Admissions

Episode 10: Better Days

Episode 10: Better Days

"First of all, we told you we would pay for you to attend the university, not for anything else. Second of all, that credit card is to help you pay for your textbooks. You don't think we don't look at the statements, Jethro? You spent nearly over a hundred dollars on alcohol alone. Are you forgetting the whole reason we gave you this choice in the first place?"

Jethro sat on his bed with his teeth gritted, his legs folded tightly as he held the phone to his ear, hearing his father's raspy snarl over the line. He wanted nothing more than to get up and sucker punch his old man in the face.

"You said you chose the only share house you could afford and that everything else would be easy. I assumed you knew what that meant," his father continued in one of his infamous rants, "Jethro, I can't keep holding your hand throughout your life, do you understand me? Your stunt in Italy was the last straw. It's your turn to learn some responsibility."

"This isn't fair! I don't know how to get a fucking job! You're supposed to just give me one after the trip!"

"And when the hell did I say such a thing?"

"I assumed cuz I'm your only son!"

"What is this, medieval England? Jethro, this is America. In America, we work for what we want. There's no such thing as a free lunch. Get a job, earn your own income, and you'll understand. Would you want to give things away for free? That's how lazy people are born."

"Okay, first of all, that sounded stupid as fuck. The American dream is dead--"

"Jethro, shut your mouth or I'll just drag your ass to military school tomorrow morning. I can send Robert and Martha in bright and early and they'll have you packed up and shipped off. I should've just done that in the first place. Do you have any idea how much embarrassment you've caused me since Italy? Your face was plastered all over the news. Shameless son gets caught breaking into a house coked up, drunk, and then vomits on a police officer? I want you to take a moment and think about that. You could cost your mother and I our jobs, our positions. We did not work hard just to have you tear things apart."

"I told you it wasn't supposed to be like that," Jethro argued angrily, leaping off his bed to pace, grateful that Ivy was downstairs and not in the room to see him throw a temper tantrum, "I told you those guys did it on purpose!"

"Of course they did! They saw a typical idiot American and took advantage of him. You want a job with me, in Washington, with that lack of brain capacity? I don't think so. The only place that'll hire you at this rate is McDonalds, and even then they'll probably fire you when they realize you can't even wash your hands the right way. God above, you are an embarrassment, Jethro."

At this point, Jethro didn't want to continue. He stopped in the middle of his room, his muscles stiffening, his lips pressing hard together. He didn't want that to bother him as much as it had, but it did. He felt it like a stab through the chest. He couldn't defend himself either, because when it came down to it, his father was fucking right. He wasn't that smart, and he knew it. It was why he'd made up for it by being the guy that everyone liked.

He wasn't going to tell his dad the truth; that he'd desperately wanted to make friends in Italy, so he played along with just about everything they wanted. They wanted to drink, so he drank. They wanted to try drugs, so he did too. Breaking the law? Whatever they did, he followed.

At the end of the day, Jethro Black didn't have a mind of his own.

And he was an embarrassment.

"Enough," his father sighed at last, and Jethro could imagine his father raking a hand through his thinning peppered hair, "I don't have time to babysit you. Your credit card is cancelled until you can learn a little responsibility. Look for a job. Make some money. Work hard in school. And then, maybe then, I will consider you for a secretary job. But you won't get anything in this world if you don't work, Jethro. And if you fail your first semester, I will rip your ass out of that school so fast your head will spin and drop you in a military school, do you understand me? And do not call me again. I'm extremely busy right now. Fucking democrats climbing up my ass about the recent shooting in California and I don't have time to listen to you whine. You're supposed to be a man. Act like one." Without another word, the line went dead.