Moody Blue

© Karen Greim Mullian
September 7, 2004

Many, many thanks to Kathy Wade <jkrickit> for her dilligent and faithful betaing. I'm her biggest fan!

Christmas morning, 1979 – A sullen teenage boy sat alone in the corner of the rec-room at the Roosevelt Home for Orphaned Children. He was the oldest that year, much older than the others, much taller, thin, gawky, and shy, his reddish-brown shoulder-length hair constantly falling into his eyes. He had just been returned by his seventh foster parents because he didn't get along with the family's three natural children who said he was a stuck-up snob and spent all his time with his nose in a book or writing in his notebook. The adults reported that they found him to be rude and disrespectful and a bad example of the New York State child welfare system, and they wanted nothing more to do with him.

Engrossed in one of the many books he'd brought from the New York City Library to read during the holiday break, he appeared to ignore the mayhem around him as the younger children unwrapped toys donated by well-meaning but faceless strangers. That's how fourteen-year-old Daniel Jackson described them in his journal, a tattered spiral notebook that he had bought for fifty cents at a yard sale at his last foster parents' neighbors' house six months ago. It cost him the last bit of money he had in his pocket, and as such, he treasured his purchase.

It was one of those thick ones with three heavy-gauge card-stock dividers and 150 sheets in each section. Originally meant for school, Daniel had made an initial pretense of taking notes in class; but before Thanksgiving the notebook was nearly filled with unfinished poetry, quotations from his favorite writers, drawings, and his own random, as yet unformed thoughts. Light years ahead of his schoolmates, he rarely took more than passing notice of his teachers. Instead he spent his time sketching detailed illustrations of Egyptian pyramids, sarcophagi, shabti, and funeral masks, many of which he had seen while prowling around museums downtown on weekends when he managed to find carfare and admission fees. The pictures he drew more often came from the descriptions among his father's papers of excavated artifacts which he then compared with the exquisite drawings his mother had done. His parents' journals he kept wrapped in an old piece of blue and white striped flannel locked away in his suitcase along with the long-suffering stuffed dog that had seen better days, remnants of a much happier life.

A week before the Christmas holiday, Mr. Peebles, his geometry teacher, had confiscated the notebook and read Daniel the Riot Act for not paying attention in class. For the rest of the week the teenager was sick with fear that he'd never see his journal again or worse, that Mr. Peebles would read it and think he was crazy.

Then on the last day before the break, Mr. Peebles returned the notebook with a suggestion that the boy talk to his guardians about sitting for the SATs come spring, two years earlier than usual.

"You're ready now," the geometry teacher said in response to Daniel's obvious hesitation. "Danny, I've never known anyone to be more ready than you are. Your transcript from middle school indicates that you're very smart. I know your lack of interest in geometry isn't because you don't get it. Your journal proves that your mathematical skills are far above average. And most people twice your age don't write as well as you do."

"You looked in my journal?" Daniel asked, appalled that he had allowed so much of himself to be revealed by not doing what he was supposed to be doing. The concept of invasion of privacy never occurred to him.

"Now what about the test?" asked Mr. Peebles.

Daniel hung his head. There was barely enough money for the orphanage to provide the basic necessities for the seventeen other kids he lived with. If one of the younger kids got sick, the cost of taking the SATs could pay for the doctor and medicine. He'd couldn't be that self-centered.

"I'm sure the New York City School District could scrape together the fee," Mr. Peebles suggested, sensing the cause of the teenager's concern. "And if they don't, I will."

The offer should have excited him, but it didn't. Mortified at the thought of more charity, the boy shook his head vehemently.

"No," he said firmly. "It's okay, Mr. Peebles. I don't need to take the test now."

It was only another stupid test. Everybody knew you automatically got two hundred points just for putting your name on the paper. Besides, he already knew he was a genius. That and fifty cents could get him a Coke at Nedick's – or another notebook at a yard sale.

"If you do well," Mr. Peebles assured him, "the best colleges in the country will come looking for you. You'll be able to go anywhere you want, major in anything you want. UCLA has an advanced placement anthropology program. Or the University of Pennsylvania. You could study with Professor Cotter."

"Clovis Cotter?" Daniel asked with zeal and not a little derision. "I couldn't. His theory on the Clovis Indians is all wrong. They couldn't have been the first. They didn't fall from the sky like their legends say. Do they think they were deposited in the middle of New Mexico by aliens? Now if you were to dig in the mountains of the Northwest, you'd find –"

Mr. Peebles put up a hand to stop him. "Danny. I'm just a geometry teacher," he said, reluctant to dampen his passion. "And do you mean to say Cotter's wrong?"

The blush returned, and Daniel swallowed his lips to keep any more inane ideas from escaping. He should never have said anything. Professor Cotter was the most respected pre-Columbian anthropologists in the United States. Most archaeologists thought he was the greatest thing since sliced bread. Who was he, Daniel Jackson, to refute the man's findings when they had stood unquestioned since the 1930s?

Mr. Peebles looked over his half-glasses as he handed back the spiral notebook.

"It's four o'clock," he said. "You'd better head for home. It's already getting dark. Have a good holiday, Danny."

* * *

"There's a present under the tree for you," said Georgie Ward, an eight-year-old who for some unknown reason had attached himself to the elusive, mercurial teenager.

The other children had received their Christmas presents, yet one package remained, and it was driving Georgie crazy.

Daniel refused to be distracted from his library book on Carter's excavations of the tomb of Tutankhamun in 1922.

"Go away, George," he said, using the little boy's proper name as he did with almost everyone he met. "There's never anything for me."

That wasn't entirely true, of course. The guardians always made sure there was something for everyone. What Daniel really meant was that there was never anything he could actually use. It was usually a sweater or something else he could live without. His sneakers were getting a little tight, but they'd do for another year if he'd only stop growing. They never gave him any books or records, not because they were lousy guardians but because they never asked what he might want and he never thought to tell them. His grandfather barely acknowledged the teenager was alive, so he didn't expect a Christmas present from him. So, logically, whatever might be under the tree had to be for someone else.

"Come on, Danny," Georgie coaxed, pulled Daniel by the sleeve. "I wouldn't make it up. Not on Christmas. Please, Danny, come and look."

The child would never stop pestering him, so with a deep sigh, Daniel carefully placed a 3x5 card in his book and let himself be dragged into the tumult of noisy, happy children. There, under the brightly decorated Christmas tree, lay a solitary remaining package with a stick-on bow and a Santa name tag that read, "Daniel Jackson." He recognized the small block letters as Mr. Peebles'.

"See?" said Georgie, proud of himself for being right.

A little confused, Daniel picked up the box and carried it back to his place in the corner of the room where he set it on the pile of library books on the floor beside him. He wondered when Mr. Peebles had dropped the present off. He wondered why.

"Aren't you going to open it?" Georgie asked.

"No," Daniel answered, trying to ignore both Georgie and the neatly wrapped box.

"But Danny, it's Christmas. You gotta open it."

"Why?" the older boy asked slowly.

"Because it's your Christmas present. You gotta open your Christmas present. Santa Claus brought it all the way from the North Pole.

Daniel made a noise of impatience. Before he turned eight, before he lost everything that had made him feel safe, he had believed in all manner of nonsense, including Santa Claus. Now he knew better.

"There is no Santa Claus," he said bluntly, then to mitigate the truth when he saw Georgie's face start to crumble, he added, "At least not the way you mean it. It's just make believe."

"Is not," Georgie insisted.

"Have it your way," Daniel surrendered with a shrug, determined not to get into an argument. He opened his book and went back to reading about the "wonderful things" Howard Carter had seen in King Tut's tomb.

For the longest time the little boy stared. The teenager tried to ignore him. Finally, Daniel leaned his head back on his shoulders, his long hair blocking his vision, and made the same impatient snort he had made before.

"What?"

"Don't you wanna know what Santa brought me?" asked Georgie.

Daniel took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. There wouldn't be any peace until he agreed. When he surrendered, Georgie's face lit up, and he raced off to find his gift. It was a red metal die-cast car. The little boy already knew everything there was to know about the vehicle. Cars – toy or otherwise – were the last thing to interest Daniel, yet he listened to Georgie intently, with more good will than patience, absorbing the details despite his lack of attention. It was one of several ways in which he learned; his brain was brimming over with other equally unimportant and useless information that he could retrieve in its proper context without pause. He nodded appreciably until the dissertation was at long last over. Then he opened his book again.

"Do you want to play with me?" Georgie asked hopefully. "Please?"

"I think I'm going to open my present," he answered to evade the issue.

To the impatient excitement of his admiring companion, Daniel slid his long, slender index finger under the tape methodically, careful not to tear the paper in case it could be used again. Once the wrapping was discarded, Georgie sounded out the words on the box to himself – "Sony Walkman AM-FM Stereo Audiocassette Player" – his lips moving as he read.

Taped to the bottom of the box was something else, something smaller, wrapped in the same paper as the Walkman had been. Daniel unwrapped the second part of the gift, already guessing what it was. Probably some crappy tape by some crappy Top Forties band that nobody would remember a year from now. He turned the tape over in his hand and read the label: The Best of Samuel Barber, the Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy conducting. A quick look at the play list showed that the first piece was one of Daniel's favorites, the mournful Adagio for Strings.

Even a smile as slight as the one that crossed his face changed his entire appearance. For once in his life here was something he actually liked. It seemed a thousand years ago that his mother would put that record on the turntable and hold him in her arms until he fell asleep – usually the night before she and his father left him behind in New York while they traveled to Egypt for the summer archaeological season. Six years after their deaths, he sometimes pretended his parents were just away on a dig. Sometimes the only way he could fall asleep was to pretend his mother held him in her arms.

Daniel listened to that tape throughout the rest of Christmas Day, generously letting Georgie listen to it later that night until the child fell asleep at the foot of his hero's bed. It was the happiest Christmas Daniel could remember since he was Georgie's age, and he too slept well, a gentle hand resting on the little boy's head.

The next morning, however, he got into serious trouble for breaking the rules by not making Georgie go to his own room to sleep. Grounded for a month, it meant no museums, no libraries after school or for the next four weekends. All because he felt sorry for a lonely little orphan on Christmas Day. He should have known better. It had been stupid to allow Georgie to get so close, and he refused to let the boy near him after that. He swore he would never let anyone that close again.

* * *

Confused and devastated by his hero's rejection, Georgie hurled his news at Daniel as if it were a javelin.

"I'm being adopted, and I'm glad ‘cause I'll never have to see you again. I know why you never got adopted. Nobody wants you. You're a freak. I hate you, Daniel Jackson!"

"What do I care?" Daniel blurted out, hiding his own hurt in a venomous response. "I'm glad you're going. Then I won't have to be bothered with you anymore, you little pest."

A few weeks later on a bleak, slushy Saturday morning in February, Georgie's adopted parents arrived to take him home with them. Daniel watched over the top of his book while Georgie struggled to bring his suitcase down the steps to the front hall. When the child looked at him furtively while his new mother lovingly zipped the jacket that was too big for him, Daniel kept his seething eyes on his reading. Over the past six years he'd seen plenty of kids leave Roosevelt's. He never got friendly with most of them, knowing they'd go at some point, never to return.

He, on the other hand, would remain at Roosevelt's forever – he'd probably die here, he thought somberly. He'd been in a black mood since Georgie's news, and it effected everything he did. At school he just went through the motions to keep his teachers off his back, though he'd totally lost interest in his classes and had no great hopes for the assessment of his abilities as his ticket to a new life. If he had a future, which he very much doubted, it would be just as bleak as the past six years.

"You'd better get a move on, young man," said Mrs. Webster, one of the home supervisors. "You need to be at school by ten."

By the time he found all the things he needed to take with him, there was no possibility of arriving on time by public transportation. As it was, Mrs. Webster dropped him off at the high school with only a minute to spare for registration. He took the last seat left in the cafeteria where the SATs were being administered, listened to the instructions given in monotone by the proctor, used his pencil to break the seal on the test packet, and wrote his name on the answer sheet as directed. Then for the next two hours he filled in ovals randomly without reading the questions in the test booklet. He didn't care about achievement tests or getting into college. He didn't care that he was a genius. He didn't care about anything any more.

* * *

Mr. Peebles couldn't help but express his disappointment at Daniel's poor showing on the SATs when the results came in a few weeks later. And he had no choice but to fail him for the semester in geometry because Daniel had stopped turning in his homework.

"What's happened to you, Danny?" Mr. Peebles wanted to know.
Daniel tilted his head to one side as he gazed past his teacher, his hair falling as usual into his face. He refused to meet the man's eyes, refused to say anything. It was clear by the way his jaw was set and his arms were folded over his lean chest that he had no intention of providing enlightenment.

"Your grades have slipped in the past few months," Mr. Peebles continued in exasperation. "And not just in math. You're going to have to take English and chemistry in summer school. That's not going to look good on a transcript. How do you think you're going to get into college now?"

Daniel's blue eyes rolled, and he pursed his lips.

Concerned, Mr. Peebles asked, "Danny, are you in some kind of trouble?"

For a short moment, the mask slipped, and Daniel's color changed slightly. His eyes locked onto his teacher's, and a furrow formed on his brow. And then the unspoken plea for help was gone.

The geometry teacher knew there was no girl involved. At five foot ten, Daniel was in the ugly duckling phase of his early teens, still growing, all arms and legs that were difficult to keep properly clothed and with feet out of proportion to the rest of his awkward, skinny frame. Only his hands, delicate and expressive, gave any hint of what he might one day become.

So if it wasn't Judy, it could only be Punch, as the saying goes. Yet there were none of the telltale signs of other teenage vices. The boy didn't have the money for cigarettes, beer, or marijuana. He had survived the bullying of older, tougher boys, resisted a shakedown by one particularly nasty creep who beat him unmercifully for refusing to supply test answers last fall. Daniel had shown himself to be self-reliant, self-contained, and resourceful, cautiously avoiding getting himself embroiled in high school intrigues. Respectful and caring, he had been liked by his teachers and fellow students. A loner by nature and circumstance, however, no one knew him well; and it was difficult to tease out what he was thinking.

"Danny, what is it?" Mr. Peebles asked once more. "What's troubling you?"

Daniel said nothing, hugging himself tighter.

"Don't try to dodge this, young man," Mr. Peebles advised. "I'll find out what's going on."

The sullen, defiant stare told Mr. Peebles that the boy could endure the most probing interrogation; but it was the deep-seated sorrow in those blue eyes that revealed more than their owner wanted anyone to know.

"I want to help you," the teacher said kindly.

Daniel swallowed. He released his right arm, and the slender fingers worked furiously.

"You can't," he said finally, straining to maintain control. "Nobody can."

The tears standing in his eyes threatened to unman him, and he turned abruptly on his heel to make his escape, walking at first, faster and faster, breaking into a trot, then a gallop. He ran at breakneck speed through the halls, out the front door of the school, down the granite steps. Dodging traffic, he crossed intersections against the light, running faster than he ever had in his life. Over the honking of car horns, Mr. Peebles shouted his name, serving only to harden Daniel's resolve.

As the river came into sight, he wiped stinging sweat from his eyes and rubbed his wet hands on his pants. He hauled himself onto the gabled concrete railing where he balanced precariously while he looked below him at the water as it swirled around the bridge pilings. It wasn't that far down, but it was going to hurt when he broke the surface, probably a lot harder than when Joey Sanduskas pushed him into the deep end when he hesitated on the high dive during gym last year. He'd hit the lower board and wound up with a dislocated shoulder, not to mention three weeks detention for fooling around by the pool. He'd been afraid of heights before that happened. Now just standing at the top of a flight of stairs could make him sick.

"Danny! Please come down from there," Mr. Peebles said, huffing from the near marathon chase.

"Keep away," Daniel pleaded, growing dizzier by the minute.

"Ya know," the math teacher quipped, still trying to catch his breath, "you might want to consider going out for the track team."

"They don't want me," Daniel replied angrily. "I'm too clumsy."

"You just ran eight city blocks without breaking stride. You're fast. God, I think I'm having a heart attack."

Daniel glanced down at his teacher. Mr. Peebles looked fine to him. He wasn't even breathing hard. Daniel, on the other hand, was about to throw up.

"You're lying," the teen said, his face turning a sickly shade of green.

"Danny, please."

"Just leave me alone," he begged, beginning to hope he'd fall off the bridge before he died of shame.

"Come on, Danny, you don't want to do this."

"What do you know about what I want?" Daniel demanded, tears streaming down his face.

"You're only fourteen years old. You've got your whole life ahead of you."

"That's supposed to make me feel better?" Daniel shouted.

"So you didn't do so well on your SATs. You'll take them again in a couple of months."

When Daniel looked down at Mr. Peebles again, he was red faced.

"Do you really think I care about some stupid test?" he cried. "I could have passed it if I wanted to."

"Then why didn't you?"

"Because it doesn't matter. It's just a test. It doesn't prove anything."

"The best colleges in the country –"

"Yes, I know. You've already told me that."

"Danny, you're probably the smartest kid I've ever had in my class."

"It doesn't matter."

"It does matter. I read your journal, Danny. You're brilliant."

"You don't understand," Daniel raged at him. "I'm a freak!"

"You're different," Mr. Peebles granted. "I won't argue about that."

"I don't belong anywhere. I'm too smart for high school. I'm too young for college. I'm the oldest kid at Roosevelt's. I've been there longer than anybody else. You know, they have a birthday cake once a month. Nobody there even knows when my birthday is. The people who buy my clothes don't know what I look like. My glasses are paid for by the State of New York. I've been in seven foster families. My own grandfather doesn't want me. I'm the freaky, geeky orphan nobody wants."

He was crying so hard now that he couldn't see. In frustration he pulled off his glasses, but it only made things worse. With his vision blurred, at least he couldn't see how high up he was; but he had to put his glasses back on before he dropped them. As he raised his hands to fix the frames properly behind his ears, his foot went out from under him. His stomach rose to his throat. The possibility that he might actually fall triggered his instinct for self-preservation, and he lurched forward, throwing out his hands to clutch the concrete railing. The impact knocked the breath out of him, and he screamed.

The math teacher saw his chance and grabbed Daniel by the arms and hauled him over the rail and onto the sidewalk. He brushed the long hair from the frightened boy's face and hugged him.

"I won't let anything happen to you, Danny," he said, his voice quavering.

For a long time, Daniel's knees shook so hard that he could scarcely stand; but with Mr. Peebles help, he remained standing.

"Mr. Peebles?" he said when he found his voice.

"Yes, Danny?"

"I don't think I'm as smart as you think I am," Daniel confessed. "This was a really stupid idea."

Mr. Peebles nodded in agreement.

"Yes, it was, Danny," he assured him. "But somehow I don't think it's going to be your last."

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