“The Byzantine emperor,” Dr. Booth said, though his tone was kind. “But you are correct—he is credited with commissioning the Corpus Juris Civilis, or the Code of Justinian as it is sometimes known. It serves as the basis for much of modern civil law.”
Fritz glanced at me from one seat over and rolled his eyes. We all knew Dr. Booth had been named after Justinian the Great. It was one of the first things we had learned in European History. The kid who had asked the question was a third former named Kevin Kelly. Third formers took Ancient and Medieval History, but apparently Kevin Kelly had taken that course prior to attending Blackburne, so the school had allowed him to take European History with fourth formers. Some fourth formers, like Fletcher Dupree, treated third formers like dirt, but I was generally kind to them—after all, I had been in their shoes just one year earlier. However, I didn’t like Kevin Kelly because he was smug and manipulative. Clearly he was sucking up to Dr. Booth by mentioning our teacher’s namesake. He knew very well that Justinian had been a Byzantine emperor, but by purposely mistaking him as Roman, he had given Dr. Booth an opportunity to both correct a student and demonstrate his vast knowledge, something he enjoyed immensely.
“Douche bag,” Fletcher Dupree hissed quietly at Kevin Kelly from two seats back. He wasn’t above sucking up to teachers himself, but Fletcher felt Kevin Kelly was overstepping some boundary.
“Mr. Dupree,” Dr. Booth said languidly, “that will earn you a detention, as well as a five-hundred-word monograph on the etymology and historical significance of the term douche bag, due to me by Monday.” He raised an eyebrow until Fletcher mumbled an apology. I glanced at Kevin Kelly, who was looking down at his textbook as if engrossed by something he was reading, but then I saw him smile, briefly.
Later that day, Fritz and I were sitting in the Brickhouse drinking Cokes and sharing a large paper cup of fries when we saw Fletcher and Diamond, sitting about ten feet away at a corner table half-hidden by an ancient pinball machine. I avoided Fletcher the way you would avoid walking through a mud puddle, but Diamond was a different matter. He was in our history class, too, but we acted as if we didn’t see each other. We had hardly spoken since the end of our third form year, never really getting past the water buffalo incident. I wanted to fix our friendship, but I was too awkward and clueless to know how. I felt an ache like a sour tooth whenever we saw each other and he cut his eyes away from me. Now he was sitting in the Brickhouse, talking with Fletcher. In a moment of paranoia, I wondered if they were talking about me.
“Well, if it isn’t the Huns,” someone said, and I turned to see Kevin Kelly leaning back against a nearby counter and smiling. Two other third formers were with him, grinning at us.
Fritz nodded in greeting, then turned to me. “Want to study tonight for the Euro test?” he asked. “Booth said it’d be easy, which means two essay questions instead of three.”
“Sure,” I said, popping a french fry into my mouth. “We oughtta—”
“So how’d you get a nickname like ‘the Huns’?” Kevin Kelly asked.
In a sad tone, Fritz said, “By slaughtering those who interrupted us.”
“Our fallen foes are many,” I added, taking a sip of my Coke.
Kevin smirked. “How alliterative,” he said. “Very Beowulf.” Next to him, one of his sidekicks chortled.
I looked at Fritz. “Methinks he is trying to impress us.”
“With the emphasis on trying,” Fritz said.
“As in trying too hard?”
“Or that he’s being very trying.” Fritz glanced over at Kevin’s sidekicks, who were looking back and forth between him, me, and Kevin. “That means difficult to deal with, or severely straining the powers of endurance,” Fritz told them.
I raised an eyebrow. “Impressive.”
Fritz shrugged. “Latin class,” he said, reaching for another fry.
Kevin wasn’t so easily put off. “Tum podem extulit horridulum,” he said to Fritz.
“I get horridulum,” I said. “I mean, I guess it means ‘horrible,’ right? What?” I said as Fritz shook his head. “You know I take French.”
Fritz grinned. “He just told me I’m talking shit,” he said to me. Then Fritz raised his hand, fingers together as if he were a food connoisseur tasting an excellent dish, and said to Kevin, “Exemplum de simia, quae, quando plus ascendit, plus apparent posteriora eius.” This one I knew, if only because Fritz was fond of this saying of Saint Bonaventure and would repeat it often in our dorm room: Just like an ape, the more one climbs, the more one shows one’s ass. I laughed when I saw Kevin’s face darken as he translated the Latin in his head. He licked his lips.
“I don’t think ‘Huns’ is really the right epithet for you two,” he said, loudly enough for those at a few nearby tables to look our way.
I nodded. “It doesn’t really capture our intellectual acumen, no.”
Kevin said, “I was thinking more like ‘the Nazis.’ ”
His sidekicks laughed at that, one of them high-fiving Kevin, who continued to look at us. There was something hard in his smirk, a cruel intelligence that took pleasure in scoring points off a target. And he had scored with the Nazi reference—Fritz was angry. “Watch who you’re calling a Nazi,” Fritz said, his tone brittle. “My grandfather fought in World War Two.”
Kevin’s eyebrows rose in mock admiration. “My grandfather was a swimming coach who liked little boys,” he said. “Not all of us have rich daddies or war heroes in our families.”
“What is your problem?” Fritz said, his voice rising on the final word so it nearly cracked.
“Oh, that stings,” Kevin said softly, his eyes on Fritz. “Don’t like that, do you?”
“Shut it, Kelly,” I said, my voice sharp.
“Or what?” he asked in the same soft voice. “You’re going to punch me in the face in front of all these people?” His eyes on me, Kevin gestured around the room at the students now openly staring at us. I realized Diamond and Fletcher were among them. Fletcher was turned around in his seat to face us, while Diamond looked on impassively.
“I don’t like being made fun of,” Kevin said. “Or having people look down on me.”
“We don’t look down on —” I started.
“Oh bullshit,” Kevin said. “I’m a freshman—sorry, a third former who’s got the balls to take your fourth form history class. Of course you look down on me, just like Fletcher Dupree does.”
Made uncomfortable by this bald assertion of what was basically the truth, I glanced at Fletcher, who glared at me as if I were the one who had just accused him of being a snob. Loudly, Fletcher said, “The hell is wrong with you, Glass? You gonna let this pissant keep jerking you off?”