Pity Isn't An Option

By Jessica L. Brooks

Seventeen year-old Jonas Norton is trying to come to terms with what his blood disorder has robbed from him, including his two most favorite things: basketball, and competing in Hatchet Racket, Wanless’ annual hatchet-throwing contest. The facts that his father works constantly to pay for his blood tests and Jonas can actually see the disappointment in his eyes for being such a failure only make matters worse. And even worse than all of that? Jonas' own twin brother, Micah, is perfectly healthy and becoming quite the basketball player himself. Also, Hattie, the girl Jonas has loved for forever? She has no idea how he feels.
Sixteen year-old Hattie Akerman lives down the hill from Jonas. Though her father, Heath, tries to hide his lack of mental clarity behind the bottle and she's pretty much given up on having any kind of relationship with him, she would still rather her younger sister, Lucy, not have to deal with the consequences of his behavior. Hattie helps her mother by baking food to sell at Market and looking out for Lucy. No matter what the rest of the town says about her crazy father, Jonas sticks up for them. He is, by far, her very best friend.
As if things aren’t complicated enough already, Heath and Micah are unexpectedly drafted into President Kendrick's army (an army from which no one ever returns) just days before Thanksgiving. When Heath disappears instead of arriving at the Meeting Place to check in, Hattie and Jonas decide they’ve had enough, and take matters into their own hands. And though nothing could have prepared them for what happens next, Hattie and Jonas learn that hope can be seen in every situation. You just have to know where to look.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jessica L. Brooks
• Release date: Feb 5, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301888160

Jessica L. Brooks

Jessica L. Brooks is a lover of books, coffee, and all things owl-dorable. She writes young adult books about near-future dystopia (Pity Isn't An Option, Cozenage #1, available now) and magical realism (the Flora series, If I Speak True, Flora #1 & By Sun and Candlelight, Flora #1.5 available now), and loves to serve virtual cookies.Connect with Jessica on her blog, Let Me Tell You A Story, Tumblr, or anywhere else on the interwebs by doing a search for her username: coffeelvnmom.

Book preview

PART ONE

Chapter One

Jonas

Sometimes, I just want it to stop. I want the door to stop. I want the bell to stop. I want the sun to stop and the moon to stop and my blood and all of it to just stop stop stop. And as the bell rings again and I cringe, hyperaware of where I am and annoyed at the constant reminder of it as patients pour continuously in and out the door, I will myself to stop thinking about it. To stop comparing the people outside this small, horrible building to the ones like me, stuck inside.

To go back to staring at the walls. Staring. This is what I do every time.

I pick the paint apart and tell myself the people going in and out of this place must have it worse than I.

I come up with words for the colors of drab and boring and monotonous that are my surroundings and remind myself that at least I know for sure I’ll be allowed to come back.

Most people around here don’t have that kind of truth to hold on to. They’ll never have the luxury of growing so accustomed to these walls and what happens between them that all it takes one mention of this place in conversation, and bumbles of anxiety surge through my stomach.

But thinking that makes me feel guilty, because here I am again, focusing on myself. And how is that fair, when I am, as some would say, one of the fortunate ones? Fortunate. Ha. Because having what I have makes me so highly favorable, right?

I sigh, and try to think of something else. How it’s not like worrying about any of this does any good. I used to have this problem on a daily basis—Modern Martyr Syndrome, or, as they said it in the article I read, MMR for short. It’s the continual eyes on me, all about me, poor me, martyr thoughts. Something happens: sickness, loss of a loved one, or maybe a lost job, but instead of recovering and looking to what you’ve got to keep you afloat, you lose sight of it all. And, once you’ve submerged yourself in that MMR hole, it’s impossible to see even the smallest flicker of light. Dense clouds of darkness follow your every move. Whispers, saying maybe it would be better to just give up, crowd out all sanity, and fill your head with doubt. Then, it’s only a matter of time before all of that darkness overshadows everything in your life. You forget who you were. You forget what you used to want.

Now that I know how MMR works, I try not to think of myself too much, and the feelings mainly hit me when I come here, and that’s all. Or, whenever I, for a split-second, forget what I have. When I feel like me, like a normal guy, and I lose sight of what’s going on. Then, all it takes is one of those you’re glass, Jonas—I’m scared you might break looks from my mom, and boom! she shoots me back to reality, and I remember what I’ve got. I can hear it, when her eyes land on mine: normalcy shattering into thousands of pixels of glass, exploding in my ear canals. And when that happens, hope isn’t just wiped away for just a time. When it’s blown that bad, you lose it for the rest of your life.

But… for those few moments, when I forget how things truly, actually are… I kind of like my life. Not the part where we don’t have money most of the time, or the part where we have to always be at Market and Dad has to work for who he does, or the part where beans make me want to hurl and my brother makes me want to slam my fist into a wall, but simply the me part—that part I could be complacent with at times. I only wish it could happen more than once in a while.

My eyes land on bamboo—large watercolor paintings of cactises—cacti—and bamboo are hanging in groups of two above the chair railing, on the upper part of the room. As though there’d been a plan for those two particular plants to be together since the beginning of time, and the artist was the only one to catch on.

Bamboo and cacti. They’re so different. I wonder what was going through the artist’s mind.

Another thing I don’t get: Why the bottoms of the frames are hung the way they are, at the perfect number of inches above the top of the chairs so every time you sit down they hit you right square in the back of the head. Was that the decorator’s idea? The artist’s? The nurses, so we’d have something else to focus on while we sit here waiting for an hour?

And whose idea was it to stuff everyone in so close and so tight, that you have to awkwardly kink your neck to one side or lean back and close your eyes in order to avoid the slightest smidgeons of attachment or understanding or familiarity with everyone inside?

At times, I think someone decided the job wouldn’t be done right unless every patient who walks through that heavy, glass door is scrunched, uncomfortable, and counting the seconds until they can walk back outside.

Waiting. Is that why? To make the waiting in the waiting room really feel like waiting?

I can’t wait to get out of here.

I hate bamboo.

I hate cacti, too.

Jonas?

I jump a little in my chair. I hate how one quick test can hold so much power over my life.

When I look to the nurse, we make eye contact. The wrinkles at the outer corners of her eyes fan out in an I’ve-seen-so-much-that-nothing-shocks-me-anymore stare—regalia worn by all of the nurses here—as I get out of my chair.

Count again today? The wrinkles deepen when she smiles. She shifts my file from one hand to the other—a stack of papers so thick, so covered with numbers and evaluations and diagnostics, you’d expect it to belong to someone decades older, not a guy who’s only seventeen.

A guy who… had plans for his life.

I nod, and the nurse turns to open the door. I follow her through the small corridor, stopping at a chair wedged randomly in a corner, about halfway down.

I sit and fold my arms.

No instructions necessary. This chair and I—we’ve been dating for a while.

She dips the thermometer into the little box full of alcohol, and I wonder if she’s thinking about what I have. If she knows anyone else who has it too; and if so, how close they are.

How you feeling this morning?

Great. I say, and smile. Because great makes the conversation go away. Every time.

Good. That’s good. She nods, scribbling down yet another part of my life wasted, space and time sucked up, never to be returned, by numbers and a few words. Okay, Jonas. Let’s head on down the hall.

I keep my eyes to myself and don’t allow them to sneak into any of the open rooms. We come to a stop in front of the tiniest one. When she waves at a chair made specifically for this occasion, a wave of bees comes over me, jitters in my stomach that lately, I know way too well.

I feel at home and like turning around and running out the door all at once.

Carefully, I plop down and rest my arms; let them sink deeper into the abyss of space between the foam underneath the vinyl and the vinyl itself. And as I look at the nurse and she brings the needle to my arm, I can’t help but think that I’ve gotten way too comfortable with this entire scenario.

Chapter Two

Jonas

Thunder cracks through the living room, jarring me from the book in my hands. I toss it on the cushion next to me and make my way to the window to find deep, gray clouds—some nearly black—have taken over the whole area above the horizon. The bright hue of October sky above me as I walked home this afternoon has all but disappeared. It looks as though someone’s drawn a line directly above that hazy line, separating it in two sections by one thin, straight one: The area below, off past the bottom of the hill at the end of the driveway, blue and bright; and the area above, thick and dark as night.

Another crash of thunder rages through the house, shaking the glass right in front of my eyes. Everything goes blurry for a second, then fades back to normal. I watch as huge droplets fall, morphing the dirt from dust to mud.

I imagine myself outside, imagine the feel of raindrops landing on my skin as I smell the wet grass and inhale particles of the moist air into my lungs.

Oh to go out there, to just be a kid.

But that’s not allowed for me anymore. I can no longer enjoy things the way I did.

I notice the clouds have begun to hover away from my house and head toward the south a bit, when I open my eyes. Then, I see her. My stomach drops.

The screen door slams behind me as I run down the porch. A shock of thunder shoots through the air, rattling in my chest, and my feet sink fast into the mud the moment I hit the ground. I hurry down the path, ignoring the moisture seeping into the bottom of my shoes, enveloping my toes, and the voice in my head yelling Mom’s so not going to be happy about this.

Chunks of peeling white paint have fallen from Gran Akerman’s fence and are floating around in the puddles up ahead, to my left. It looks less like paint, and more like dirty snow, from this distance.

I blink, shake my hair out of my eyes.

The water stings my skin, it’s coming down so hard.

The closer I get to the bottom of the hill, the more I realize how bad things are. Yesterday, the bolls in the cotton field were nearly ready to be picked. They were so bright under the sun, it hurt your eyes just to look in their direction. Now, those very same bolls are top heavy and sagging to the ground. So dull, so heavy, it’s as though the life was washed right out of them.

Still slipping along in the mud, I assess the field down below. My eyes land on Hattie near the end of the very first row. Oh no. She’s soaked.

Cautiously, I approach her silhouette. Her clothes are rumpled up and pasted to her skin, rippling in the air as if holding on for dear life underneath this strong wind.

I try to think of what to say to her as I slush through the mud—something that would sound positive and make her feel better in the midst of all of this. A way to point out there must be some sort of silver lining in this unexpected storm, a plan we simply don’t know about yet. But nothing comes to me. No bright light in a dark tunnel, no good rain on a cloudy day, not the tiniest iota of positivity. All I can think is what I know, what she knows too, what we all know around here: that nothing good comes out of this place. Ever. And that’s just how it is.

Hattie would probably smack me if she knew what was racing through my head. You have to think positive, Jonas. Think more about the good things you want to happen, and less about the bad. She tells me that constantly, as if it’s that easy. But with it raining like this when the cotton is less than two weeks from harvest, I know what’s going through her head. And it isn’t the good things she wants to happen, even though she’s too hardheaded to ever admit it. She’s cursing the weather for destroying the one thing her family was counting on to get them through the winter. I guarantee it.

I notice Hattie’s holding a large basket of soggy cotton—pieces I’m guessing she thinks can be salvaged for some reason. Her hair, usually blonde but now dark brown and soaked, is clinging to her skin. Usually, Hattie puts it up in some sort of twisty-bun contraption thing, but it’s down today. Which means she must have run out of the house suddenly, like me.

It’s nice down, I think to myself. She looks softer around the edges, more compassionate.

She looks like she used to... before everything.

Hattie glances over, narrows her eyes at me.

I shake my head not to go there.

And as she goes back to plucking the destroyed fluffs, I realize mud is splattered all over her, too. You’d think she’d been out here for hours wallowing through the field of cotton and mud, not just the past couple of minutes.

This isn’t a field of cotton. It is a field of calamity.

I wipe the water from my eyes, not that it makes a difference, and peer into the basket. By the looks of it, I’m pretty sure it’s all ruined. I don’t tell Hattie this.

Hattie – I take a deep breath.

You shouldn’t be out in this, Jonas. She yells, over the wind.

"And you should be out in this? I yell back. Because you’re so much better than me?" It comes out more bitter than I’d meant, but I can’t help it. Sometimes this overwhelming urge to remind Hattie that she’s not my mother takes over me. And can she not tell that I came out here to help? And I’m older than her, so what is her problem?

You know what I mean. Hattie mutters. She sets another handful of cotton down into the basket. You should go home, Jonas. This isn’t good for you.

Do you think I would have come outside if I didn’t want to be here, Hattie? Let me help. Stop being so supercilious!

Hattie rolls her eyes. "Now is not the time for Jonas words. She sighs. Just—I don’t want your parents mad because you came out into this. I don’t want them thinking it’s my fault if you end up sick again."

Hattie pries out a clump of soggy cotton stubbornly clinging to its bowl and chucks it onto the pile. Defeat is seeping from her eyes, mirroring the dark sky all around us. Mirroring our lives. Just look around, okay, if you’re going to stay out here. She shoves the basket at me. Better yet—find something to put over the top of this.

There’s no point in arguing—those eyes have been boring into mine, permeating the darkest corners of my irises and reaching the deepest parts of my soul, ever since we were kids. I know what that look means: If I stand here doing nothing, she’ll tell me to leave. But… If I agree to help, I can keep an eye out, make sure she’s okay. Which is way better than being stuck inside.

I sneak a quick look up at the clouds—they appear to be looming directly above us, ready to reach down and carry us along with them as they angrily float away—and head for the house. Within a few steps of sinking into the cold mush, I’m barely able to move my feet. Somehow, the mud has gotten thicker. As I round the last row and take off toward the Akerman’s, I feel the goop squishing between my toes on the insides of my shoes. Which means my shoes are probably ruined. Which means Mom’s going to give me hell when I get home.

But then again, one pair of ruined shoes is nothing like losing an entire field of cotton, is it. So I keep moving.

Aside from a few overturned buckets near the east corner that won’t fit over a basket, there’s nothing around the front part of the house. I turn for the porch, taking care to step only in the pools of muck that appear to be the most shallow, and find a pile of firewood that Hattie, her dad, Heath, and me stacked here below the porch, next to the back door, after Market last spring.

Then, without warning, I’m taken back to that night. To the screaming reverberating through the air, the emotions floating around in bursts so strong, you could actually feel it, deep in your veins.

We were in the process of dismantling our booths for the day, when it all started. One minute Market was closing, the next, emotional upheaval was all around. By staying out of the way and listening to the crowd, the three of us were able to piece together most of what had happened.

Minutes earlier, an announcement by President Kendrick had come over the radio: He was pulling an additional five men out of Wanless. That was all it took for everyone—especially the Union—to lose it. You could feel the emotions pulling at you, slapping you in the face as you walked around Market. Worry, fear, sadness, rage; they yanked at your shoulders, almost knocked you down.

Sometimes, at night, when I’m trying to fall asleep, I can still see the men crowded around the bonfire on the back of my eyelids. I can see them shouting, shoving each other, shaking their fists as the flame’s shadows creep across their faces; can hear their voices getting louder and louder as they argue about something we can do nothing about. Then I can hear the axe off in the distance. The fast chopping, the whack of the blade on a fresh Douglas fir, followed by a creaking sound.

Before I knew what was happening, Heath had grabbed Hattie’s hand, and I’d taken hold of the other. We were running, stopping only after coming across a booth on the outside of the perimeter, a safe place to hide behind. Hattie was so scared she tucked her head to the ground; but I peered out from around the corner, and watched it all go down. I watched as the tip of the evergreen came crashing down right in front of us, the top half landing exactly where we’d been standing moments earlier.

A chill runs through me, bringing me back to where I am now. So this firewood, the remnants from the night people lost it for a while, I suppose it’s the one good thing to come from this weather. If this storm had come much later, it wouldn’t have had enough time to dry out before full-out winter hit, and then it would have been useless too, like everything else.

I pick up a piece of cardboard peeking out from the crawlspace underneath the porch, and imagine Hattie’s face if she’d heard me thinking rain was good in mid-October. She’d probably roll her eyes; say it was just like me to revel in her misery. Not that I would ever do that.

The cardboard’s wet and flimsy. There’s no way this is going to work. I chuck it on the ground and crouch underneath the awning by the back door, to search the other side of the pile. Finally, on the other side of the back steps, I find a small piece of plywood leaning against the house. It’s wet, but seems to be strong and sturdy. I reach for it, with barely enough time to catch my balance and swing my right arm around the banister of the porch before my foot slips.

Somehow, I figure out a way to knock the mud against the side of the porch, grab the plywood, and trudge back to Hattie without falling down. Of course, she’s already two rows further off to the east from where we were. And there’s no sign of her stopping.

This is all I could find. I hold it up for her approval.

Hattie nods once, just slightly, and I set the makeshift lid across the top of the basket. Better than nothing. She yells, over the thunder.

I have to resist yelling back that that’s exactly what the cotton is—nothing at all. That it’s absolutely useless. Just like us, being out here right now.

Another chill runs through me as I adjust the wood. I look down and see my skin, and my stomach drops. The sleeves of my jacket—the one I’d found wedged between my dad’s old tuxedo and my mom’s favorite party dress in the back of the closet—are stuck halfway up my arms.

If Hattie sees me tugging, trying to pull the wet wool back down to my wrists as far as they’ll go, she doesn’t let on. I find myself wondering how much she does notice, how often she can tell my shirts or pants are too small, but is just nice enough not to point it out.

Squinting to keep the water from my eyes, I shove my hands deep into my pockets, so the short-long sleeves don’t show. You want me to pluck like you, or follow along?

Follow me. No, pluck. No, just follow. She pinches a few strands of hair from her cheek and shoves them behind her ear. This weather is dumb.

We stand there together in silence, Hattie Akerman and myself. The thunder is closer, much louder than it was ten minutes ago.

When she lifts her head I follow her gaze to the blackness above us. I don’t know what to say, so I say I know, and I’m sorry.

I wonder if I do know. I am sorry, though.

As Hattie takes off walking down the row in front of me, I think of my parents. How are they doing? Do they have enough money set up this winter, or would just one unexpected act of weather like this throw us all out of whack also? Then I remember. Duh, Jonas. My blood. All their money is gone.

I see Hattie curl a finger at me. I’ve been caught lagging.

An ache shoots down my back—my muscles have started cramping from the cold.

Determined to muster up some sort of useless it could be worse analogy, I clamp my teeth down to keep them from chattering, and rush down the row.

A door slams behind me just as I open my mouth and Hattie’s younger sister, Lucy, steps out. She rushes down the steps, not paying attention to the water everywhere, and slips on the last one, which sends her gliding across the mud. Lucy swings her arms around in little circles like miniature helicopter blades, trying to catch her balance. I can’t help but laugh at how funny she looks.

Nice save, Luce! I yell.

Lucy laughs and shoots me a proud smile. Did you see that, Beanie? She says. I almost ate it! Her legs are still formed into a wide split, but she doesn’t seem to notice.

Get back in the house, Luce. Hattie frowns.

But Mom always makes hot tea when it rains Lucy pouts, and I can’t find any!

Hattie turns her back to us and plucks two more heavy tufts. I notice two of her fingers have blood on them when she pulls her hand back out, and wish I had something to wipe them with.

Hey, why don’t you let me do that part for a while, Hat? I offer. I’m sure you could use a break right now.

I’m fine. Hattie snaps. She wipes her fingers on her pants, and turns to Lucy. Have you checked the cabinet above the pans?

Lucy shakes her head. Not there. I checked already.

How about the cabinet above the—dammit! Hattie grimaces, and draws her hand to her chest. She looks up to the sky, scowling as though that word was meant for one person, and that one person only.

Lucy takes off back up the steps, looks at me and shrugs.

Hattie waits for