Читать книгу The 15:17 to Paris: The True Story of a Terrorist, a Train and Three American Heroes - Anthony Sadler, Anthony Sadler - Страница 17
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ОглавлениеAT FIRST, SPENCER TRIED to get along. He ran for school president. Alek served as his de facto campaign manager. They put their heads together and came up with a progressive platform of free burritos.
They designed a campaign poster that consisted of Spencer holding an M16 replica paintball gun in front of an American flag, wearing full camouflage and an Uncle Sam–style “I want you” frown.
Then, to make sure they remained true to their message, the two boys went to school in full camouflage. It was important to take the campaign seriously, because Spencer had big plans to change the world. “I will switch the Coke machines to Pepsi machines,” he said, “because Pepsi is more American!” But on the day the candidates were to address all the voters, his opponent read flawlessly from a beautifully written speech, and Spencer, rattled and nervous, mumbled through his campaign promises so quietly nobody heard a single thing he said. His big plans for more patriotic vending machines went unheard, whispered into his own chest, and the vote was not close. Spencer did not win.
His political ambitions crushed, Spencer’s hatred for the school grew. The place rubbed him the wrong way. They were too involved. The way they enveloped every part of his life was too much; he had gone from a fatherless home to a place with a dozen new fathers and mothers. It didn’t feel right, even though he didn’t quite know how to explain why it felt wrong. Spencer was small and unconfident, and the teachers felt off to him; they were unlike the teachers at his old school. He didn’t like going to church and school with the same people, under the same authority; it was the mixing of two worlds for which some separation felt natural. People were always watching. They were too interested in him, but seemed to be looking past him, through him, like he had some rotten thing inside he hadn’t known about but they were certain was there. When he bristled and pushed back they punished him, pulled him into the principal’s office and kept him there for hours, which felt like days, insulting his character, invoking God to reduce him to tears and assure him he was shaming the Lord, that he needed to conform because he was walking down a path toward sure damnation.
“They’re crazy, Mom. I’m telling you, they’re crazy, and you don’t care!” Spencer screamed, but Joyce didn’t believe it, or at least at first she didn’t want to believe it. She knew Spencer needed structure, and she didn’t exactly have a wealth of options. She was pinching pennies to make ends meet and keep the kids in private school; there was only one she could afford, and she couldn’t stomach sending Spencer back to be eaten up and spat out by the bigger kids in public school, while teachers pumped him full of prescription pills. She chalked it up to character building and hoped his attitude would change. Surely he’d soon see the value in it, finally begin to apply himself.
But all that happened was that he hated it more, and the bond between him and Alek, his one coconspirator, grew stronger. They both bucked under the authority of this strange place to whose faults both their mothers were blind. That was the only saving grace for Spencer: that Alek saw it too.
Alek was stalwart and dedicated in his apathy toward schoolwork. Alek made Spencer certain it wasn’t just him. It was those people at the school; they didn’t deserve to judge him, and it definitely didn’t have any right to tell him whether God was on his side or not. It felt like the two of them, Spencer and Alek, were together in the trenches of some strange kind of psychological warfare. And since it was just the two them who didn’t buy into it, the two latecomers, interlopers in this world that all the other students had attended since kindergarten, it was Spencer and Alek more than anyone who earned the ire of the school administration.
Alek responded in the way that was becoming his style. He checked out. He ignored them. He did what he wanted and didn’t let what they said affect him, which seemed to arouse their anger even more; but Spencer saw the way they treated Alek and seethed.
Battle lines were drawn.