.

I read the first couple of lines and saw this was not something Roam had asked me to look over.

I looked back at Roam’s teacher and shook my head.

Mr. Robinson nodded his. “Right then. Outside of it being glaringly obvious he did more than watch a couple of episodes of Burns’s documentary, a lot more, I’m not entirely certain how to describe the prose of that report.”

I felt my back hitch straight. “What are you saying?”

He looked me right in the eye. “It’s well beyond a high school senior’s aptitude.”

That was when I felt my eyes narrow. “You sayin’ my boy plagiarized this report?”

He shook his head. “No. I’m saying Roam is an exceptionally gifted and intuitive writer.”

Say what?

I stared at him.

“I’m sorry I didn’t bring this to your attention before,” he went on. “However, even if his earlier reports and test essays were very good, I’ve noted as the semester wore on, his talent has markedly increased. That said, I’ve seen nothing from him like that.”

“He hates writing reports. It drives him ’round the bend,” I said quietly. “Like, seriously.”

Mr. Robinson nodded. “I’m not surprised. For many outstanding writers, their need to tell their story, get their point across, doing this in the way they want the words to be crafted to share their narrative is a painful process. It can be very frustrating, as they can be very hard on themselves because each word has to be the perfect one and more, they all have to fit just right.”

I looked down at the paper.

“It’s my understanding Roam hasn’t applied to any colleges,” Mr. Robinson remarked.

I lifted my gaze again to him. “We had the talk. Only briefly. He didn’t seem interested so I didn’t push him.”

Another nod from Mr. Robinson with a gentle, “I know his history, Miz Jackson, and this doesn’t surprise me. Saddens me, but doesn’t surprise me. I will say that it’s more than just this assignment that made it clear. However with this,” he tipped his head to the papers again, “it’s more than clear he should go on to higher education.”

“To be what?” I asked.

“That’s yours,” he replied, now pointing at the papers in my hand. “Take it and read it and you’ll understand. But I’ll tell you what it did for me. That was not a high school report. That was not even a college level essay. When I read that, I forgot I was reading an assignment. It was like I was reading a book, a very good one, and when it was done my first reaction was annoyance because I wanted more.”

“Lord,” I whispered.

“He took a chance with that, Miz Jackson. He didn’t simply inform me of what he’d learned about American involvement in Vietnam. There are four parts to that report told from the perspectives of an American general, a member of the Viet Cong, an American Marine, and a Vietnamese peasant. It reads like fiction even if every word is factually correct. And the even-handed empathy for each viewpoint that he shared through his narrative was astonishing. Especially as written by the hand of a high school senior who wasn’t even alive during the conflict he was writing about.”