Anything But Typical

Rebecca introduces herself to Jason and his mother. She smells sweet and reaches to shake his hand. He cannot bring himself to look at her. Elizabeth, Jason’s mother, asks Rebecca how she knows Jason. Rebecca explains their connection and they make small talk. Jason remains silent and avoids looking at Rebecca. He decides that this is the part of their romance where “boy loses girl” (163). 

Jason overhears his mother on the phone, talking to his father. He can tell that she is lying to make his dad think they are having a great time. Jason and his mother share the desire to avoid making people sad. Jason is feeling a lot, but cannot speak or write. He never wants to write again, and he does not intend to finish his story about Bennu. He decides he will never write another fictional character. He and his mother eat room service and watch TV together until they fall asleep.

Jason’s mother treats him to the breakfast buffet in the morning, because she has figured out what was bothering Jason all along. He is especially grateful that she hasn’t tried to get him to talk to her about Rebecca, but he can tell that she is sad. She tells him that it hurts her to see him hurting. Rebecca walks into the breakfast room, sees Jason, pretends to stop and tie her shoe, then turns around and leaves. Rebecca’s mother calls after her, making it obvious that Rebecca was avoiding being in the same room as Jason. Jason hears his mother make a sound of pain and flashes to another section of the Bennu story. Bennu dreams that he has the surgery, wakes up in the recovery room, but even though his body is bigger, he is stunned to see that his face looks the same. He is devastated that the surgery didn’t work. 

Jason used to be on the baseball team with his dad as the coach. Jason always played left outfield, far from the action. He could hear kids and parents alike teasing him about the way he ran and his lack of coordination. Some parents even wanted him kicked off the team. One day at practice, Jason’s dad left him in the dugout while he got something from his car. Some of the boys used the opportunity to give Jason a dead leg and then kick him while he lay in the dirt. They kicked him against the wall until he was crying; his dad and another man had to stop the boys. His dad told his mother that boys will be boys and it’s a cruel world, but his mother was distraught, calling the boys monsters. Jason connects the fact that he never played baseball again after that incident to his declaration that he will never write again.

It is time for Jason to attend his first writing workshop, but his mother tells him that if he would rather just watch TV she will understand. He wants to make his mother happy, so he tells her he will go, even though he plans to just sit and not write a word. They arrive at the workshop and his mother fusses over him as he struggles to find a good spot to sit. He finally settles into a chair facing the wall. The other students talk about the teacher, who hasn’t arrived; he is a published author. The instructor arrives but Jason refuses to turn around. All of Jason’s worlds have collapsed, and he worries he needs to let go of his fictional characters, especially Bennu. Finally, he turns to the author and “I see that the instructor is a Little Person. He is a dwarf” (184). 

The instructor, Hamilton, asks what the most important part of a writer is. There are many guesses: eyes, hands, brain. But it is Jason that gets the answer right when he jumps up and says, “my bottom” (186). Instead of laughing at him, Hamilton tells him he is exactly right—writers have to “sit down on your bottom and write” (186). It is for writers to write because they preserve history and memorialize their individual voices and lives—their words “will be as close to truth as can be” (186).

That evening, there is a party for the Storyboarders. Before Jason attends, he looks at himself in the mirror, trying to make his face completely still. He realizes that we never really see ourselves the way the rest of the world sees us. At the party, Rebecca walks directly up to Jason. His mother leaves them to give them some privacy. Jason wants to tell Rebecca all about his experience with Hamilton, but he can’t bring himself to speak. She tells him that she really likes reading his stories and hopes that they can keep writing to each other after the conference. She tells him that he helped her a lot with her grade in language arts. Then she walks away.   

On the plane home, Jason’s mother orders Jason a Sprite, with no ice, just the way he likes it, and says that Hamilton is just a very short man, not a little person. He is happy she takes such good care of him. Jason is stuck sitting next to a large man that takes up a lot of space and smells very bad, but he uses his internal resources to cope with these stimuli, and even enjoys his experience. He grows excited to see his dad and Jeremy as the plane descends. His mother tells him that this trip has been one of the best experiences of her life. She cries and tells him that she has realized that she is learning from him, especially about bravery. He wishes she wouldn’t cry and talk so much, but he also accepts that this is just the way she is, and “we all have things we can’t help doing” (193).

Jason finishes Bennu’s story after all. Bennu wakes up on the morning of his surgery, gets ready in his house that has all the accommodations he needs, puts on his specially made clothes, goes to the doctor’s office, and tells the doctor, “Sorry, Doc. I changed my mind. This is who I am. This is me” (194).