The night had grown darker, broken only by the soft glow of the footlights along the brick walkway and the brighter porch lights of the academic buildings and dormitories. It was cold, and I put my hands in my pockets. Mr. Hodges walked purposefully yet without haste. Following a step behind him, I knew that Mr. Hodges would find out where Fritz was. What I didn’t know was what else he might discover. The idea that this man, whom I had long admired for his intellect and his kind way with the boys at our school, could potentially discover that I had cheated was so wrenching that I half wanted to step off the lit path into the night and disappear.
My room was empty—Fritz wasn’t there, and it didn’t appear that he had come back in my absence. Mr. Hodges reminded me to stay put. “He may be out moping by the golf course,” he said. “Or studying calculus in someone else’s room.”
I just nodded. Somehow I knew Fritz wasn’t in either place. He had lied to me about last night; that much was certain. So where had he been? I recalled the last time I had seen him, running through the darkening wood before he disappeared around a bend in the road.
Mr. Hodges tilted his head to the side like an inquisitive bird and peered at me. “Is there any reason you’re worried, Matthias?” he asked gently. “About Fritz?”
I shrugged, not trusting my own voice. My throat threatened to squeeze shut. Suddenly my eyes were burning. “He’s stressed about college,” I managed. Then I put my hands over my face and sat down in our beat-up green recliner and wept. Shame, guilt, and disgust flooded over me. Soon I became aware of Mr. Hodges’s hand on my shoulder, and I pulled myself together, shaking my head almost angrily as I took his proffered handkerchief. I blew my nose and then hesitated, not knowing what to do with the handkerchief. “Keep it,” Mr. Hodges said with a little smile. “It’s yours now.”
Despite myself I laughed weakly. “Sorry about that, Mr. Hodges,” I said. “I just . . . I wasn’t nice to him this afternoon. He was freaking out about college again. I mean, he’s going to get in. If not UVA, then plenty of other places. I just . . . I just got tired of him complaining about it, and told him that, and he just . . . He ran away.” A few more tears fell from my eyes, but I was done crying, as if my grief had cast me on some rocky shore, spent but clearheaded. Never before had I appreciated the subtlety, the hairsplitting involved in lying. I had cried because of what I had said to Fritz, true, but that wasn’t the only reason I had broken down in front of Mr. Hodges. I had violated the most important rule at Blackburne, and I’d betrayed Fritz, and there was no way I could tell anyone about any of it without being expelled. Then I masked my guilt by revealing another uncomfortable truth. Dimly I wondered how much self-deception one had to practice in order to live with a lie.
Mr. Hodges squeezed my shoulder once, firmly, and then withdrew. “I’m sure he knows you didn’t mean to insult him,” he said. “Even if his feelings were hurt. You’ll be all right?” I nodded, and he headed for the door. “Just stay right here, Matthias,” he said. “It’ll all be fine.”
IT WASN’T ALL FINE.
Study period ended at ten. Immediately, stereos powered on. The Red Hot Chili Peppers competed with Eminem, the music threatening to make the windows vibrate. Ten o’clock became ten thirty and still no sign of Fritz. This was getting ridiculous, I thought. Avoiding me because he was angry was one thing, but eventually he had to come back to our room, if only to keep from getting suspended. Where the hell was he? I went to the bathroom and found Jay “Beef” Organ staring at himself in the mirror, picking a zit on his nose. He asked why Mr. Hodges had been in the dorm earlier. I made some noncommittal remark, brushed my teeth, and went back to our room. Ten forty-one. Lights-out was at eleven. For the fifth or sixth time I looked in and around my desk to see if Fritz had left a note but found nothing. I finally gave up and decided to try reading. I leafed through Light in August but couldn’t handle any more Faulkner; I picked up The Catcher in the Rye, a favorite book, but after reading the opening paragraph twice, I put the book back on the shelf and threw myself onto my bed. Someone upstairs, probably Max Goren, was playing the Beastie Boys’ “Brass Monkey,” a song I had always hated. I reached underneath my pillow to pull it over my head and shut out the noise, and my hand touched something small and metallic lying on the mattress beneath the pillow. I pulled it out to look at it. It was a thin silver chain, and attached to the chain was a round medal about the size of a nickel. It was Fritz’s Saint Christopher medal. I sat up and stared at it. Fritz had been wearing it when I had last seen him that afternoon. And it had been placed under my pillow.
The Beastie Boys’ song cut off in mid-rap, silence falling like a curtain interrupting a bad play. There was a knock on my door. Instinctively, I shoved the medal back under my pillow, just as the door opened. I jumped out of bed and saw Mr. Hodges. Behind him was a sheriff’s deputy in a brown uniform shirt and khakis, the star on his chest shining faintly in the glare of the overhead lights.
“Matthias,” Mr. Hodges said. “I’m sorry to startle you.”
I was still staring at the deputy. “Is everything . . . ,” I began, and then paused. Suddenly I was seized with terror. “What’s going on?” They found his body, I thought. Fritz had killed himself. And he had left his Saint Christopher medal on my bed. I couldn’t look away from the deputy, an impassive-looking man with gray hair who seemed to be looking at something just above my eyes.
“We cannot find Fritz,” Mr. Hodges was saying. “He’s not anywhere on campus. No one has reported seeing him since dinner. Dr. Simmons has contacted his parents. They are not aware of any reason why he shouldn’t be here. His father is driving over from Fairfax.” He turned to the deputy, who looked me in the eye for the first time. “This is Deputy Briggs from the county sheriff’s office. He wants to ask you a few questions. Is that all right?”
I nodded, trying not to stare at the pistol holstered on Deputy Briggs’s right hip. My heart had been tripping away in my chest ever since seeing the deputy, as if he were there to arrest me. I recalled seeing him before, directing traffic and parking on campus for big football games. “Yes, sir, that’s fine,” I said. Then something that Mr. Hodges had said hit me. “Since dinner?” I asked. “Did someone see Fritz around dinnertime? I—I haven’t seen him since track practice.”
“Mr. Greer saw Fritz walk out of this dorm around six forty-five this evening,” Mr. Hodges said.
I must have stared. “Mr. Greer?” Our wheelchair-bound maintenance man was not the first person I would have expected to have news about Fritz. Pelham Greer was friendly in a gruff way, but aside from joking occasionally with students in the Brickhouse, the school snack bar, or passing us on the walkways, he lived in his own peculiar orbit that did not regularly include students. As Diamond had once put it, he was one weird motherfucker.
Mr. Hodges was nodding. “He’s quite certain. Fritz had a backpack over one shoulder.”
“A backpack?”
Mr. Hodges nodded. “He must have stopped back here while you were at dinner,” he said. He turned to Deputy Briggs with a slightly embarrassed air, as if he were trespassing on the deputy’s business.