He was curious, also. Curious in general. At times he would, of his own volition, visit museums and gallery openings. He even read books that weren’t assigned to him (mostly social science– and history bestsellers about the fading and forgotten or late and developing trends and milestones of the “Cute Revolutions,” occasionally artist- and musician biographies, less occasionally CliffsNotes and for-Dummies digests of scholarly classics Fondajane esteemed). He was gracious with strangers, kind to his friends, he respected the help, and was generous always. He loved his stepmom the way one loves one’s favorite aunt, his driver the way one loves one’s father, and his father the way one loves one’s one true loving God. What’s more, he was very open with his feelings, demonstrative even—a warm and frequent hugger and smiler, an habitual praiser of apparel and haircuts.
* * *
—
At the start of seventh grade, though, Triple-J changed. Where before there was enthusiasm, now there was reticence. Where before an even temperament, now swinging moods. His face, itself, underwent transformation: it had always been a soft, almost moony thing, but now, even when he bent toward a spoonful of soup—even when he yawned—it was sharp and clenched, preemptively defensive, his down-flexed brow and dubious squint hoarding all the blue brightness of his eyes in their slots.
The change was a shock, not only for being so pronounced and unpleasant, but for having happened in the course of one day. That morning, Fondajane—upon Triple-J’s request—rode with him to school to continue the conversation they’d started at breakfast about, of all things, the legalization of prostitution in America (Trip’s Social Studies class was on its human rights unit, and the textbook quoted a passage from FABRYTAYF); when he returned that afternoon, he looked as though he were sick, and when she asked him whether he was feeling okay, he stormed off, muttering, “Leave me alone.” Later, at dinner, wearing his new face, he exhaled noisily at Jonboat’s inquiries, refused to meet his gaze, and wouldn’t eat dessert.
Burroughs was questioned: he didn’t have answers, said he’d try to get answers.
He failed to get answers. He talked to Trip’s friends the following day, talked to his teachers the day after that. They’d seen the change, too, but had no idea what might have caused it.
Weeks passed, and the old Trip didn’t return. His face remained closed to those who loved him most. His desserts were left to puddle and clot in their bowls. What the hell was going on? Speculations were made, followed up on, rejected:
One of the older girls at Trip’s school had just been arrested for selling cocaine and MDMA to an undercover cop. The speculation that Trip had been one of her clients was dismissed, however, once the uniformly negative results came back from the broad-spectrum drug screen performed on some hair that Jonboat, ninja-like, had plucked late at night from the sleeping boy’s head.
Tessa Swords, for whom Trip, everyone suspected, had long been harboring romantic feelings despite her being four years his senior, and despite the vicious-rumor-slash-open-secret that her paternal biological grandfather wasn’t actually Xavier Swords, but rather infamous cuckolder Carmichael Pellmore (i.e. Jonboat’s maternal uncle)—Tessa’d been photographed getting groped by a mop-topped Grimaldi on a Monégasque beach, and the photographs had made it into multiple tabloids. But the theory that jealousy had transformed Trip was rejected on grounds that, only three months earlier, photographs of Tessa sucking face with a Savoy in a Roman alley had been published just as widely, those photographs hadn’t bothered Trip at all (hadn’t seemed to, at least), and, as someone whose sense of his own and others’ position in society was (to put it mildly) preternaturally sharp, he surely understood that if a Savoy weren’t able to lock Tessa down, a Grimaldi couldn’t even carry her purse.
Lastly was the mourning-in-memoriam conjecture. The anniversary of Triple-J’s birth mother’s death had been two weeks away when the change overtook him, and though the prior anniversaries hadn’t ever shaken him (the last two, in fact, had passed without comment), this one would be the tenth, and that tenth-ness, perhaps, increased its significance, making it harder for Trip to contend with. But then neither when the anniversary arrived, nor after it passed, did anything change, i.e. Trip remained changed.
* * *
—
After the change had been in place for a month or so, parents and driver reached a conclusion: nothing had caused it. Nothing, in any case, environmental. Just interior shake-ups. Pre-, if not adolescence itself. Puberty. Hormones. Dawning teenagerness.
They determined that they had to help Trip adjust; that to help him adjust, they would adjust: they determined they’d allow the boy a wider berth. The frequency of his after-school lessons with Burroughs would be reduced from five to three times a week. The frequency with which he could miss family dinners would be raised from one to two times a week. His allowance would increase by 50 percent. And the trip to Chicago that he’d wanted to take in order to try to bribe somebody into granting him access to the Friends Study tapes, tapes that ever since he’d begun collecting cure clips had come to represent for him a kind of holy grail (not even Baron Swords could get his hands on the tapes, or at least that’s what he claimed; nor was anyone sure the tapes hadn’t been destroyed)—they’d let him take that trip to Chicago with Burroughs, and, if the opportunity arose, they’d let him spend as much as $30k on the bribe.
When they told him of this new, less rigorous regimen, Triple-J thanked them, and maybe, maybe he was cheered a little, for a minute or two, but just as Fondajane was rising from her chair to come around the table and offer him a hug, he stumbled from the dining room, hunched like a fiend, with what appeared to her to be tears in his eyes.
* * *
—
The very next afternoon, Triple-J’s headmaster, Dr. Clepp, called Fon at home. During a quiz that morning, Clepp reported, Trip’s Chemistry teacher had noticed him looking over the shoulder of a neighbor. Now, no one, Clepp rushed to explain to Fon, wanted to blacken Trip’s academic record; the teacher, in fact, hadn’t even told Trip what she’d seen him doing—she’d gone straight to Clepp with that information. She hadn’t told Trip and had instead decided to go to Clepp because when she thought she was seeing what she seemed to be seeing it occurred to her that maybe she was seeing something else; maybe, rather than cheating on a quiz, all that Trip had been doing, for example, was stretching his neck, and so to accuse Trip of cheating, or to even imply to him that she thought he might be cheating, seemed to her to be…inadvisable. After all, if he weren’t cheating, the accusation that he were, even if that accusation were merely implied, could very well make him feel unjustly persecuted, and thereby unsafe, which was a feeling—unsafety—that, through Dr. Clepp’s stewardship, the school had made its mission to prevent being felt by any of its students. Having said all of that, Dr. Clepp explained to Fon, it was, in his view, a headmaster’s duty—and for that matter no less so a duty than was preventing students from feeling unsafe—it was, as headmaster, Dr. Clepp’s duty, Dr. Clepp felt, to apprise a boy’s parents—especially such parents as Fon and Jonboat, whose donation at last year’s Christmas auction, in the course of providing the school the funds to build its new locker-room whirlpool facilities, had demonstrated how profoundly dedicated they were to their son’s education, and, hopefully, how profoundly dedicated they would continue to demonstrate themselves to be to their son’s education—a boy’s parents, Clepp felt, should be kept apprised not only of what their son was up to at school, but also what their son might be up to at school, and even what their son almost certainly wasn’t up to at school. That was all. That was why he called. To keep Trip’s dedicated parents apprised.