The Sacrificial Daughter (25 page)

The rest of her school day practically flew by and other than her challenge to fight Amanda being accepted, it was generally pleasant. Sure she heard the occasional vile limerick but these were easier to ignore when she'd remind herself that without them she wouldn't be passing English this year.

This wasn't a done deal just yet. Jesse figured that she'd try to get Mrs. Jerryman alone sometime in the next day or two and then drop the hammer on her. Just the thought of it brought a warm feeling to her guts.

The rest of Art class breezed by and Ms Weldon even complimented Jesse on her sketch. For the most part Jesse had just scribbled randomly enjoying the mixing of colors.

"I like how you are capturing your anger," the teacher said. "This will work nicely on Saturday." When Jesse's eyebrows came down in consternation, Ms Weldon added, "You do remember that this is a mandatory school assembly?"

Jesse could only smile and nod.

Her lunch period was spent in the warm confines of the front office, more specifically the waiting room in front of the principal's office. This was by design, rather than from an outgrowth of bad behavior. Nowhere else seemed safe and after the previous day's incident with Mrs. Castaneda, Jesse had exiled herself from the library. There was a bonus to sitting in the waiting room of the principal's office: her presence was a complete befuddlement to Mrs. Daly.

The lady had gone to the copier and Jesse had slipped on by and taken a seat. Every few minutes the receptionist would glance at her and wonder what she had done. Jesse had to fight from laughing at this every time.

It was just before the bell that ended fourth period rang that Jesse received her challenge. Amanda Jorgenson came out of the Principal's office looking like she just had her head handed to her.

Principal Peterson looked sharply at Jesse, "What did you do this time?"

Amanda had been evacuating the area in a hurry, but stopped to hear the answer. There was a certain distasteful eagerness in her eyes.

"Oh, nothing. I was just reading this old magazine," Jesse replied with a smile in her voice and on her lips. "It's very interesting." It was too. It was a
Time
magazine from 1990 and it read as if it could have been written a week before. Environment being destroyed, terrible political climate, same things as always. "You know this says the Amazon Rain Forest has been losing a chunk of jungle the size of South Carolina every year and has been since 1978? I did the math. They ran out of jungle four years ago...I bet it's nice down there now."

"Jesse...What...What do you want?" Principal Peterson asked in exasperation.

"Nothing," Jess replied. "I'm just sitting here."

"Oh." The principal didn't elaborate. He only turned and stalked back into his office.

"Did you have fun in there?" Jesse asked the tall blonde.

Amanda's eyes flashed daggers. "You're going to pay."

"I know, but I was going to pay either way. At least I had a little fun first."

"You want to fight me? Just the two of us?" Amanda asked in a quiet voice.

Jesse shook her head. "Really I don't. I want to be left alone."

"It's too late for that," Amanda replied still unnervingly quiet. "I'll fight you tonight; just you and me. Eight o'clock here at the school."

"No. You won't come alone. You're too chicken," Jesse replied. She didn't bother to bring up the fact that she would never travel this far at that time of night, not if she could help it.

"Then down at the berm. You'll be able to see all the way down it. I'll be alone. Eight o'clock...no weapons."

Don't agree to this, Jesse! Have you forgotten the Shadow-man already? You were practically killed just last night.

"Fine...eight o'clock," Jesse heard herself say. It felt like she was possessed, like someone else was running the machinery that made her lips move. Why had she just agreed to that?

Because you are an egotistical idiot
, her voice of reason responded. It might have been a reasonable voice, but it certainly wasn't charitable. Yet it was correct as always. Jesse couldn't have backed down from that fight, just like she couldn't have meekly accepted the swirly that had been planned for her in the bathroom. No matter the odds against her.

Just then the bell rang for fifth period and despite the fact that they shared the next class, the two girls went their separate ways. Amanda never made it to study hall and though Jesse did, she didn't study. She alternated between worrying about her coming fight and thinking about Ky. When it came to Ky, she never purposely started to think about him, he always just seemed to slip into her thoughts.

She missed him, which she knew was a very bad sign. Jesse hadn't seen Ky since first period and it was eating at her. It was so bad that she was actually looking forward to Mr. Irving's class.

He won't look at you.

She knew all too well.

When fifth period ended, Jesse waited for Ky and saw that he was still hard at work keeping to himself. It was flattering, since she knew that he didn't have to work this hard for anyone else. As he went by, she slipped into his protective wake and smiled as his shoulders twitched. With him in front, parting the crowded halls, Jesse made it to class unmolested and upbeat. In fact, she was practically perky, the view from where she had walked had been fine, fine, fine.

"Miss Clarke, are you going to be respectful today?" Mr. Irving asked. His eyes told Jesse that he hoped not.

"Yes sir," Jesse said. "I promised my father that I would." Before she knew it her eyes had slid off Mr. Irving's aging face and flicked back to Ky. His head was down, reading a book.

"Your father..." Mr. Irving said this as if it were the most painful subject. "Are you ready to discuss his policies in a calm, rational manner?"

Again? He was going down this road, again? "I...I...uh. Is this necessary?"

Mr. Irving held up one finger to her, while he addressed the class. "Quiet down; take your seats." He then turned back to Jesse and said loudly enough for the entire class to hear, "I'm not trying to pick on you. We're trying to get an understanding of your father's...unorthodox policies..." He was interrupted by snide laughter and under the breath snarky comments. When it quieted, he went on, "He seems to have a poor understanding of economics, and who could better explain his economic policies than his own daughter?"

"I don't know...an economics teacher maybe?" Jesse replied with a shrug.

She had said this pleasant enough for him to smile at her quip. "You would think so...only what he's doing doesn't actually count as economics."

"Then what is it?"

Mr. Irving strolled away from her for a moment so that he had the class's full attention. "I would call it slash and burn economics if anything."

The teacher seemed pleased with the new term he had just coined. He had the approval of a number of students as well, who nodded along in perfect bobble-head fashion.

"This is just like what you were talking about yesterday, when you went on about voo-doo and trickle-down economics," Jesse said, with a first spark of anger. "This is a tactic isn't it? It's called...semetic something."

"I don't know what you're talk..." Mr. Irving began, but Jesse interrupted when a memory flashed into her mind. She had been eating breakfast, while her father was perusing the newspaper and suddenly he was spouting about control of the language and...

"It's called semantic infiltration," Jesse said, the memory of her father lent some authority to her voice. At least in her own mind it did. "It's when you rename terms in order to affect a person's judgment of an idea. Like voo-doo economics. I'm sure that has another name..." she paused, waiting expectantly until the teacher finally spoke.

"Some people call it supply-side."

"Yes! That's semantic infiltration right there." Jesse was suddenly energized. "Who would ever take something called voo-doo or trickle-down seriously. However supply-side sounds respectable enough."

"That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet," Mr. Irving quoted. "It hardly matters what it's called. It's the outcome that's important."

"If it hardly matters then why use a different name?" Jesse paused a fraction of a second and then answered her own question. "Because, when someone can't win an argument on merit, they try to win on deception."

Jesse was coming close to being disrespectful and Mr. Irving's eyes had flashed at the word deception. But then he gave her a little smile. "You suddenly seem well versed in economics. How do you feel supply-side compares to Keynesian economics?"

The question was designed to demonstrate her lack of authority on the subject, something she was willing to admit. She'd heard the word Keynesian before, but barely knew anything about it. "Is that the 'prime the pump' one, or the one from Australia?"

"First it's not Australia...you are thinking of the Austrian school of thought, which is a form of trick...supply-side economics." Mr. Irving explained.

"Then it's the 'prime the pump' one," Jesse said. "Though I'm not really sure what that means."

"Priming the pump is only one of the many ways in which government, when properly run, can control a desired outcome." Mr. Irving went to the chalkboard and began writing the words
John Maynard Keynes
as he spoke. "Keynesian ideas suggest that when an economy is stagnating it can be re-ignited by infusing it with money or low interest rate loans. This is the very opposite of what your father is doing."

"But where does that money come from?" Jesse asked. "Do you just print the money willy-nilly? That's inflation, right? And doesn't that hurt everyone by making the money in their pockets worth less? Or do you take it from the private sector…from companies? If so it means they have less money to spend or hire…hurting the economy even more. "

"Taxes are a necessary evil, Miss Clarke."

"I never thought that taxes were evil," Jesse said considering. "But they can have evil outcomes...which is why I don't think I could be a...Keynesianist? Is that a word?"

Mr. Irving shook his head. "No it's not...but what do you mean by 'evil outcomes'? Is it evil to take from those with plenty of money and redistribute it to those with less?"

"That's not what I was thinking about, but the answer to your question is yes, that is evil. It's called stealing," Jesse replied. "Criminals, who are usually poor, do it all the time and we throw them in jail when they do. Aren't they just redistributing wealth from rich to poor?"

"It's not the same," Mr. Irving said with a touch of ire. "Criminal behavior is not the same as helping out your fellow man by paying your fair share of taxes."

"The rich don't pay their fair share," Jesse replied. This was greeted by heads nodding around the classroom, including that of Mr. Irving. She went on, "They pay
more
than their fair share." This statement stopped the nodding cold.

"Oh, Miss Clarke. It seems your father really has brain washed you," Mr. Irving said sadly. "The simple truth is that the rich can afford to pay a higher tax rate."

"Yes, but we weren't talking about the ability to afford to pay more. We were talking about the idea of fairness," Jesse replied. Again, statistics that were so important to her father that he couldn't help sharing,
repeatedly
, came back to her. "The top one percent of wage earners pays forty percent of all the taxes, while the lower half of the country only pays three percent. That doesn't seem fair to me. To be perfectly fair, everyone—rich or poor—would pay the exact same amount. Not the same rate, the same amount. That would be absolute fairness. Blind fairness. Instead we have this legal form of stealing."

Mr. Irving opened his mouth to reply, but Jesse was on a roll. She'd never really had friends to talk to and her father was usually absent and rarely had time to converse. And now, suddenly, she was given a platform to speak where she wasn't being held up to ridicule at every turn. She discovered that she actually had a lot to say and spoke right over Mr. Irving, who was only going to refute her statement either way.

"It is stealing," she said, in answer to his unspoken refutation. "If you don't pay your taxes, what happens? A man with a gun shows up and forces you into a cage until you pay what he demands. Sure there are courts and all, but the idea is the same. A criminal takes your money because he has the power of his gun...the government does the same exact thing. In no way is that charity. Charity is giving from the heart."

"If you are so against taxes how do you propose paying for infrastructure, defense, schools that sort of thing," Mr. Irving asked. He went to his desk where it looked to Jesse that he was going to start on actual class work. For some reason she felt disappointed at this.

"How would I do it? I would make the United States sort of like a club with membership dues," she replied. "You pay ten percent of your income or get out."

Mr. Irving looked skeptical, "Ten percent? It's not enough for everything that the government does."

"That's because the government tries to do too much...and this is the problem with Keynesian economics," Jesse said, leaning on her chair. "The Keynesians want government to help here and help there, because they are under the delusion that they can control the economy and steer it in a direction they like. But they can't. They never could, otherwise we'd be in a perfect economy by now. All the government does is get in the way of people living their lives and running their businesses. I think that's the main difference between Keynesian and Supply-side. One side looks to the government for answers to all problems, the other looks to the individual."