Tradition

by Brendan Kiely

  She’d seen it. She knew. I wasn’t alone. We hadn’t been alone. Gillian had been there. She’d seen what Ethan had done.

  But she was stomping off and Ethan was chasing her now. Then they were gone and I was alone again. Me and my tree. I needed to get to my feet. I looked up but everything felt like it was spinning, the sky, the stars, my tree, me, everything was spinning and falling.

  PART THREE

  * * *

  AFTER

  CHAPTER 21

  * * *

  JAMES BAXTER

  There was going to be a lot of fallout from the party at Horn Rock, and I wanted to avoid it all, so I laced up my shoes and went for a run. It was about the only thing I could focus on and do. I went out much further down Route 17 than usual and tried to keep my legs at a faster pace, but that’s the thing about alcohol—it saps the potassium from your body and the next day your muscles are tighter than they should be because lactic acid has built up and you just need to stretch it out.

  All this was stuff I’d heard Coach Ellerly say back home a hundred times, which is why he always hollered about not drinking alcohol at parties. It would affect our game and if we wanted to party we could be his guest and we could also get the hell off his team. If that was a choice we were prepared to make, he wasn’t going to pass any judgment, we just had to know he wasn’t going to feel bad for us if we were out of work and struggling to hold down a job years later, because people who acted without any thoughts about the consequences of their actions were children and he wasn’t a goddamn babysitter, he was a coach who worked with young men—not children, young men. Men. He’d repeat that so many times. You want to be a man? Get the job done. You want to be a man? Make pain your friend. You want to be a man? You dig your cleats in the dirt and you push those lineman dummies up that field harder and faster than you did the last time or they’ll come back to haunt you later this week when they are real people and all they want to do is bury you in the ground and walk all over your grave.

  When I first made varsity, one of the upperclassmen put it like this: Coach Ellerly blows a whistle like the devil calling souls down to hell. That same year, we were on the bus on the way to Dayton. When we pulled into the parking lot, he made us sit on the bus until some of the staff from the other team came out to make sure we were still coming in. Then he stood at the front of the bus and said, “We’re going to someone else’s house today. What do we do when we get to someone else’s house, men?” He didn’t wait for us to respond. “We bust down the door and stab the dog. Hoo-rah. Hoo-rah!” We chanted and yelled along with him and he swung open the bus door and we ran off the bus screaming and holding our bags over our heads like soldiers, making a break for the locker room, running past the parents and staff from the other team, scaring them to all hell. By the time the game started, we were so hopped up on adrenaline that in the first play of the game, I knocked a kid on the other team so hard in the stomach he had to sit out most of the first quarter just to catch his breath. He was useless the rest of the night.

  But all those memories were also making me think about Freddie and Hackett and how, if I wanted to, I could make them sit out for a while. Thing was, I wasn’t just mad at them, I was mad at everyone, and myself, too. It wasn’t that I could barely read what I’d been assigned, barely form a complete sentence in classroom conversations most days—it was more how everyone acted. Like cruelty was currency, and the meaner you were, the richer you were. Just when I thought I’d found a few who weren’t, that got all messed up too. I couldn’t believe Jules had gotten back together with Hackett. People were talking about it. Jules and Hackett scoring again. Jules seduced Hackett under the tree. Told him to come back to her. Told him not to leave her alone. I wanted to say it didn’t surprise me. People slide back to exes all the time. I’d seen so many people do that throughout high school: break up, get back together, break up again, sneak away at a party, pretend they’re not hooking up, while really knowing that’s exactly what they are about to do. But Jules had been so adamant. No boys. And of all the boys, she chose Hackett (again). It felt like everything she’d said before wasn’t true. All that stuff about principles and empowerment. That had all made sense to me. So what was she doing now?

  I thought I had finally figured things out, but after the previous night, I felt as confused as I had when I arrived at Fullbrook.

  I dug in, lifted my knees high, and pumped as hard as I could to get back up the hill into campus, trying to put all the people from Fullbrook out of my mind.

  But when I turned into the street with our dorms, I saw Javi sitting on the ground beneath one of the trees in front of Jules’s dorm. I hadn’t seen him since I’d left the party, and I didn’t know if he’d seen the video or not, but it became clear as soon as I sat down next to him.

  “You stink,” he said to me. He wasn’t teasing me or egging me on. He was dull and flat, like a teacher offering a prayer before sit-down dinner. He leaned his head back against the tree and stared up to the second floor of Mary Lyon Hall. “Usually,” he went on, “after a party, after anything, really, Jules comes down here and we do a recap—we run through the highlights reel of the night before. Make sure neither of us missed anything. Make sure we both know as much about everything and everyone as possible. She won’t come out today.”

  I nodded and wiped the sweat from my eyes. “Yeah, well, maybe she’s embarrassed,” I said.

  Javi looked at me. “Oh God, you saw it? Has everyone seen it? Everyone’s seen it, of course.”

  I hadn’t been talking about the video.

  “Max won’t even talk to me. He saw it last night, while we were still out there, and he pushed me away. I tried to tell him it didn’t mean anything but he was a mess.”

  “It doesn’t mean anything,” I said. “It’s something a twelve-year-old would do, or care about.”

  “But it does mean something! It is a big deal! It was his first kiss—with a boy, I mean.” He paused. “You finally get to feel something, feel something that has been spinning inside you but you just didn’t really know, you finally feel it, coming out all over your skin, like your sweat is just saying yes, but you’ve never felt that way before, and all you want to do is explore, understand, feel more, but suddenly you’re naked in front of the whole world. The whole world, you know?”

  He clenched his jaw, and I knew he was fighting back tears. “Who would do that?” he asked. “Why? Why would you sit there in the dark, laughing, doing that?”

  “It’s so stupid.”

  “How many people have made out somewhere on campus this year? But how many of them were filmed? Filmed so someone could say, Look how weird that is. But it isn’t. There’s nothing about it that’s any different from every other motherfucker making out this year.” His hands trembled and he balled them into fists and hit the ground. “Mother. Fuckers,” he growled. “You can’t know this, Bax. You can’t know what it is like for people to look at you, and sometimes, you see the way their eyes fall away, and you know they are afraid to look you in the eye. Then they get this video and they’re all wide-eyed and shocked, like they’re watching animals at the zoo.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I saw it last night.” I told him about Gillian and Shriya giggling when they showed it to me. “But it was as much a surprise to them as it was to me, so it wasn’t them who filmed it.”

  “It doesn’t even matter,” Javi said. “It’s like it was everyone.”

  “Do you want to find out who did it?”

  “I’m not even sure. Yeah, I guess,” he said, but he didn’t sound like he did. “It’s not even me. I’m not that worried about me. But Max . . .” He trailed off.

  My first kiss was during a game of truth or dare in seventh grade, when someone dared me to kiss Kendra Witticker. I didn’t know what I was doing and I drooled all over her chin, and she mine, and when it was over she was so grossed out, she told everyone there they couldn’t say anything to anyone about it, and I felt about two feet
tall. I could remember that so clearly, and I knew Max had gone out with two girls while he’d been at Fullbrook, and he had his memories of girls too, but then, when he finally got to kiss another boy, the thing I think he really wanted most, it was the opposite of being told to forget it. Javi was right. It did mean something.

  “Should we go find Max?” I asked.

  “No. No way. He really made it clear. ‘Stay away.’ ” He looked back up at the second floor. “I just wish Jules would come down. I know she’s in there. I saw her.”

  I wanted to talk to her too. It wasn’t any of my business, I knew, but I still felt like asking her. What the hell? That guy? I didn’t bring it up with Javi, though, because Javi had no love for Hackett, and I didn’t feel like making his day even worse. And besides, as he and I were sitting there, I saw Freddie walking up the street, coming from the main campus. Even from a distance, I could see the bandages and stiffened gait of a guy in a lot of pain. As he got closer, all the small scrapes became apparent too—he looked like someone with chicken pox, almost. Even his face was cut up.

  The current that rushed through me was terrible and electric. Everything in me was charging me to get up, run after him, and knock him down in the way I couldn’t have the night before. I might have been actually getting up, I’m not sure, but Javi sensed it, and whether it was for me or for him, or for some other reason, he simply stuck out his hand and grabbed my forearm. He squeezed. And his eyes stayed me.

  Freddie glanced at us but said nothing. He didn’t wave or even nod. I didn’t either. As he passed us, Javi went on a whispering tirade about how much he hated Freddie, how much Freddie was the kind of guy who ruined people’s days because he needed them to be as miserable as he was, but I couldn’t help thinking that as much as I agreed with Javi, I was going to have to figure out a way to still talk to Freddie. Hang out with him. Freddie was the captain of the hockey team. That was the only reason I was there—hockey. Hockey, hockey, hockey.

  This felt all the more true at sit-down dinner that night, because although I didn’t have to sit with Freddie, I had to sit with a couple of the other guys on the hockey team, and although we were sitting in our chairs, as we spoke to each other it felt a lot more like we were circling each other, not letting our guard down, boxers light on their feet feigning jabs before a fight. I ate as quickly as I could and left them to tackle clean-up duty. Jules and Javi had both skipped dinner, but as I was leaving I saw Aileen ahead of me. We were moving at the same pace, and unless one of us suddenly doubled back and bolted into the dining hall, the exiting crowd would draw us closer together. She flinched as I walked up to her.

  “Hey.”

  She kept walking, and spoke to me while looking at the ground. “Hey.”

  We stepped out into the night, and as we descended the steps, the crowd fanned out around us. We walked a few paces in silence.

  “I’m glad you’re okay,” I said when we were pretty much on our own.

  “Oh my God, can we not talk about it? I don’t remember any of the night. It’s all a blur.”

  “Wait a sec,” I said. I was actually surprised how quickly she was walking. It was like the top half of her body was motionless and her legs fluttered on their own separate motor. “I’m really being serious. When I saw you just now, I was super glad. I mean, I didn’t know if Shriya would take care of you or not.”

  “She did.”

  “Good.”

  “I mean, she went all out.” She paused. “It’s super embarrassing, though, you know. Someone wiping your face with a cloth. Please,” Aileen continued. “I mean the whole night. Can we just forget it ever happened? All of it?”

  “Aileen. I am sorry. I have nothing to do with that bullshit the guys tried to pull. Freddie, he thinks he can do whatever the hell he likes and get away with it—like we’re all toys he uses and throws away when he’s bored. I’d have punched him in the face for what he did to you—and me—if you hadn’t already thrown him down the hill.” I smiled. “That was seriously badass. Have you seen him today?”

  Aileen allowed herself the slightest half grin. “Looks like he stuck his face in a paper shredder. Wish he had.”

  “For real.”

  She nodded and gave a little one-breath laugh. “I don’t know what he has said about me, but not all of it is true. He likes to exaggerate.”

  “In other words, he’s a liar.”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s why I never listen to anything he says.”

  “Good.”

  “Hey, would you mind if I walked you the rest of the way home?”

  “I guess it’s more fun to talk than carry me home, right?”

  We walked and talked about other things going on, like the announcement that the Winter Ball assignments were coming out later that month, and how awkward the whole tradition seemed, and how strange it must be for the teachers who were there to chaperone, but had to stand around and watch what was going on, and the few who ignored all the students and just danced way off to the side to kill the hours—the ones who were probably right in the middle of the dance floor when they were our age. We thought about teachers who might have been goth, or punk, or hippie when they were in high school, and wondered what it was that had drained them of all their flavor and fun.

  “Maybe they still have it?” Aileen said, when we were standing outside her dorm. “Maybe they just have to hide it?”

  “Like, the teachers have their own secret parties, or concert trips, or Ultra?”

  “Camp counselors do.”

  “I’m not sure I want to imagine what the teacher parties are like.”

  “You think they talk about us as much as we talk about them?”

  “Oh, man,” I said. “I hope not. I bet they want to think about anything other than us, whenever they can.”

  “Maybe,” Aileen said. She got contemplative. “I wonder how much they know about us, about the lives we live outside of class, about who we are on our own.”

  “I wonder how much they want to know,” I said.

  “They’re not our parents,” Aileen said. “We raise ourselves here, don’t we?”

  “I guess so.”

  “I hope we do a good job.”

  There was something so sad about the way she said it, a lump formed in my throat. I had no clue. I didn’t feel like I was doing much of a job taking care of myself, let alone anyone else.

  “Catch you later,” I said as she walked up the steps.

  “Yeah,” she said, turning and looking down at me. “That’d be cool, you know.”

  She was in half profile, the porch light beside the door warming her face. She smiled, and I swear it wasn’t cute, it wasn’t pretty, it wasn’t playful, it wasn’t anything other than brave, and that smile bobbed like a buoy in the pit of me.

  “That would be cool,” I told her.

  CHAPTER 22

  * * *

  JULES DEVEREUX

  I hid from everyone Sunday, which was easy for most of the day, except for sit-down dinner, which I skipped, and when Mrs. Attison, who was the dorm proctor, knocked on my door to check on me that night, I just said I wasn’t feeling well. I wouldn’t let her in.

  “Please see me tomorrow, just to check in,” she said.

  I could still hear her out in the hall, or feel her, really, that presence hovering and breathing outside my door. It would have been one thing if she had been a guard, but she wasn’t, she was like a fox or a raccoon, prowling the porch, not afraid of the people in the house, skulking, sniffing around, closer and closer to the door.

  “You sure you’re okay?”

  “Yes. Just need sleep.”

  “Okay.”

  And then she was gone and so was one fear, that she’d come in and see me trembling, a washed-out mess, but that fear was replaced by another, one that told me I shouldn’t be alone—even though I couldn’t bear to see anyone. I felt so certain I’d done something terribly wrong, and it was all my fault. I hated myself
for thinking it, but I did.

  I couldn’t sleep. I skipped breakfast on Monday. I wanted to let the hours pass, and zombie out for the day, in the hope that whatever semi-nauseous feeling I had swirling in my gut would go away before I had to face the world—but I couldn’t continue to hide out, because the longer I remained a hermit, the more questions people would have for me. And the idea that I might have to answer people’s questions began to scare me even more. What exactly would I say?

  It was fear that finally got me out of bed, Monday afternoon. Fear that got me into the shower. I had to move quickly. I couldn’t miss another class that day. I was afraid of getting found out. But about what? What did I do?

  “Jules!”

  I almost broke into a run when I heard my name called out behind me, but it was Javi, and when I turned to him I felt a sudden rush, something warming in my chest. “Jules,” he said again. “I was looking all over for you yesterday. I was waiting outside for you.”

  Javi, I thought. He wrapped his arms around me, and when he pulled back, his face was pale. He had bags under his eyes like I had. The urge to shout everything I wanted to say about Ethan rose within me, cold sweats, like I was about to puke.

  “I really needed you,” he said. He tugged me forward toward Main Street. “I know you saw the video, and it’s all crazy. I want to knock on every door and steal every phone, and shout at everyone in the face.”

  He went on, and I half listened, but if he could see my own need to speak, he didn’t notice or say anything. I felt something collapsing inside me, sticks snapping, logs on fire splitting and falling, and I suddenly felt so ashamed.

  “It’s like the whole world was watching us make out, Jules.”

  The whole world watching me and Ethan. How did I let it happen? I thought. Why did I let it happen? Javi kept tugging me and talking, drawing me across the street. The branches of the old elm outside the admin building waved at us as a gust pushed at our backs. We wound around into the academic quad, and all I could think about was how much Javi didn’t like Ethan and how stupid I’d been to let myself be alone with him. Javi was still talking about Max and the video, but all I kept hearing in my head was my own voice, getting louder and louder: Why?