“They won’t hurt him. Your roommate.” He nodded at the stage. “Look.”
I looked. Diamond had gotten No Neck’s name wrong, so they were making him do push-ups, bellowing out the count. At twenty, they made him stop and hustled him offstage while they brought up the next third former.
“It’s just a game,” the boy said. “There’s a teacher at every exit. Plus they don’t want to hurt us, anyway. It’s just a way to get everyone pumped up.”
I checked the exits to confirm what he was saying about the teachers, and there they were, one or two at every exit, watching silently, arms folded. And Diamond was safely back in his seat several rows up, smiling with relief. I let out a breath I didn’t even know I’d been holding in and then glanced at the boy next to me. I felt a bit foolish about having been so scared.
But the boy seemed to read my thoughts and just shook his head. “My father went here. That’s the only reason I know. Otherwise I’d be pissing my pants.”
Relief and gratitude swept over me. “Thanks,” I said. “I’m Matthias.”
He smiled. “I’m Fritz.”
CHAPTER THREE
On the Saturday before students arrived for orientation, we had an all-faculty meeting and subsequent department meetings, where I had met with Sam Hodges and my other English department colleagues. They were all earnest, low-key, pleasant men who seemed to enjoy their work and their place at Blackburne. Despite their kind welcome, I felt a bit like an imposter, especially as more than one of them had taught me as a student.
That afternoon, Sam hosted a faculty party at his house. I walked over from my apartment in Lawson-Parker, the double dormitory for fourth-and fifth formers. The sun flared out of a white sky, and a sultry heat lay on the Hill, broken only by the occasional dry rasp from a field cricket. The trees themselves looked hot and tired as they threw blurred shadows over the grass. One of the ever-present faculty dogs lying on the front porch of Huber Hall raised a shaggy head to sniff at me, and then, uninterested, went back to its nap.
Sam and his wife lived just down the Hill from Saint Matthew’s Chapel, which was a plain, austere building, its spire rising to a modest height on one end of the Lawn opposite the vast, four-story Stilwell Hall with its massive white columns and portico, its two wings sweeping around to each side as if to claim that end of the Lawn as its own. Sam’s house was more in the style of Saint Matthew’s: a brick ranch, white trim and black shutters freshly painted, the hedges clipped and grass mown, the brass door knocker gleaming against the black door. A weeping willow drooped in the front yard, its leafy branches trailing over the ground. It reminded me of my parents’ house, and the thought stirred something in me that rolled over uneasily.
Several people were already gathered on the patio in Sam’s backyard, from which you could see the entire western half of campus, the football field, the nine-hole golf course, and the green wall of trees shimmering in the near distance. Most people seemed relaxed, although Sam, in an apron and chef’s hat, looked hot and flushed from the open heat of a massive gas grill, where he stood skewering hot dogs and flipping hamburgers. I saw a few of my new colleagues, some holding beers. I hesitated at the edge of the patio. It was something of a minor shock to look at this group of mostly middle-aged men talking to one another more freely than they had in that morning’s faculty meeting—a meeting run in a dry, efficient manner by Dr. Simmons, the headmaster of Blackburne. I had known many of these men to wear ties and blazers almost exclusively, unless they were coaching on the athletic field or in the gym. There had always been a thin but impervious membrane between masters and students. And now I was about to become a master. Yet instead of feeling a sense of accomplishment, I felt reluctance, almost an aversion. Blackburne already had me as an alumnus. Now it was about to claim me as an employee. This was a mistake. I had no business being here, doing this.
“Hey! Matthias!” Porter Deems waved me over from his position by an open cooler. He was a short, dark-haired man with the intent look of someone about to sell you something you didn’t want. Grayden Smith stood next to him, frozen for a moment like a startled deer by Porter’s voice; then he raised his hand and smiled at me. Both were new Blackburne teachers like me. The three of us had met that morning.
“Fellas,” I said, strolling over. “What’s up?”
“Getting Gray here a drink. Man’s uptight, needs to relax.” Porter brought up three dripping bottles of beer from the cooler.
“I’m relaxed,” Gray said, twisting the cap off his bottle and flicking it into a nearby trash can. “Just ready for school to start.”
We drank our beers, measuring one another silently. Gray had gone to Kentucky and Georgia Tech. He wore spectacles and was quiet without being shy, measured and deliberate in his speech. He would teach chemistry. Porter was a UConn grad with a master’s in history from Columbia. He radiated self-assurance and energy, the kind of man who would always be white-water rafting or climbing a rock face.
“Hey, I read your book,” Porter said. “Liked the protagonist, that O’Keefe guy. Badass journalist. Sorta Anderson Cooper meets Indiana Jones. But the whole rebel-freedom-fighter thing? I dunno—it was too Hollywood for me.” Before I could formulate a response, he continued. “So you’re an honest-to-God novelist. What’s that like?”
“Like?”
“You get noticed in the street, laid a lot, what?”
At this, Gray nearly choked on his beer but managed to cough it up. Porter whacked him absently on the back as he waited for my reply.
“Women every night,” I said. “They send me their underwear to autograph. It’s embarrassing.”
Porter smirked. Gray cleared his throat loudly and gave me a weak but approving smile. “So,” I said, swirling my beer a bit in my bottle and intending to ask something generic about why they wanted to become teachers or what they thought of Blackburne, something to get away from the topic of my writing.
Then Porter said, nodding behind me, “There’s that creepy dude in the wheelchair.” I turned and saw the man he was referring to. Wearing a short-sleeved denim work shirt and jeans, he was rolling over to Sam at the grill, his forearms tanned and corded with muscle as he swiftly worked the wheels of his chair. He stopped to exchange a few words with Sam and then gazed out blankly at the crowd. “Snuck up on me outside of Stilwell Hall,” Porter said. “I came around the corner and he was sitting there like he was waiting for me. Fucking jumped out of my skin. Told him I hadn’t heard him, and he said he always comes from downwind.” Porter drained his beer. “What’s up with him?”