Andy Rathko, Adam Benet, and Rebecca Angstrom had all gone to the same K-8 school. Now, except for Becky, they all went to Saint Vitus.
Every school had different societies and each of these societies has further divisions. There were the athletes, and then they were divided between King Football and Prince Basketball. After that came the minor courtiers; soccer, lacrosse, track and field, ra ra ra ending in the various swim teams which basically had a ranking slightly above chess or debate team. Swimmers were in a gray area, no doubt, and didn’t count much as athletes, except to themselves and they had their own internecine rivalries.
And then there were the Dork Squads, starting with the attractive intelligent kids who would go off to Harvard and ending in the pimply faced kid who never washed, got shoved into lockers and always wound up in detention because he spaced out and could never answers teachers’ questions. He’d never get to Princeton. Dork Squad started with the newspaper and yearbook committee and its lowest manifestations were chess team and Jack Moskowitz’s newly formed Checker Club.
There were also the Drama Fags. Nobody liked them as well as they liked themselves. Their hair was always perfect. They weren’t just doing the next school musical, they were always chatting up the school librarian about the new part they got at the dinner theatre downtown or at the community playhouse. “I’m the youngest guy to ever have the role... blah blah blah,” and so forth. Drama Fags weren’t only in drama club. The people who did the light for the plays and musicals were also Drama Fags. The members of the choir—the very mediocre choir—were Music Fags, but they counted as Drama Fags too. The most normal and acceptable of the Fags were the Band Fags, who knew they were band fags and generally had bad skin and a predilection to openly discussing masturbation. They could never be loved, but they could be tolerated.
Last were the Black People. They were all middle class, and fairly well off, but slightly apologetic for it and made a habit of wearing their pants as low as dress code would permit, maligning white people loudly as possible and walking around in very small, very sullen groups. They had their own table in the cafeteria, they had their own section in the gym for pep rallies and for the all school Masses, though few of them were Catholic and the ones who were had renounced the faith because “It’s so dead... It’s so white...”
Of course, very few people belonged to just one of these groups, and so it was the endless permutation of societies resulting in a multiplicity of backstabbings and minor betrayals that made the wheels roll at Saint Vitus. None of these groups really liked each other, and precious few people acknowledged this.
But some people did. Some people didn’t want to make the Wheels roll. They generally knew each other. They could just look each other in the eye and see it there, the look of someone who just didn’t give a fuck about any of this. Some of them didn’t cut their hair and they smoked lots of pot. Some of them were into magic, or into Jesus or into something else. Some of them just kept quiet and made little sarcastic remarks. Some of them sat smoking cigarettes on the ledge of the bathroom window. No one knew the name of their group because no one dared to name them. But they had named themselves.
“I think,” Balliol said, “we should just be called the Bitches.”
No one was really a bigger bitch or a bastard than Lincoln Balliol, except maybe Addison Cromptley and Seth McKenna. Andy Rathko was a magician. He had a red, round face and a sharp nose that Balliol privately believed Andy could bend down and bite off he so chose. He’d started out doing parlor tricks. On the first day of school a priest had reached out to shake his hand, and it had come off bleeding. Andy burst out laughing and when his real hand came out of his blue blazer he roared, “Gotcha, Father!”
This had been worth about a week in detention.
Tonight, at the party in his house, Andy had a meat cleaver in his head and Lincoln Balliol was wearing a football uniform with a sign around his neck that read, “I’M A COMPLETE AND TOTAL FAGGOT.” Seth came out with the punch bowl followed by Andy and his tray of vaguely disgusting looking Halloween treats.
“They taste better than they look,” he said, picking up a bloody ear and biting into with a smile.
He reflected, “Just like chicken.”
“Seth?” said Mason, taking out his vampire teeth, “Exactly what are you supposed to be?”
Seth took off his baseball cap, and pointed to his plaid shirt.
“A redneck from Ohio,” he grinned cheesily, and headed to the kitchen.
“But,” Adam began, “he dresses like that all the time.”
Adam Benet was pretty, always talked about clothing and good food and, as far as Balliol was concerned, was a closet homosexual.
“Yes, Adam,” Balliol said in his most neutral tone. “That’s why it’s called irony.”
“What are you, Becca?” Mason said.
“A ho.”
“But you dress like that all the time too,” Adam complained.
Addison stood up and Mason yanked at the hem of his friend’s burlap tunic—he was a suddenly defensive Igor.
Mason suggested: “Why don’t we find something fun to do, tonight. Get out of here.”
Addison looked sharply at him. And then Mason looked sharply back.
Addison sat down.
“You know,” Andy said glossing over the minor incident, “It’s still pretty hot. I don’t think winter will ever come. We could go to Lake Ashkelon.”
“Lake who?” Mason said.
“It’s the old quarry lake,” Balliol told him.
“Yes,” Andy said.
“Isn’t that illegal?” Adam’s eyebrows rose up in worry.
It was Balliol who stood up with his punch glass.
“Be a man, Benet! How many chances do you get to commit a felony?”
“Well then let’s go,” Seth shouted, rising up and clapping his hands.
“Let’s go!” Addison agreed.
Andy went out of the living room shouting, “Ma, we’ll be back...”
“You up for it, Mason?” Becky said.
Mason nodded, and they prepared to clean up the house.
LAST ONE IN NAKED IS A LOSER!” Seth shouted, pulling down his pants.
“I lose,” Balliol murmured, and took out a cigarette.
“Come on!” Seth shouted. “This is a great night for a skinny dip.”
“Well then by all means,” Balliol said with a magnanimous gesture, “Dip. Have fun, dip mad. Count me out.”
Everyone else seemed more or less of the same opinion while Seth, on the edge of the pebbly hills that dipped into the lake continued stripping.
“There are ladies here,” Addison said.
“There’s only one lady,” Becky said. “And she doesn’t mind.”
Seth was naked now, and Addison said, “Well, fuck this,” and stood up ripping his shirt off, and then unbuckling his jeans.
“Okay, now I mind,” Mason said.
And Addison and Seth ran to the end of the tongue of land that went out to the deeper part of the lake. The last thing the rest of them heard was: “Cannonball!” before Seth jumped and there was a splash of water.
“Well, how often do you get to see two naked bony asses in a day?” Balliol remarked.
“Fuck!” they heard Addison shout from a distance. “It’s FREEZING!”
Darkness was setting in.
“I can’t go in,” Adam Benet was saying, “I paid one hundred fifty dollars for these sneakers. I don’t want to put wet feet in them. They’re probably already ruined just by walking on these pebbles.”
“Isn’t the purpose of sneakers to do things like… you know,” Mason suggested, “walk on pebbles and stuff?”
“The purpose is to look good,” Adam said. “And in a month when I get my new car I won’t even have to walk. It’s an Element, the seats are higher in the back. Just like a theatre.”
“That’s the ugliest car I’ve ever seen,” Balliol shook his head in disapproval.
“No,” Adam disagreed knowledgeably. “It’s a great car. Everyone’s got them. Either that,” he sat back on the rocks dreaming, “Or a Mini Coop.”
Mason shrugged.
Andy Rathko said, “Have you ever thought that somebody’s trying to sell you something?”
Adam looked at him blankly.
“I mean, look at this shit. You don’t even tie your sneakers.”
“That’s the style.”
“The style,” said Andy, “is to wear sneakers you can’t do anything in or to, and that includes tying?”
“Well, now you’re making it sound stupid.”
Mason and Balliol just looked at each other.
They heard water splashing. Addison and Seth were dogpaddling to the shore.
“Christ!” Seth panted. “Damn, Addison.”
Addison crawled out of the water bedraggled and Mason took off his cape and said, “Cover yourself, sir.”
Addison wrapped it around himself and then grinned stupidly. “I won the race. I’m the winner.”
Seth shook his head and began pulling his jeans on over his wet skin.
“I need a cigarette,” he said.
And then they heard, “Hello! Who’s out there?”
They all looked at each other, suddenly sucking in their breaths.
The voice shouted again:
“Who’s out there!”
Mason’s eyes flew open, the beam of a flashlight fell right in front of him and he jumped back.
“Maybe it’s a friend,” Andy whispered.
Becky shook her head. “A friend with a gun and a flashlight.” She pointed into the weeds. “Let’s go.”
The front door of the house flew open and Mason stood there in the remains of his vampire costume.
He opened his mouth to say something and noticed not only Joel and Dr. Powers, but Dean Howard.
“Hellllllooooooooooo….” He let it come out of his mouth slowly, and then it died.
“Are you fucked in the head, Mason?” his father asked him.
“Dad!” Mason snapped. The dean was here.
Sidney shrugged and then said, looking at Rick Howard, “Oh, it’s just Rick.”
“Hey, Mason,” Rick Howard said.
This was so unfair. The father of an accomplice and his dean were here right now. He needed to talk to his father.
“I need to talk to my father,” Mason told them. “Right now,” he added.
He made a gesture and a bow and motioned for his father to follow him.
Sidney looked at the other men, then shrugged and stood up. “I’ll be back.”
“We went to the quarry lake,” Mason told his dad as he paced about the room throwing off his cape, taking off his black jacket.
“The one near the Pennsylvania border?”
“Yes. Seth drove. Dad, Seth skinny dipped.”
“Seth Seth?”
“No, Dad, Seth the Egyptian God of the Desert.”
Sidney cocked his head.
“You really ought to read more, Dad. Anyway, yes, Seth McKenna. As in Joel’s son. Anyway, we almost got arrested. We were trespassing.”
Sidney’s eyes went wide.
“What happened?” he sat on his son’s bed, face rapt with interest.
Mason eyed his father in disbelief and then wondered why he was shocked at Sidney’s evident pleasure.
“We ran really fast. I mean fast, through the grasses, on all fours, we kept a tight line, Becky said it would be best if we didn’t scatter—”
“Addison’s girlfriend?”
“Yes.”
“Wow,” Sidney said. “And who else?”
“Balliol was there?”
“Lincoln Balliol? He seems a little too classy to skitter through the woods.”
“Actually, Balliol even skitters in a classy way. But, of course, Tommy was at his Christian thing.”
“Um,” Sidney’s voice was neutral.
“So,” Sidney said. “Did you know it was trespassing?”
“Yes,” Mason said wearily.”
“Um?” Sidney looked shocked. He looked... pleased?
“What?” said Mason.
“You willingly broke the law and almost got arrested?”
“Yes, Dad, I did.”
“And just barely got away?”
“Yes, Dad.”
Sidney swooped his son into his arms, kissed him on the head and said, amazed, “You’re turning into a man!”