Read "There is Confusion" by Jessie Redmon Fauset online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
It was Joanna's love for beauty that made her consciously see Peter Bye. It is true that almost as soon as she saw him she lost sight of him again, for the boy did not come up to her requirements which, even at the early age at which these two met, were quite crystallized. Joanna liked first of all fixity of purpose. The phrase "When I grow up, I'm going to be" was constantly on her lips. She got into the habit of measuring people, "sizing them up" Joel would have said, in accordance with the amount of steadfastness, perseverance and ambition which they displayed. She had little time for shiftless or "do-less" persons. Sylvia used to say, half angrily, "Joanna, when the bad man gets you, he isn't going to torture you. He's just going to shut you up with lazy, good-for-nothing folks. That will be torture enough for you."
Peter Bye, in spite of the dark arresting beauty which first drew Joanna's glance to him across the other white and pink faces in the crowded schoolroom, was undoubtedly shiftless. "Not lazy," Joanna said to herself, looking at him from under level brows before she dismissed him forever from her busy mind. "It's just that he doesn't care; he just doesn't want to be anybody."