The Brilliant Boy Billionaire - 15. A Crisis Averted

Henry stopped in front of the great-room table, and I placed my hand on his bare shoulder, giving him a gentle squeeze that I hoped was reassuring, then left my hand there as a sign of support.

The girls were no longer present, but both brothers and their parents were at the table, literally shouting at each other. The shouting stopped the moment Henry and I appeared. Henry took advantage of the resulting silence and began speaking. “Mom, Dad, Rob, Sammy, while you’ve all been shouting at each other, J.J. and I have been talking. This isn’t about J.J.; it’s about me. J.J. didn’t go behind your back to conspire against you. He saw a kid in need and tried to help the best way he knew how. He knew there were things I wasn’t telling you, but he didn’t know just how bad it really was. He didn’t know about me drinking beer.” Fran gasped at hearing that. “Sorry, bro, but I like Heineken.”

“I didn’t think I drank that much of it,” Rob exclaimed. “I wondered if Sammy might be sneaking some – or maybe Hillary or Camilla. I never dreamt it was you.”

“There’s more,” Henry continued. “I’ve experimented with pot.” Again, Fran gasped. “And I’ve seriously thought about suicide,” This time it was Sammy who exclaimed, “Jesus!”

“I even got some OxyContin to use for it,” Henry added, much to my own shock.

“Is it because you’re gay, honey?” Fran asked.

“Hardly,” Henry said with a laugh. “I never really gave much thought to it until J.J. arrived. I knew I was in love with Darren, but the thought of being rejected because of it never even occurred to me. I knew it wouldn’t matter to you guys, nor to my sisters. Most kids at school are fine with gay kids. There are even a few brave souls who are out – mostly eighth graders – and everyone’s cool with it. I doubt it’ll be a problem when I get to high school and certainly not in college.

“No, it wasn’t that, at all. To be honest, I didn’t really know why I used pot, drank or thought about suicide. It took J.J. telling me a little bit about his own life and his own struggles that made me realize what it was.” Shit, didn’t he realize his parents were likely to ask me about that? Henry continued, “He made me swear not to tell anyone, ’cause it’s still too painful to talk about it. He only told me ’cause he saw signs of a suicidal kid from his own experience. I know you’ll respect his feelings.” Phew, that was a nice save. “The important thing is that although I was a straight-A student, I just didn’t like school. I didn’t like life. It all seemed so pointless,” Henry went on. “Nothing I learned in school interested me, and I couldn’t see a way forward.”

“But what about family, Henry? What about love? What about Darren?” Fran asked.

“I know,” Henry answered, “and the thought of what killing myself would’ve done to Darren – and to all of you – it would’ve been so selfish, so unforgivable.”

“Didn’t you realize this was all temporary?” Jerry asked. “Didn’t you realize that eventually, school would come to an end, and then you could make of your life whatever you want it to be? Look at what Rob did.”

“He’s not even a teenager, Dad,” Rob interjected. “His attention span isn’t long enough for that.” Even though I was behind Henry, I could picture him rolling his eyes. In his mind he was already a teen, and I wasn’t sure I’d disagree.

Sighing, Jerry commanded more than asked us, “Sit down, boys, let’s talk about what we’re going to do now.”

“Not until you agree not to send J.J. away, Dad,” Henry said as he stood firm. “Either you agree that J.J. can stay as long as he lives in Omaha, or I’m leaving.”

“Is that an ultimatum, Henry?” Jerry asked with a bemused expression.

“Yes, Dad, I’m serious. Were it not for J.J., I could’ve taken those OxyContin at any time,” Henry replied.

“Can I get you to agree to show me where you kept the pills and let me dispose of them?” Jerry asked.

“Only if you agree to let J.J. stay, and if you listen to me,” Henry answered.

“You want me to extend an open invitation to J.J. and let him stay indefinitely?” Jerry asked.

“I’d like for you to adopt him,” Henry responded. What?

“Um, Henry, Jerry, I can’t ask you to do that,” I interrupted. “I’m not sure I even want that. Besides which, it would open a huge can of worms that should be left alone.”

“Still, I want J.J. to stay under the same terms as Rob,” Henry suggested. “As far as I’m concerned, J.J. is my brother, even if not by blood.” I squeezed Henry’s shoulder in response to that to let him know how much I appreciated the sentiment. I might not even be two years older than he is in actuality, but he felt very much like a younger brother to me, and, yes, I realized I loved him as if he were my own flesh and blood. How’d that happen in scarcely more than 24 hours?

“We only planned on having J.J. stay with us for a few months at most on the recommendation of my brother, just until he could get back on his feet,” Jerry began. “We’re not set up for him to stay long term. It’s one thing for Rob to share his bed with one of his brothers so the other can have an occasional sleepover. It’s not fair to expect him to share his bed permanently with a stranger.”

“I don’t mind, Dad,” Rob countered. “J.J.’s a great guy, and I think he’ll be a close friend. I’d like him to stay, too, but knowing what’s been going on with Henry, maybe it should be Henry that sleeps with me, and then J.J. could sleep with Sammy, where he’d have his own bed.”

“I’d love having J.J. room with me,” Sammy chimed in. “I’d like him to stay forever.”

“You’re tired of rooming with me?” Henry asked in jest.

I could tell he was teasing, but Sammy apparently wasn’t taking any chances on being misunderstood, and said, “God no. I love you, Henry. I’d never be the same if something happened to you. I’d be devastated. It would tear the family apart. I meant that I like Rob’s idea. I like it a lot. I think it might be better for Henry to room with Rob, at least for now, and it would be awesome to have J.J. live here. He’s more than welcome to room with me.” I couldn’t get over how all three brothers wanted me to stay.

“We could swap the girls and the boys,” Fran suggested. “That way, J.J. could have the guest room.” All three brothers and I shouted “no” at once. The lower level gave us privacy, distance from the parents and direct pool access. Why would we give that up? Why go through moving bedrooms for what I intended to be a temporary arrangement, anyway?

“I suppose we could get some air mattresses to use when you guys have sleepovers,” Fran thought out loud.

“You mean like Rob could sleep on an air mattress in the other room so Darren and I could have the bed in Rob’s room to ourselves?” Henry asked.

“No, I mean like Darren could sleep on the air mattress in your and Rob’s room, unless you or Rob would be willing to sleep on the air mattress so Darren can have a side of the bed,” Fran countered.

“I think maybe I’d rather sleep in the guest room and schlep downstairs to use the bathroom,” Rob decided. “There are some things I just don’t wanna see, and with Henry and Darren being boyfriends, I’m sure they’d like to have some privacy. I’d rather not be their chaperone.”

“And here I thought that would be a most excellent idea,” Fran responded to much laughter.

Clearing his throat, Jerry said, “Let’s get back to the discussion at hand. Take a seat, boys,” as he motioned us to sit down in a pair of empty chairs. Henry made the first move, and so I followed suit. “The one thing no one seems to be asking is whether or not J.J. wants to stay. He came to Omaha to get on his feet, and he may well prefer to live on his own.”

“In a way, I wish I could stay here indefinitely,” I replied. “Already I feel close to all of you. The plan always was to get a job, get a driver’s license, save some money, get a place of my own and then figure out how to get a college education. Ultimately, I’ll probably leave Omaha, as will some of you, I’m sure. It’s a big country and, as you know, a big world. How long I wait to get my own place isn’t entirely up to me. The last thing I want to do is overstay my welcome.”

“Son, let me be clear,” Jerry countered, “We want you here. My sons want you here. My daughters adore you and after what happened just happened, Fran and I want you here. Trust us, we’re military. We have experience in being flexible, and we won’t hesitate to tell you if you’ve overstayed your welcome. Otherwise, you’re welcome to stay as long as you’d like.” All three of the boys cheered at that, while I blushed furiously.

“Now, I know there are things about your past that you’d rather not comment on,” Jerry continued, “Like the string of bodies back in Indiana,” he quipped, not knowing it was partly true.

Still why not joke about it, since it wouldn’t be taken seriously, so I responded, “Just one.” Everyone laughed at that except I noticed that Henry looked nervous. I could only hope that no one else noticed it.

“Would it be possible for you to tell us enough about yourself for us to understand how and why you picked up on Henry’s problems?” Jerry asked.

Pausing for a bit to contemplate what I was willing to tell them, I replied, “I guess I could tell you about some of that. Obviously, I’m pretty smart. I’m sixteen and already have my GED. Like Henry, I was a top student but bored silly starting in the first grade. Unlike Henry, though, I had an abusive father, so I spent as much time as possible in the library so as to have the least interaction with him as possible. I became a voracious reader and was reading books meant for fifth graders when I was only in the second grade. Once my daddy got me a bicycle, I could get around on my own and spent all my time in the county library, where I read just about everything I could get my hands on.

“Most schools, even in rural communities, have programs to help smart kids – so-called gifted-and-talented programs. Obviously, some are better than others, but most of them are intended for kids with above-average intelligence, kids who might go to an Ivy League school if they can afford it, kids who might take advanced placement, college-level courses in high school or maybe even take community-college courses for dual credit where it’s available. These are still kids who will complete a full public-school curriculum and graduate high school when they’re eighteen.

“With the exception of a few notable school systems in places like New York, most schools don’t have a clue what to do with a true genius. In New York, there’s a critical mass of genius kids and they actually have schools for kids with an I.Q. at or above 140. Rural schools may not see a kid like that in several years. My fifth-grade teacher, however, took notice of my lack of participation in class in spite of my grades, so he did something rotten. In place of the regular achievement test given to us every year, he gave me the test for kids completing the eighth grade, instead. The test booklets are all different, to keep kids from cheating, and he removed the cover of mine so I wouldn’t see that it wasn’t the fifth-grade version.

“When the results came back, he sat down with me and my dad and told us what he’d done, and that I was in the 99^th percentile for eighth graders. As a result, I skipped all of middle school and went directly to high school, at the age of eleven.”

“Jesus, that musta been rough,” Sammy interjected. “I can imagine how the high-school freshmen treated you.”

“You hit a bullseye,” I replied. “I went from hell at home to hell at school, but I was used to putting up and shutting up. Still the emotional toll was high, and I even started to make plans, both to run away and for suicide. I didn’t see how I could get through four years of high school, but then one of the librarians took an interest in me. She tried to get me to open up, but when she saw me shutting down instead, she went off in a different direction and acted as a personal mentor, guiding me on what to read to satisfy my interests. She showed me online sites designed specifically for kids like me, and I quickly got through a math, science and engineering curriculum, even as I participated in my usual classes. I suppose now I might try to go back and get college credit for some of that and even work toward my degree, but at the time, I didn’t have any money of my own.

“Which brings up the next phase of my education, tutoring. As I approached my twelfth birthday, my librarian mentor asked me if I’d be interested in tutoring middle-school students. I had no idea how much I would enjoy it, and I managed to save some money of my own. God knows, my father didn’t give me an allowance even though I worked for him full time in his painting business in the summers at no pay.”

“That’s illegal!” Sammy exclaimed.

“Tell me something I didn’t know,” I responded, “which was why I accelerated my plans to leave home when I turned sixteen, but things got so bad that I couldn’t wait even that long, which is how I ended up here.”

“Why didn’t you simply use your tutoring funds to get your college degree?” Sammy asked.

“Because you need a high school diploma to apply to an online university, and I couldn’t even get a GED until I was sixteen with a waiver from my high school and signature from my dad, a signature I’d have never gotten. Besides, I needed all my money to run away and survive. I used it to buy a good bike since I couldn’t drive and to provide for food, shelter and clothing. Unfortunately, everything I owned was stolen when I got to Missouri, which is how I landed in Kansas City, penniless.”

“Did you ever have to resort to—” Sammy asked but then hesitated to complete his question. He didn’t have to.

“No, I never resorted to selling my body,” I replied. “I didn’t steal or otherwise break the law, but I did get picked up and put in juvie for a time until I figured out they were violating my rights in holding me without filing charges. There were no charges to file, and they didn’t want to hafta deal with CPS ’cause I was from out of state. Someday I’ll hafta tell you the story of how I got out of juvie, but the bottom line is I got very lucky and was taken in by the Rodriguez family. I worked for them for room and board and saved a small amount of money, too.”

“That’s quite a story, J.J.” Fran said.

“The question is, how does it relate to Henry’s situation?” Jerry asked. “He has a loving home with a supportive family and a loving boyfriend. I still don’t understand why that isn’t enough or why he’d try pot and alcohol or even think of suicide.”

“Then maybe you should ask me, Dad.” Henry interjected. “Talk directly to me. You’re not the deputy director of this family. You’re not a major general here, Dad, you’re my father, and I hope you realize there’s a difference.”

Jerry seemed visibly shaken by Henry’s words. Finally, he responded, “You’re right, Henry. I do tend to think as an officer more than a father most of the time, and I’ll try to change that. There’s one thing that’s similar, though, and I think we should try it.

“In the military there’s something called the wink-out factor. We know a certain percentage of our soldiers won’t be able to handle the stress of battle and will kill themselves rather than seek help. We account for this, but we also try to identify those young men and women and get them help before they break. We already know you’re at risk, Henry, so I think we need to look into counseling. Maybe even a shrink.”

“I think counseling’s an excellent idea,” I interrupted, “but it has to involve the family. One-on-one sessions with Henry, group sessions with Henry, his parents and anyone else he feels should be there, and a few sessions involving the whole family.” Then sheepishly I added, “I’ve read a lot of stuff and some of it had to do with psychology.”

“That sounds like a good plan,” Fran chimed in. “Perhaps the school can give us some names.”

“How do you feel about that, Henry?” Jerry asked, addressing his son for the first time. “Do you need professional help dealing with the alcohol and drugs? Do you still feel like killing yourself?”

“I’m not gonna kill myself,” Henry replied. “So long as you guys listen to me and address my problems, there’ll be no need to. Besides which, I now have way too much to lose to give up on life. It would be selfish of me. As promised, I’ll show you where I’ve been keeping my Oxy and I’ll let you dispose of it. I don’t keep any pot or other drugs in the house, and you have my word I won’t touch it again. As I told J.J., I think it’s highly overrated. I do like beer. So’s Daren, and he’ll soon be fourteen, but my thirteenth birthday is still months away. I have no desire to get drunk or anything like that. There’s no way I need professional help. What I propose is that we won’t drink beer until we have your okay and then only in your presence.”

“That sounds fair,” Jerry agreed. “What about counseling?”

Shrugging his shoulders, he replied, “Personally, I think all we need is better communication like we’re having now, but I’m game for personal counseling as long as there’s also family counseling.”

Turning to me, Jerry asked, “J.J., what do you think we should do about Henry’s academics?”

“I don’t want to see him go through anything like what I went through,” I replied. “He needs socialization with kids his own age and, of course, with his boyfriend, every bit as much as education.”

“Which was why I wanted to keep him in his regular grade level,” Jerry countered.

“The only way to do that,” I replied, “would be to send him to a top private school or maybe even a renowned boarding school like Phillips Academy back East. Maybe he could get a scholarship. Otherwise, the tuition is like that at a private university and with six other kids to get through college, I doubt you can afford it.” Jerry’s nodding head confirmed it.

“There are those who would say he should start college next year,” I continued, “But that would be like what happened to me when I skipped middle school, and although college kids are supposedly better than high-school kids when it comes to bullying, he wouldn’t be in with kids his own age. From what I’ve read, you can’t skip stages of adolescent development. You can bypass them, but at some point, the adolescent behavior that hasn’t been mastered will surface. The last thing you want is for it to happen as an adult. That’s kinda what happened to Edward Snowden.

“Henry has already mastered the entire high-school math curriculum and then some. He’s already solving problems involving complex differential equations. With a little more study, he’ll be ready for quantum physics. At the least, he can challenge all of his high-school math and science courses. If he passes the final exams, he’ll get credit without having to sit through them. Better still, you and Henry should meet with the chair of the math department at the University of Nebraska. Let Henry show him what he can do. Chances are he or she would be willing to devise an exam for Henry put together from past final exams and award actual college credit for the ones he passes. You’ll only need to pay to enroll Henry at the university and possibly a small recording fee. With a college transcript in hand, you can ask the high school to award dual credit, which should more than satisfy the math requirements for graduation.”

“There’s a hell of a lot more to school than math, J.J.,” Jerry pointed out.

“Yes, and I have a plan to address that, as well as the socialization issues,” I replied. “You could go to his guidance counselor and demand that Henry be tested, but chances are he’ll end up being placed with high-school juniors and that would be just about the worst thing that could happen to him. I have personal experience with that sort of thing. What I recommend is that Henry challenge the entire eighth-grade curriculum. I’ll tutor him to make sure he’s ready to pass all the tests. We can do it over the summer so it doesn’t interfere with the current school year. Then we’ll enroll him as a high-school freshman next year. He could easily pass for one and should have no trouble fitting in. He’ll probably have to complete a regular freshman year, but we’ll sign him up for all the most advanced courses available.

“Starting in his sophomore year, we’ll sign him up for college courses for dual credit. He can do that for two or three years and then either start college as a college sophomore when he’s turning sixteen or as a college junior when he’s turning seventeen. Either way, he’ll have the credits to get a high-school diploma, and his first undergraduate degree when he’s nineteen. The advantage of doin’ it that way is he’ll be in with kids nearly his own age, at least until he’s close to sixteen or, if you prefer, seventeen. And he’ll be in Darren’s grade level for at least three years – or maybe four.”

Jerry was just about to turn to Fran to discuss it but seemed to realize there was someone more important to talk to first. Turning to face his youngest son, he asked, “What do you think, Henry?”

“I like it,” he replied. “I think it’s the right compromise between academics and social skills.”

“Fran?” Jerry asked.

“I agree,” she answered, then looked at me and said, “Thanks, J.J., for everything.”

“Good,” Jerry responded. “I’ll look into setting up a meeting with the chair of math at the U. of N., and into arranging for Henry to challenge his eighth-grade classes.” Then turning to me, he said, “J.J., you have an interview in the morning at Applazon. You’ll go there with Rob, of course, but there are a lot of other things we need to do, not the least of which is getting you enrolled in the high school so we can enroll you in driver’s ed this summer. As a C.O., my schedule’s flexible and I’ll pick you up from your interview, take you to the post office to establish your residence and then to the high school to sign you up, with me standing in for your parent or guardian. With my rank, no one will question it.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Rob responded, “but we have a lot to do tonight if we’re gonna move Henry into my bedroom and J.J. into Sammy’s. Also, there’s a major snowstorm coming, and we should probably get ready for it.” Shit, I had no idea what needed to be done for a snowstorm.

“At least I don’t have that much to move,” I noted. “Most of the stuff I bought today is still in the wash, which reminds me. I need to get back to that, too.”

“I’ll take care of washing your stuff, J.J.,” Fran interjected, but then I turned beet red on thinking of the double entendre she’d accidentally used. “I know you’re teenagers, but you boys need to get your heads out of the gutter,” she added. “You just take care of moving all of Henry’s things and rearranging your bedrooms, and I’ll take care of the rest.”