Adonis

Week 3- Exercise is to Create a conflict situation where your character discovers something that has a life changing effect on him, makes him revise his opinion or change his mind. 300 words

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“I’m glad I bumped into you. I’ve been meaning to call. It’s to do with your son.” The forty- something kitten-heeled woman looked vaguely familiar to him.

“Jason?”

He was in a bit of a hurry, a business lunch to get to; who was she anyway?

He had this kind of car park encounter often. Jason was the ideal student, top of his class, top of his game, tennis-ace, soccer-star; everyone wanted a piece of him. She was probably scouting for the college cricket team. He’d met her at one of those school fund-raising events. What was her name? Kelly or Kiely, something like that, a parent of one of Jason’s classmates, a fat kid with glasses, Benje or Harry.

But something in her sour-faced expression threw him off his present tack. Not sour grapes sour, and her neck was streaked with a vivid rash of emotion. ..Women… Emotion…. A metal grid clicked and descended.

“What about Jason?”

“Tell him to lay off my Harry.”

“How do you mean?” His voice echoed off the grid, throwing his own faltering tone back to him.

“I mean bullying. I mean the One kidney Kiely joke.”

That boy!  

 “It doesn’t sound like Jason to…”

“Oh, it’s him. Egging on the others. He’s the ringleader.”

 He had clinked glasses with her at that last charity event organised by her to raise money for the Overseas Construction Volunteer Project for transition year students.

The silence stretched. He should be apologising by now or asking for details or… but his imagination couldn’t stretch to it, to the schoolyard where his Adonis was baiting a sick boy to raise a cheap laugh.  

Her face crumpled and the grid shattered, and then it happened and he saw it. His golden child, nonchalant, indifferent, raising the hue and cry.

Copyright with Cathy Leonard 2019