His eyes lit up like pinball machines. "Really?" He asked, his disinterest dropping away instantly.
"Yeah." I said. "But it's cool. If you got things to do…"
"Well I can prob'ly come over for a while." He put in. "You know, we haven't hung out in a while."
"Cool." I said, suppressing a smile. "I'll see you after school then."
"Right."
On the way home from school I asked Tracy and Cindy if they maybe wanted to go to the mall for a few hours before Dad got home from work.
"The mall?" Cindy asked, lighting a cigarette. "I was hopin' you had some new albums to show me today."
Tracy gave her a look of annoyance and then turned to me. "What's the matter Billy, you getting' shy about your study sessions with our friends?"
"No." I answered. "Not at all. I have something important to do today. Mike's coming over."
"Mike!" Tracy said, disgusted now. "That fuckin' hoser! I thought you'd wised up and stopped hangin' out with him."
"Please?" I said, not offering any explanation. "This is important. If you guys go out for a while I'll smoke some of the bud I scored with you later."
That did the trick. I'd long since learned the barter power that the possession of a little marijuana held in a teenaged society. Cindy let me out at the curb and roared away shortly afterword, Tracy in the passenger seat, with a promise not to return until Dad got home.
Mike pulled his Beetle to the curb soon after.
Our conversation was cautious and casual as we went to the garage and smoked ourselves into oblivion with Tracy's bong that I liberated from the secret hiding place in her room. By the time we re-entered the house we were well into the stratosphere. I hoped I was coherent enough to speak my mind effectively through the drug haze. My own intoxication was countered by the fact that Mike, in his stoned state, would be extremely susceptible to suggestion. We watched some TV for a few minutes while we munched on some food we'd found in the fridge. By the time we went to the garage for our second set of bonghits, we were comfortable speaking to each other despite our months of separation.
"I hear you're going to go to independent study." I said as I dumped the bong water down the sink and rinsed the chamber.
"Yep." He nodded, obviously excited about it. "My parents put in the application the other day. The counselor says it'll be approved and I can prob'ly start next month. After only six months of it I'll graduate."
"Six months huh?" I said. "And you only have to go twelve hours a week?"
He nodded. "Isn't that fuckin' cool. And I get to schedule my own twelve hours. I can go six hours for two days and take the rest of the week off, or four hours for three days, or three hours for four days. Whatever I want."
I carried the bong upstairs and replaced it in Tracy's room. Mike took a seat on the couch while I was gone. When I returned I sat next to him and took a sip out of a soda.
"Mike," I asked. "Do you realize that you're being encouraged to drop out of school?"
"What?" He replied, looking at me with renewed hostility.
"The system is encouraging you to drop out of school. Independent study is nothing but a joke, a joke designed to allow people to drop out with some measure of self-respect intact. First they offer you something that sounds appealing: you only have to go to school twelve hours, you work at your own pace, you'll get to graduate early. It's an offer too good to be true."
"What the fuck you talking about?" He asked. "It's not too good to be true.
That's how it works."
"Really?" I continued. "How many people do we know that have gone through independent study? Let's see there's Rodney, Steve Kale, Michelle Beckenwood, Stacy Smith. Those are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head. None of them graduated, not a single one.
"Yeah, but they were stupid." He said defensively. "I'm different."
"No you're not." I told him. "You're being used by the system. I'm sure the counselor spouted a bunch of bullshit to you and your parents about how this will help you. They're lying. It doesn't help you, it helps them. They've marked you as a likely dropout in the near future so they're trying to get rid of you before that happens. They don't give a shit about you or your future, they WANT you to drop out. But they want you to do it this way because it doesn't go on the school's statistics as a dropout; you go down as a transfer to another school. That way they don't lose any of their budget money or have their teaching methods audited by the state board of education.
"So off you go to independent study where you're encouraged to fade politely away. Do you know how they get you to drop out with this program? Do you know what the kicker to it is? It's that flexible schedule you were talking about. Come whenever you can, you only have to be there twelve hours a week. But you see, if you offer a teenager a deal like that, they'll abuse it and those fuckers KNOW that. You get up on Monday and say to yourself, 'I don't have to go in today because I only have to go twelve hours. I can knock out some hours tomorrow. Then Tuesday rolls around and you say the same thing. After all, you don't HAVE to be there on Monday or Tuesday. Before long you'll find yourself at Thursday without any hours built up. By that time the thought of spending six hours is too much to take. So you cut for that week; after all, anyone they send to independent study is an accomplished school cutter, aren't they? Before two months go by it will be too much trouble to go at all. There will be no paperwork done, nothing that says you've officially dropped out, but you will in effect have dropped out. Just like they planned for you."
Mike had simply stared at me during this speech, absorbing what I was saying without expression.
"Where did you come up with all that shit?" He asked me finally.
"My Dad's a teacher." I told him. "He works for the damn school district. Believe me, that's the way it is."
"What the fuck are you tellin' me all this for?"
I took a deep breath. "Mike, you're my friend. We've been friends since we were kids, right?"
"Yeah," He nodded, "But what's that got to do with anything?"
"Friends try to help each other. Remember when Fairview stabbed me? You grabbed him off of me. You helped me. That's what I'm trying to do for you.
Help you. You're about to make a big mistake, a mistake you'll regret for the rest of your life."
"How do you know I'm makin' a mistake?" He shouted. "Even if I do drop out what makes you think it's gonna be a mistake? What do I need a fuckin' diploma for anyway?"
"What do you want to do with your life Mike?" I asked him.
"What?"
"What do you want to do?" I repeated. "What would like to do for a living? What would be a dream job for you?"
"Man," He said, dismissing me. "Fuck this shit. Let's talk about something else."
"Look Mike." I said carefully. "Like I said, we're friends and I'm trying to talk to you as a friend. Nobody else is here, nobody's gonna hear what you say. I'm not putting you down or anything, I'm just trying to help you because you need some help. You're on a path of destruction here and I'm trying to steer you off of it. So tell me, what would you like to do for a living? What would be a cool job?"
For a minute I didn't think he was going to answer. Finally he said, "I don't know."
"You don't know?"
He shrugged. "I never thought about it before. I can't picture myself in five years, I don't know."
"Maybe that's part of your problem." I said. "You don't have any goals." I looked him up and down for a minute, an idea occurring to me. "You'd probably like a job where you get a lot of days off each week, wouldn't you?"
"The more the better." He agreed.
"A job where even when you ARE at work, you get to spend a lot of time sitting around on your ass."
He scoffed. "Yeah, like there are jobs like that."