Tradition

by Brendan Kiely

  She glanced ahead, over my shoulder to the dorm. “I can’t.” She hesitated and avoided looking at me. “I’m already helping with the tours.” She flashed a fake smile. “With Gillian, obviously.”

  And of course there was that, too. Last year I’d told Shriya there didn’t have to be a split. She didn’t have to choose sides. But that was dumb. Of course there were sides. There are always sides, and she didn’t choose mine.

  I took a deep breath. I wanted to show her it didn’t hurt as much as it did—or maybe I just wanted to fool myself. “It’s cool,” I said, as she was walking away. I shrugged and didn’t know why. It’s not like anybody had made me come out here to pass out the pamphlets. I just wanted to do something good for the community.

  It took all of no time for the mother who was pissed at me to find Mrs. Attison on the front steps of Mary Lyon. They’d barely said hello to one another before the mother turned and pointed to me. I knew exactly what was coming.

  Mrs. Attison walked with her hands bouncing slightly on either side, a kind of sped-up sway. When she got to me, sweat glistened above her eyebrows. “Julianna, I think it’s time to wrap it up.”

  “Oh, I’m happy to stay out here to the end of the day. It’s important, you know.”

  “I know.” Her mouth folded into a tight, wrinkled stamp. “I’d appreciate if you stopped all the same.” She took a step back, as if that was the end of it.

  “I’m just passing out health center pamphlets,” I added. “It’s like passing out pamphlets about the gym or the arts center. What’s the difference?”

  “Julianna, I’m on your side. It’s one thing to provide help. It’s another to shove parents’ worst fears in their faces as they’re dropping off their kids.”

  “It’s all available at the health center. What’s the big deal?”

  “You always have to push it one step further, don’t you?”

  “That’s not how I see it.”

  “Of course not.”

  “I’ll sit behind the table if that is somehow better, but—”

  “Julianna, this isn’t a discussion.”

  “Mrs. Attison.”

  “Julianna.” She rubbed her thumb and forefinger like she was balling wax. “For once, try not to make a scene. Try to take a step back and be a team player.” When I shook my head, she continued before I could make my argument. “This is your senior year. The last thing you want to do is make this year difficult for yourself. The politicking is done for the day.”

  This shut me up. I was stunned. I simply nodded.

  “Thank you,” she said, collecting herself. “I have to get the tour leaders prepped.”

  Prepped. Now there was a familiar word at Fullbrook. Make sure you are prepped. Prep this, prep that. So much prep. Sometimes I wondered if “prepped” was actually the right word. There were a lot of rules at Fullbrook, written and otherwise. Unspoken codes. Codes Mom had embraced and still lived by. This was her school, not mine. If she’d sent me elsewhere, what would that have said about Fullbrook? Or her, really? She’d been in the first class to admit women, and the codes had stuck with her. Or maybe they’d been a part of her all along?

  A stone of sadness plunged deep within me. The lemonade pitcher sat mostly full on my folding table, and I pictured myself knocking back shots of lemonade all afternoon on my own, pamphlets leaving the table only when a breeze lifted them into the air and blew them like whispers across the quad.

  CHAPTER 3

  * * *

  JAMES BAXTER

  Freddie and Hackett walked me to the far edge of campus. When we got to the tree line beside the baseball field, they glanced around, then leapt over the metal gate in front of the access road and bolted down the dirt road. I followed, uneasy and wary, but it felt good to run, to get out of the sun and the feeling that people were watching, waiting for me to say something stupid or incorrect and prove to them that I really was the dumbass from corn country they all thought I was.

  Once we’d turned a bend and the campus was out of sight, we slowed. “Not supposed to be down this way without supervision, of course,” Freddie said.

  “Cray-Cray might come zooming out of nowhere in his security cart,” Hackett added. “But I doubt it.”

  The path bent around the base of a hill rising in the woods. The further we walked, the steeper and steeper the side of the hill became, until the path opened up to a narrow beach, where the cliff edge hundreds of feet above us was a sheer drop to the water. The river was a bright sheen of sunlight disappearing into the thick woods beyond.

  Freddie pointed to the boathouse next to the beach. “Home to another one of Hackett’s non-sports.”

  Hackett shook his head.

  “Rowing isn’t a sport, dude,” Freddie continued.

  “It’s a race.”

  “Yeah, but not like a real race.”

  “It’s in the Olympics,” I added.

  “Hell, yeah!” Hackett said, pointing two fingers at Freddie. “The Buckeye doesn’t say much, but when he does—he gets you.”

  Hackett and I slapped hands, but it occurred to me that I’d never known anyone who played either of his sports, skiing or crew. Still, I liked the banter. Liked being a part of it all. There was something familiar—not the words, just being part of the conversation.

  Mom, in her way, had given me only one mandate for my year at Fullbrook: Make friends, James; you deserve them too. Dad’s had been another one entirely: Don’t screw this up. You have one more shot. Make it count. Then he added buddy, as if that somehow softened it.

  Freddie sprang over the rubble at the base of the cliff like a mountain goat. Hackett and I followed more slowly, to a rock that rose out of the water. We all wobbled at the top, trying to keep our balance and not flop forward into the river.

  Hackett pulled out a Zippo. “Well,” he said, putting his hand on my back. “Welcome to your first real Fullbrook tradition.”

  For a second I thought he was going to make me dive into the river, but he kept dancing the lighter through his fingers, rolling it around his knuckles. Freddie reached behind his back and pulled out a padded envelope he’d hidden beneath his blazer in his waistband. “Out with the old, in with the new,” he said.

  He pulled a framed photo from the padded envelope and held it in front of me. “But you’re going to do it.”

  “That’s right,” Hackett said, pointing the lighter at me. “Come on, man. You weren’t here last year. You haven’t been here. You want to be a part of all this or what?”

  “Yeah,” I said, hoping I sounded as confident and carefree as he did.

  Freddie nodded. “We stole it from the admin building.”

  “Why?” I didn’t want it, but I found the package in my hand. Then the lighter.

  “Tradition,” Hackett said. “Seniors have been doing this since my father went here. We take one thing from the admin building to start the year.”

  “But no one has ever taken something directly from the headmaster’s office,” Freddie added. He nodded, trying to egg me on. “You’re with us now, man. You got to jump in. We stole it. You burn it.”

  “Last year’s graduating class,” Hackett added, pointing to the photo.

  “Burn it! Burn it!” Freddie chanted. “Out with the old, in with the new. This is our year! Come on, man. Do it! Do it!”

  Hackett reached into his pocket and pulled out a flask. “Hold up,” he said. “Take one down and pass it around.” He swigged down a mouthful and passed the flask to Freddie, who did the same and passed it to me. I sniffed it. Hackett laughed. “That’s Macallan 25. Bottle’s in my room. Only break it out for the real occasions.” He loosened half a smile. “It’s the good stuff, man. You’ve probably never had it before, but trust me, this is what the big boys drink.”

  “Come on,” Freddie said. “We don’t have all day!”

  “You’re one of us now, Buckeye,” Hackett said. “Drain it!”

  It smelled like fire, woodsmoke in a c
an, and it seared my throat as it went down. I coughed and wiped my mouth. My eyes stung. “Holy crap,” I said. “That’s awful.”

  Hackett laughed. “So much to teach you, man.” He put his arm around me, and even though I thought this was all stupid as hell, at least I wasn’t sitting in my room staring at the wall, trying to figure out if my Pink Floyd poster was as out of place at Fullbrook as I was. Instead, I was out with Freddie and Hackett, with people—which was more than I could say for the last ten months.

  I held the frame, turned it so the glass threw little spears of sunlight, and quickly smashed it against the rocks at our feet. Glass shattered, the frame splintered and snapped, and I pulled the photo loose from the mess. Freddie and I kicked what we could into the river.

  “All right,” I said, trying my damnedest to sound like them. “Out with the old, in with the new.”

  “Hell, yeah!” Freddie shouted again.

  There was that butterfly feeling jumping in my gut, because ever since last fall I’d become overly hesitant and anxious, and every time I had to make a decision, I was stunned into wide-eyed inaction. I just wanted to do the right thing, but I had the hardest time knowing what that was. Something bugged me about what we were up to along the river, but it seemed worse not to just go with the flow with the guys. Freddie and Hacket weren’t worried at all, so why should I have been a stick in the mud?

  All right, Mom, here’s me making friends. I held the photo and the envelope together, flipped open the Zippo, and set the flame to a corner. At first they smoked, blue-green veins burning and melting the bubble lining and photo paper, but they gathered, ignited more, and I held what seemed like a ball of fire in my hands for as long as I could, before dropping it into the river below me. Don’t worry, Dad—it’s just tradition, they do it every year.

  “Woooo-hoooo!” Freddie hollered, tipping back, roaring at the sky.

  “Last year’s gone,” Hackett said. His voice was steady, but he had some of Freddie’s mania in his eyes too. “Last year’s classes, gone. Last year’s records, gone. Sports seasons, gone. A quarter of those Fullbrookers are gone too.”

  “And the new prospects have arrived,” Freddie said.

  Hackett shook his head but smiled.

  “What?” Freddie asked, already bounding back down the rocks. “Come on, Buckeye. Let’s see what these prospects look like. Little looking ahead to the Senior Send-Off, baby!” He waved to me over his shoulder.

  At first I thought he was talking about the other athletes like me. “Gillian and Shriya probably have them down by the student center by now,” he called back. Then it dawned on me what he really meant.

  “Guy’s an animal,” Hackett said, as we climbed down the rocks after Freddie. “Tie a piece of meat to a string. Hang it out in front of him. He’ll chase it for miles.”

  CHAPTER 4

  * * *

  JULES DEVEREUX

  It was so strange, starting senior year like that, feeling as if the ground was opening up beneath me, I was slowly sinking into it, and it might swallow me up for good. I was trying to figure out how to shake that feeling when I saw Javi strolling toward me.

  Tie loose, collar unbuttoned, he wasn’t wearing any socks either. Sunglasses. New. Versace, of course. I glared at him to let him know I was judging him. But not really.

  “What?” he asked, playing along. “I’m not leading any tours today. I almost stayed in my room, but then I saw little old you fluttering across the quad all on your own.”

  “If you call me ‘little’ one more time . . .” I shook a finger at him.

  He took off his sunglasses and faked a sad face, those green eyes of his dipping toward me. I held my glare for about half a second more, then walked straight into him, nose to his chest, arms at my side, expecting a hug, which he delivered immediately, closing me in. Even on a hot day he smelled so fresh, so clean, as he always did, which, to me at least, was part of what made him seem so strong.

  “This sucks,” I mumbled.

  “Senior year? How is that possible? We can finally stand on the senior carpet outside the dining hall. We can finally sit in the senior couches in the library. Come on. We’ve been given the keys to the kingdom.”

  He couldn’t stop himself from laughing, a boom I felt all around my head until he let me go and I stepped back to look at him—his perennial south Florida tan richer than when I’d seen him last, as if he were still at the beach, smiling up at the sun. He always looked more relaxed than I did, even when he wasn’t. “It’s good to see you, Javi.”

  “This was my biggest fear, this year. You.”

  “Thanks.”

  “No, seriously.” He began pacing around me. There was something radiant about Javi; he danced when he walked, like a boy unable to hold back his enthusiasm. I loved him more now than I did then. All the kissing was behind us. It was something much deeper now.

  “I have to get out of here,” I said, waving at the bustle in front of Mary Lyon.

  “Out of Fullbrook?”

  I frowned. “I wish. No, but seriously. Take me away from here.”

  “Want to go for a walk?” he asked. He smiled, and I knew exactly what he was thinking.

  “Sure. But remember I have rules this year.”

  “Rules? Julianna Devereux.” He raised an eyebrow. “To quote one of my absolute best friends in the world, ‘Rules were made to be broken.’ ”

  If I had to go to my mother’s world for high school, I was determined to go to mine for college. I just had to get in first. Hence, the plan: my exit strategy. Senior year. I was going to be on top of all my shit. One more year, one more year. That was my mantra. Do everything I needed to do and more and skip everything that would get in the way. Stay focused. One more year, one more year. I looped my arm through his and tugged him back toward the table. “Help me clean up first.”

  He made me drag him down the path. “Jules, forget it. Mrs. Attison had her fit. You’re done. Let’s jet. It’ll get cleaned up.”

  That was another phrase I heard all too often at Fullbrook, and it annoyed the hell out of me. As if it was magic. As if there wasn’t a someone who would have to clean it up. As if it wasn’t expected that those who made the mess had to clean it up.

  “Come on,” I insisted.

  He rolled his eyes but followed me.

  We broke the table down and propped it up beside the front steps—I didn’t know where it belonged—and we bundled the pamphlets and brought them and everything else back to my room. By the time we’d finished and were heading out the front door, a campus tour was gathering near the front steps. Gillian and Shriya stood with their heads held high above the group of first years, explaining the route they were all about to take.

  “Don’t worry,” Gillian explained. “You can always ask for help.” She had changed her look. Gone was the preppy athlete of her first three years. The Gillian addressing the crowd was styled and polished like a TV pundit. Her blond was even whiter.

  She glanced toward the steps and found me and Javi trying to squeeze behind the last lingering parents who’d already overstayed their welcome for Move-In Day. I looked up and, for some sick, Pavlovian reason, flashed her a quick smile.

  Gillian and Shriya had been chipping away at me ever since Ethan and I had broken up the year before. They’d made it seem like I was breaking up with them, not him. Gillian especially. I was out. Out of their inner circle, the clutch of kids at the top of the social scene. I’d been one of them once without even trying, but Gillian and Shriya were the queens of Fullbrook this year, and I wasn’t a part of it.

  All I ran was my one-woman club. Gillian was the captain of the field hockey team, president of the Winter Ball committee. And if the guys ever had to vote, all the ones who weren’t numbnut racists would vote Shriya hottest girl on campus—since that was the dumbass kind of vote boys took the time to complete. And that was what it was, she was beautiful—but more important to me was that she had an air of authority, the poise
of someone ten years older than me. It wasn’t only Mrs. Attison who loved her. It was every single adult on campus. “A star is born,” Headmaster Patterson said to a couple of other teachers, after Shriya’s speech at our final all-community sit-down dinner last year, like they were taking credit for having molded her—as if she hadn’t been brilliant before she’d come to Fullbrook.

  But now that Gillian and Shriya had dropped me, I wondered if we’d ever really been friends at all, or if the boys had been the center all along and we’d just orbited them, hoping to get pulled in closer. It pissed me off. We should have been our own center.

  Now Gillian was with Ethan.

  Javi grabbed my hand. “Can we please get out of here?”

  “Please,” I said, more demoralized than I wanted to sound.

  We waved to the crowd, offered a few vague welcomes and hellos, and hurried across the quad. Once we were out of earshot, I leaned into him again. “So you’re not going to abandon me this year?” I asked. I hated myself for sounding so pathetic, but I just needed to hear what I knew he was going to say.

  “Yes,” he teased. “Starting now.” He spun out of my grip and skipped ahead. “Get away from me, crazy lady,” he mocked. “I don’t want to catch your crazy!” When I didn’t run after him and sock him, he doubled back and looped his arm through mine. “No. I’m friends with everyone—I don’t care. But if they are going to make me pick sides? Shoot.”

  It was true. Javi and I had always rolled around the edge of that inner circle.

  “Besides. You know how I feel about Ethan.”

  He’s not that bad, I’d told Javi a million times last year—until I’d finally broken up with him. At least Javi hadn’t said, I told you so.

  “Whatever,” he said, as if he was reading my mind. “Let them have Fullofit. The rest of the world is ours.”

  We crossed Old Main, swung around the admin building, and took the road to the gym and student center. Just as we got near the side door, it swung open violently. Aileen had kicked it open with so much force, it hit the brick wall, bounced back, and tagged her shoulder as it closed. She spilled the coffee she was holding down her leg, and screamed.