Chris’s eyebrows flew up.
“That’s rough.”
Mason shrugged. Chris looked around the room.
“Well, not J.D. He’s a good guy—”
“Hate,” Mason repeated, “all of these people.”
Addison Cromptley, slouched in his seat beside Seth McKenna, stirred when Jack Butterfield passed him the note.
Seth looked to Addison and Addison, looking up to see that Mr. Breeder—what the hell kind of name was that—wasn’t looking at him.
He uncrumpled it, looked up at the window. Mason’s head popped up. And then it went away. And then it popped up again. Away again.
“Is Mason sniffing glue again?” Seth asked.
“Don’t put it past him,” Addison said and, lazily, left his desk.
“Mr. Cromptley!”
“I’ve got to whiz,” Addison told him. “I’ll be right back.”
“You’ll miss the rest of the Prussian War.”
“I assure you, sir, I’ll be back soon, or my name isn’t Frederick the Great.”
Addison shut the door behind him and said, “What are you doing here, Nut Job?”
“Trying to stop being bored.”
“But this is your homeroom’s Against Drug Day! No classes. Woo hoo?”
“No, just sitting up with the worst people God ever made. I don’t have classes with anyone in my homeroom. I hate these people. I was wondering, how can people be gay?”
“What?”
“Boys smell nasty. They fart. They belch all the time. They have nothing to talk about. I hate these people. How could you ever go gay?”
“I hadn’t looked at it that way?” Addison said. Then, “Actually, I hadn’t looked at it at all.”
“And think about this. We’ve got that day in a month where all the homerooms have bonding day and we just get to know each other. I’ve got to be sick for that. And then there is the whole Sex Day—”
“Which really means Don’t Have Premarital Sex Day.”
“Yes,” Mason said. “But junior year is probably too late for that. Besides, the only way to get through Against Drug Day is with a joint in one hand and a crack pipe in the other. This is awful!”
“You should skip.”
“I can’t skip.” Then: “Would you skip with me?”
“I can’t skip!” Addison said.
“So you would advise me to do something you would never do?”
“This once!’
“Good bye, Addison.”
“Does this mean you all are even eating lunch together?”
“Yes,” Mason said, disgusted.
“Shit. Just me and Tommy. Seth has a different period. Look, Mase, Tommy’s really being a Jesus freak.”
Mason wondered if he should tell Addison about the whole prayer meeting via phone the other night, then decided against it.
He shrugged. “Tommy’s Tommy.”
“Do you think I’m cute?” Sully asked.
“God, Sullivan, if I wasn’t already attached to my imaginary girlfriend,. I’d do you in a minute.”
“Hah ha!” Sully rolled up a napkin and threw it at Balliol who caught it and sipped from his juice box.
“You’re a very attractive sixteen year old,” Balliol told him. “Is that what you want to hear?”
“I just want to know what I look like. I mean, it shouldn’t even matter at an all boy’s high school. But it’s like you know who’s hot and who’s... me.”
Balliol looked at Sully in amazement, and then he said. “I’m not even going to dignify this.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Turn around.”
Sully turned around and said, “Awright. Now what am I looking at?”
“You see that table? With Dave Riley? The boy with all the acne across his face. Looks like a strawberry patch? And you see the one across from him, with the acne and the yellow teeth. And you see Shawn Newman. Sometimes called Fatass Newman--?”
“Okay, okay,” Sully waved it off and turned back to him. “I see what you’re saying. I’d just like to... Be hot. Instead of not ugly. I’d like someone to say, ‘You’re beautiful.’”
Balliol opened his mouth to say something, and then closed it.
“Were you about to tell me I’m beautiful.”
“In all honesty I can say that I wasn’t.”
Balliol looked up from his juice box and Sully, who felt eyes on his back and smelled aftershave, turned around.
Dickhead Howard, also known as Dean Rick Howard, was looking at them with something between sternness and pity. Balliol affected not to care, and Sullivan said, “Yes, sir.”
“Sullivan, I need to meet with you in my office as soon as you finish your lunch. Don’t worry about your other classes, I’ll give you an excuse note.”
Fear like ice water ran over Sully, and then left him feeling sort of weak.
“Yes, sir,” Sullivan murmured, “I’ll be up in a minute.”
As Dean Howard went away, Balliol could see Sully was trembling.
“NOW, SULLIVAN, WE’RE FAMILY HERE at Saint Vitus’s, and when we see one of our own in trouble,” Rick Howard told him, “we try to help him out. And I’ve seen your first two quizzes and your first test in calculus. Well, also in chemistry and.... you’re not doing so well.”
“I’ll do better.”
“Is there anything we can do for you?”
“You can take me out of calculus.”
“We can’t do that. You tested too high when you entered here.”
“I’ve been bad at math every year. You can drop the math requirements.”
“We’re a college prep school.”
“Well,” Sullivan said, suddenly tired, and a little angry at the Dean for scaring him, and for looking so stupid and humorless, “I guess there’s nothing you can do.”
“No, no, Sullivan,” Rick motioned for him to calm down. “I have thought of something. I’m going to get you a tutor. Next Monday we’re all going to get together in my office—”
“All?”
“You, your family, your tutor, his family—”
“Wait a minute.”
“Yes?”
“Firstly, this is not a family affair.”
“It is,” Rick said gently. “Once the whole family’s together, once we’re all fighting for you to win and you’re not in this alone, you’re going to do great. And we’re going to get a tutor for you, and the thing is... I believe that we will all teach each other.”
Rick Howard was becoming visibly excited.
“You’re a smart guy, Sullivan. Your other grades, especially your grades in English attest to this. So I think you can teach your tutor too. We’re going to find the perfect match,” Rick pushed his hands together. “I promise.”
“And his family too?”
“Yes,” Rick insisted. “Learning’s a family affair.”
“Had you considered that I don’t have a family.”
“Yes you do, Sullivan.”
“I have a mangy dog, a pissed off mom and a dad who drops off child support.”
Rick grinned sadly at him and said, “I’m sure your pissed off mom can help you more than you think,” he said. “And don’t be afraid to bring your mangy dog. Now, let me write you that excuse note.”
Rick Howard began whistling to himself.
He’s actually happy about this. He really thinks he’s going to change my world. I can’t fucking believe this,” Sully thought as Dean Howard cheerfully scribbled the excuse note.
“So I’ve been thinking, Mase…”
“Don’t do that, Addison. You know your track record with Thinking. It’s never a good idea.”
“I’m serious.”
“I’m serious too,” Mason said. They were smoking cigarettes and drinking stolen beer in his bedroom. “Every time you start a sentence with, ‘I’ve been thinking,’ bad things happen.”
“This is not about drugs or marijuana or anything like that.”
“Then you’ve given up the whole idea of a drug ring?”
“I was never serious about that. You know that.”
“But Seth McKenna was. Seth is....”
“Isn’t Seth’s dad one of your dad’s best friends. Aren’t you all like godbrothers?”
“Yeah,” said Mason, “And so is Chris Powers. This means what?”
Addison cracked a grin and leaned over Mason to ash his cigarette.
“Actually it means that if all of you were in the same room with your dads that would make one crazy picture. I would love to see Seth and Chris together.”
“They used to be like best friends. Remember?”
“No.”
“Back in Catholic school. I mean, old Catholic school. K-8.”
“I don’t remember that at all. But they were a year up. What were you doing?”
“Being friends with you and Tommy.”
“Oh,” Addison shrugged.
“But was Seth running a drug ring?”
“Sort of,” Addison shrugged. “I think.”
“You think.”
“Okay, I know. It was like little bitty stuff. Nothing major. Remember, this is the guy that chugged a bottle of Triaminic just to get high.”
“Seth is...”
“Seth is desperate,” Addison said, and then made a long, groan and stretched himself out across the bed taking his hands through his hair. “You can’t blame the guy. We’re all a little desperate.”
“And yet we don’t all chug Triaminic and then barf across the statue of Our Lady of Fatima in the lobby of Saint Vitus’s.”
“To be fair,” said Addison, “he only barfed on the little boy’s statue.. And, as I remember, the boy didn’t seem to mind. And Mary just kept smiling.”
“She’s nice that way. Isn’t she? Did you know that Corey Ellison sells condoms during lunch?”
“Yes I did,” Addison said, lifting a finger. “Which brings me to my big question.”
Mason raised an eyebrow. “You want to start a black market in contraceptives at Saint Vitus. Which, from what I’ve heard would be quite a thriving market—”
“No,” Addison waved it off. “But I do want to get some condoms. Because... I’ve been thinking. I think it’s time for me and Becky to have sex.”
“No!”
“Yes,” Addison said, shocked by Mason’s vehemence.
“But we’re only...”
“Sixteen,” Addison reminded him. “The time when people start doing it.”
“Is that why you want to do it?”
“No,” Addison said. “I want to do it because.... We’re getting closer now. I really think this’ll bond us. You don’t know what it’s like to be in love, Mason.”
“I hear about it all day,” Mason said. “I do know. It’s everyone wanting to fuck each other.”
“No, that’s not it.”
“Apparently it is,” Mason said, gesturing to Addison. “I think you should wait.”
“Till I’m married?” Addison said in a dopey impersonation of Tommy.
“That’s an option. But how about till you’re eighteen.”
“Eighteen,” Addison stated, “is a very long way away.”
Mason sighed and said, “No, it’s two years away. Not even two years. Really, Addison. And had you thought that you can’t go back on this. I mean this is the first time. You can only have it once and—”
“Now you sound like Tommy.”
“Well, Tommy’s not always so bad,” Mason said. “Sometimes Tommy’s got some really good sense.”
Addison eyed Mason.
“Sometimes Tommy isn’t completely insane,” Mason modified. “And, I don’t feel comfortable with the whole thing.”
“If that’s the way you’re going to be about it,” Addison said. “Then I guess the rest of my question is... out of the question.”
“Wait,” Mason put a hand up. “There’s a rest of the question?”
“Yes,” Addison said.
“Which is? Which was?”
Addison sighed and said. “Well, I’ve got brothers and sisters and stuff in the house all the time.”
“And you want me to babysit.”
“No,” Addison said irritably, “Can you put away the funny man for just a second.”
“Sorry,” Mason in a tone which said that Addison should be sorry.
“I’m sorry,” Addison told him. “I shouldn’t have snapped it was just…” The whole time Addison was mumbling, becoming more inaudible as he turned away from Mason.
“Just that what?” Mason demanded.
“I thought that maybe...” Addison said in a hushed voice, thumping his finger on the mattress. “I could lose my virginity here.”
“OH, THAT’S BAD, THAT’S REAL bad,” Balliol sympathized. “Where is that man’s head? I mean,” Balliol stood up and paced around the den of his house looking at Sully who was sitting, distracted, on the couch, “it seems like his heart is really in the right place. I mean, I can picture Dickhead—Dean Howard, doing something like this in the best of spirits. There’s something eternally hopeful about the guy, he always wants to save you and make things better.”
“He’s kind,” Sully allowed. “Optimistic. Cheerful—”
“Doesn’t it just disgust you?” Balliol shook his head in disbelief and then spun the large globe near the lace curtained doors of the solarium. He slapped his hand down on the globe and it stopped spinning over Uraguay.
“And now this shit,” Balliol said. “A tutor. A family meeting.”
“And that’s why I was thinking you could be my tutor.”
Balliol gave his friend a genuinely sad and desperate look. It was so seldom that Balliol displayed this wealth of emotion that Sully almost would have gone through an experience like this once a week.
“If it were English or drama—not that people fail drama—or history or say, foreign language... The liberal arts, my type of stuff, then I would be right there, but his is calculus and—to my ever lasting shame—I’m in remedial math, and you know it.”
Sully looked at him strangely and said, “Actually, Bay, I forgot. You’re so smart and everything.”
“But not there. I’m smart in the same things you’re smart in, and that won’t help you too much.”
“I wish you were smart enough to help me find a way out of this mess.”
“I wish I was too,” Balliol said.
“Maybe I could get into another school. Maybe I could leave before Monday and be enrolled at... Cartimandua Central. I always wanted to go to a co-ed Catholic school.”
Balliol, who was an Anglican, rolled his eyes and said, “I never wanted to go to any Catholic school, but there it is. And I don’t think you should waste your time on crazy schemes that won’t lead anywhere. Like trying to enroll in a different school before Monday.
“I can’t believe you’re saying give up.”
“I know,” Balliol allowed. “It’s so unlike me.”
The two boys looked equally depressed and then Balliol said. “We could hop the bus and go to the mall. Shopping always makes you feel better.”
“Shopping always makes you feel better.”
Balliol stuck his bottom lip out and shrugged. There was some truth to this.
“I think,” Balliol said, “if we used my credit card to buy anything and everything that looked nice it would make you feel better.”
Sully palmed Balliol’s head in a fake smack and said, “You think spending money makes everything better.”
Balliol raised an eyebrow.
“Doesn’t it?”