“THE BEST THING ABOUT THIS YEAR,” Mason Darrow reported receiving a cigarette from the hands of his best friend, “is that I was the best looking person in our year,” Mason took a drag. “Except for you. Be a pal and open that window, Addison.”
“Except for me, you don’t say,” Addison smirked, a Maverick smoking from between his lips while he turned the fan toward the window and pushed the window wide open.
“The whole class has gone down hill,” Mason continued, putting his cigarette in the ashtray and cramming Doritos into his mouth. Over the crunching he said, “I really hope something happens at Saint Vitus this year. I wish we’d meet some new people.”
Addison, who was several inches taller than Mason, collapsed on the bed and bounced back up, smoke flying out of the nostrils of his long nose. Both boys were in the standard after school uniform of a Saint Vitus Men’s College Preparatory High School student; rumpled navy pants, untucked white shirt and loose red tie with a blazer, thrown on the floor somewhere.
“Can I confess something?” Addison rolled his large, mournful eyes at Mason.
“Shoot fellow. By the way, can you see my goatee yet?”
“No. Stop shaving for three more days.”
“Dad’ll make me cut it off. Anyway, back to you confession,” Mason said, cigarette in one hand, his tongue flicking down to lick the spot under his lower lip where he was trying to grow hair.
“I hate Lewis Chat.”
“What’s that to me?”
“Well, it’s just, you’re my best friend, and.... I like you, but...”
“It’s nice to know you at least like me.”
“But,” Addison pressed on ignoring him, “I don’t know if I really like the other Black people at Saint Vitus. It’s just…”
“I don’t know that I like anybody at Saint Vitus,” Mason said. “No one said you had to love all Black people not to be a bigot.”
“Are you sure?” said Addison.
“Are you serious?” said Mason. He took three quick drags on his cigarette and said, “Besides, they’re all obnoxious as fuck. Except for Balliol.”
“Lincoln Balliol? I don’t even know him. He just seems mean as fuck.”
“I don’t know him either,” Mason said. “But I think I should. And I think he lives around here, too. He’s supposed to be loaded. He just looks like someone who doesn’t have time for bullshit. I wish I looked like that.”
“You will once you get your goatee,” Addison said with a lopsided grin and a puff on his cigarette.
“You’re very funny. Where can we get liquor?”
“From your Dad’s liquor cabinet.”
“Aside from Sidney’s liquor cabinet. I wish we could buy. Just to have a little bit. Not to be drunk all the time, but just to have a little bit of booze. I can’t wait till we’re legal. Then we can do... everything.”
Addison looked very reflexive as he puffed on the last of the Maverick, and quick as that lit a new one off the dying one, passed it to Mason and then lit his off of Mason’s.
“Have you noticed everyone’s getting—”
There was a padded thump on the door. Addison let out a slight shriek, Mason cleared his throat, exhaled and said, calmly, “Yes?”
“It’s me, guys.”
“Oh,” Mason let out a breath and caught his chest. He pushed himself up, unlocked the door and pulled in Tommy Dwyer, locking the door behind him.
“It’s smoky in here, guys,” Tommy said.
“Well, yes, Tommy my boy, it is,” Addison said, exhaling into the fan and watching the smoke out of the window.
“I’ll finish this off and that’ll be it,” Mason told him.
“Unless, of course,” said Addison, “you want one.”
“No thanks,” Tommy had just pulled off his blazer and pulled it over his nose. “I want to live.”
Addison looked at him and said, “I don’t know why. You’ve given your life to Jesus, you can’t drink, you can’t smoke and you can’t fuck. Doesn’t seem like it would be worth it.”
Tom Dwyer pushed up his glasses and opened his mouth, but Mason just put a hand on his other best friend’s shoulder and Addison, crushing out the last cigarette said, “I’m just fucking with you, Thomas. Only fucking.”
“You shouldn’t play when it comes to Jesus,” Tommy said, sitting down on the crowded bed and helping himself to Doritos.
“I know. Pray for me.”
Tommy looked at Addison suspiciously and then said, eyes narrowed, “I will. Rather you mean it or not.”
“Whether,” Mason automatically corrected.
“Huh?” said both boys.
“Not rather,” Mason told them, crawling onto the bed now too, and punching a pillow that he pulled to his chest. “The word should be whether.”
“Oh,” Tommy said, considering it. “All right.”
“You were going to say something,” said Mason to Addison, “before Tommy scared the shit out of us.”
“What?” Addison said. “I don’t know.”
Mason prompted: “You said that everyone was—”
“Oh, yeah,” Addison snapped his fingers: “Everyone’s getting laid. Apparently it happened last summer. Everyone got laid while we were... doing whatever we were doing.”
“Masturbating to fantasies of getting laid,” Mason supplied.
“Yeah, probably,” Addison allowed.
“Well, I don’t think everybody’s doing it,” Tommy said.
“Jeb Kern—”
“In Campus Ministry?” Tommy sounded pained.
“Christians are fucking hypocrites,” Addison began, and then said to Mason and Tommy. “Except for you guys. But... you’re the real deal. Yeah, I heard that Jeb Kern’s been getting sucked off all sophomore year by his girlfriend, and they finally did it.”
“Who did you hear it from?” said Mason.
“Jack Keller.”
“Well, now who did he hear it from?” Tommy said, wearily.
“Somebody,” Addison brushed that aside. “But look guys. The point is everyone’s doing it.”
“And if everyone jumped off a bridge—”
“Yes, Tommy,” Addison cut him off, “I probably would. If they gave me a bungee cord. Look, I’m tired of being a virgin. I think this’ll be the year. I think in a few weeks probably. Me and Becky.”
“No!” To his surprise it flew out of Mason’s mouth.
Addison looked at him.
“You know how I feel,” Mason told him. “Beneath the cigarettes and the craving for a flask of liquor to smuggle into geometry, I’m a good old Christian soldier just like Tommy.”
Tommy raised an eyebrow then he said, after a pause, “But, Addison, I just think...”
“That it’s a sin.”
“I think that it’s not what God wants for you, and... cigarettes and all that, that’s one thing. But, this is big. This is like a no. You should wait. Till you’re married.”
“I’m going to wait... till I buy Trojans.”
“Addison!”
“Well, how do you feel?” Addison turned to Mason.
“I didn’t know I got to vote on it.”
“You don’t,” Addison said. “But I’d still sort of like to know... I mean, we know how Tommy feels.”
“Well, I sort of feel the same way,” Mason said. “All right, I do feel the same way.”
Tommy smiled, heartened by this.
“Besides, it just weirds me out, Add. You having sex. I’ve never known someone who’s not a virgin.”
“Mase?”
“Hum?”
“I’m pretty sure your dad’s not a virgin.”