Jack Kelly isn’t stupid but he’s good at pretending he is because he doesn’t feel smart and anyway smart doesn’t get you anywhere in his world. In his world, it’s survival of the strongest fists, the fastest feet. It’s fight for yourself and for other people you want to survive with you. In his world, smart means nothing except maybe reading the headlines faster. Maybe in another world, Jack Kelly would be smart. Maybe it shows in flashes, when his guard is down, when he shows the bits and pieces he’s picked up from old books he’s used for drawing paper and pieces of lessons he’s heard from outside school windows. Most of the time, though, Jack Kelly acts the way he knows he has to, with all the bruised fists and black eyes and stubborn bravado to prove it.
And then Davey shows up, and he’s weaponized smart. He doesn’t have the bruised knuckles, the black eyes, the crooked nose that mark success in Jack’s world. He has the fast feet, but more than that he has a sharp tongue. His eyes flash and his mouth opens and people step back like they’ve been hit. When he says something he says it with complete confidence, he knows what he knows and he says it with complete confidence and he’s right. And in the quieter moments, moments like the ones where Jack shows the things he’s learned, smart isn’t a weapon, it’s a gift he likes to share. He likes to sit with the little ones and teach them how to sound out big words, to teach them what things are and why things are.
Jack has never seen anything like it, in his world of fists and feet and bruises and scars. He’s never seen how somebody’s words can not only incite a fight but cause damage, make somebody react like they’ve been hit. He’s never seen somebody who’s brain and tongue work so fast, jumping into arguments and winning them in a single sentence.
He’s seen people yell to get a crowd worked up, but he’s never seen somebody who can just as quickly calm them down, who can get people on his side and behind him at the same time.
He’s never seemed smart used as anything other than a tool. A way to connect the dots. A bragging point about the world smart comes from and the people that inhabit it, a world of homes and food every day and work with a roof overhead, a world that Jack hasn’t known in a long time.
And Davey’s smart is none of that. Davey’s smart is useful. It’s a weapon, it’s words Jack can borrow and pull from and use with his own image to make everything stronger, it’s simple and sweet and kind, it’s everything Jack didn’t know smart could be.
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