Tradition

by Brendan Kiely

  Meanwhile, the seniors were completely relaxed. Freddie strolled around, asserting his usual authority in the room. He jabbed at a few of the freshmen as he walked by them—especially the smallest ones. “Who knows,” he teased, “maybe one of them will make a man out of you tonight.” He laughed and glanced over to Hackett, who was perched on the arm of the couch, and who ignored him, too busy scrolling through his phone.

  “Hell, yeah,” Hackett said, more to himself than anyone else. He grinned and texted something back. He was in his own world, and until Freddie referred to him, nobody had paid him any attention.

  Instead, most boys looked at Freddie. The sophomores and juniors were already gone. Tradition went like this: The sophomores and juniors picked up their dates first and went to the dance. Then the senior and freshman boys picked up their dates and paraded to the dining hall. The seniors and freshmen filed in, one couple at a time, alternating between senior boy and freshman girl and senior girl and freshman boy. The names of the freshmen were read aloud—like the induction to some kind of society. Like a debutante ball. Like a hey, you are on display, and the rest of us are watching you, judging you, sizing you up, deciding where you belong in the hierarchy.

  Freddie turned his attention to us. He shook his head. “It’s annoying, you know. You guys having to throw everything off. You won’t get announced because neither of you is bringing a freshman.”

  Javi had explained the whole tradition to me. What did we care? We both thought it was stupid. Or worse. Some of the guys glanced back and forth from Freddie to us.

  “Bax is new,” Javi said. “He should get introduced.” Neither of us cared, of course. He just wanted to egg Freddie on.

  Freddie glared at me. “Which one of you is the girl?” he asked.

  “Neither of us,” I said.

  “That’s the point, dumbass,” Javi added.

  Javi and I remained arm in arm, and I kept my eyes fixed on Freddie’s. I knew he’d look away, and he did, smirking. “Boys,” he said, “here’s to making it a night to remember.”

  And with that, Hackett stood and pocketed his phone. “Okay. Ready?” he asked. There were a few nods and halfhearted hoots.

  “What the hell?” Freddie said. “He asked if you are ready. ARE YOU READY?”

  Now, like they were all back at the pep rally, they yelled in agreement.

  “All right,” Hackett said. “Let’s go.”

  He led the freshmen out of the common room and toward the side door, marching out front like the captain of his penguin army, and then Freddie and the other seniors made their way to the other door, closer to Mrs. Attison’s dorm proctor suite.

  “I guess we make our own way,” Javi said to me.

  “Good,” I said.

  I couldn’t imagine falling in lockstep with Freddie and the other guys. Of course we had to make our own way, just like Jules and Aileen—the four of us, outcasts mounting our own private and necessary revolution.

  Javi nodded. “Ready?” he asked.

  “To take on the world?” I said. “Absolutely.” But as we walked out, following thirty yards or so behind all the seniors, I was nervous about what I was going to do that night.

  It had snowed the day before, and again that afternoon. The fluffy flakes had fallen and fallen for hours, so the whole campus was blanketed in a thick, gleaming whiteness. On any other night, the guys would have been scooping it up by the fistful, making snowballs, and bombarding each other, but not tonight. Tonight, coolly, almost solemnly, they marched to the girls’ dorms, deadly serious.

  When we got to the dance, Javi could see my nerves, because I positioned us over by the far wall, like some middle school boy at his first dance, and fidgeted like one too, even more than usual. Juniors and sophomores crowded around the punch bowl and snack table, and a few brave theater kids were already out on the dance floor. Once the seniors and freshmen came parading in, I couldn’t stop my nerves from getting the better of me, and I began shuffling my weight from foot to foot.

  “Is that what you call dancing?” Javi asked.

  “No.”

  “Good, because it isn’t.”

  I stood still—too still, like at attention, but without the salute.

  “Are you going to stay there all night?”

  “No.”

  “You’re acting a little weird.”

  “Sorry, man. I just think the whole night is weird.” I paused because it wasn’t coming out right. “I mean, not this. Not us. Like, that’s good. Or. Well. I don’t know what I’m trying to say.”

  Javi laughed. “Let’s dance, big boy.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t for one minute think you signed up for this and don’t have to do any dancing,” he said. He laughed again. “Come on. Don’t leave me hanging.” He dragged me out onto the dance floor and even though it was still early in the ball, and there wasn’t real dance music playing, but rather something old, a swinging, bluesy Elvis song, Javi found the beat and started moving to it. We were smack-dab in the middle of the room, and people started turning to us. The juniors and sophomores already on the dance floor moved in a little closer, watching. Javi grabbed my hand and held it in the air. A couple of the dancers cheered. I was out of my league.

  The music jumped into the chorus and Javi spun himself around under my hand. The dancers all slid closer, most of them already swing dancing to the tune. As the song moved toward its crescendo, Javi shouted to me, “Come on, Bax. Live, baby, live.” And I couldn’t hold back anymore. I dropped into it and did my best to keep up with him. He spun me around and we shuffled in tiny circles amid the dancers around us, all cheering.

  CHAPTER 38

  * * *

  JULES DEVEREUX

  Aileen and I had ditched the system and we let Gillian and her team figure out what to do. Neither of us was around when our dates came to pick us up, and while we felt bad, we also thought it was ridiculous that two seventeen-year-old girls had to sit around and wait for two fourteen-year-old boys to come pick them up. The whole charade was so gross. Instead, we hid out in Aileen’s room until everyone else was gone.

  We walked arm in arm to the dining hall, entered late, and might have slipped into the ball unnoticed, except for Aileen. The tear along the leg ran from the hem to the waist. The shoulder strap was torn from the back and hung limp and loose on the side, and there was an extra rip under the armpit. Her bra strap was left bare over her shoulder and Aileen had fastened the dress to the bra with a safety pin, just to keep it from sliding down. When she took off her coat, Mrs. Attison and her sixth sense of decorum caught sight of Aileen’s dress from across the room. She marched toward us through the crowd.

  “Excuse me,” she was saying as she approached. “I don’t think that’s appropriate attire for a formal.”

  “Brace yourself,” I said quietly to Aileen.

  “No way. I’m not just going to stand here. Let’s dance.”

  She pulled me forward and we hustled into the throbbing mob near the center of the room, and even though I knew she wanted to say more, once we were in the thick of it, Mrs. Attison didn’t pursue us. I’m not sure she even knew why the dress was a mess. Maybe after a moment’s thought, she realized she didn’t want to find out.

  Once we were on the dance floor, I wasn’t sure I was seeing what I was seeing. Javi and Bax shaking it together in the center. I could hear the song winding down, and I was worried it would all end, but as the next song kicked in, they kept at it, and more people joined them. I grabbed Aileen by the hand and we jumped in right next to Javi and Bax and swung along with them to the next song. We all turned and turned, and for a brief few minutes, I thought I could spin the rest of the party right out of my mind.

  And as if the universe heard me, as if, for one moment, all the feet in the world leapt and landed in time with the song, another body squeezed into our tight circle. It was Max.

  Javi eyed him and played it cautious for a moment, but Max tapped Bax on the
shoulder, to get him to make room. Bax grinned, backed up, and let Max slide in front of Javi. They yelled at each other over the music.

  “I was wrong,” Max said. “I was scared.”

  “Me too,” Javi yelled back.

  Yes boys, yes, yes boys, yes, yes boys, please, I wanted to chant, but instead all I could manage was a smile and a nod.

  “I don’t care what they think,” Max shouted. “I don’t care at all.” He stepped closer, pulled Javi toward him, and they moved in unison, bumping and grinding, speaking a language of forgiveness with their hips and smiles.

  There had been this perfect moment the night Javi, Bax, Aileen, and I all went to Wendell, this moment in the barn, dancing, this moment feeling like nobody expected anything of me, and I too expected nothing from the world. Expectations. Javi called it my paranoia. But it wasn’t. It was more an almost-always-present low-watt fear and worry that hummed somewhere deep inside. But there, dancing in the parti-colored light in the barn at Wendell, sweating and feeling the pulse of music in my stomach, an electricity like my first real kiss howling through my bones, I felt the weightlessness of no worry at all. I felt free.

  I was almost there again—a feeling like a thing you can smell but can’t see, so you know it’s there, but where?—except I was so far away. Bax had stepped away from the dance floor and strode over to the punch bowl. He had Ethan by the arm, and he leaned in close to whisper something in his ear. Aileen was with him, standing between them and Lianne, by the edge of the table, and she got a few more first-year girls to huddle around her. I knew what they were saying—it was all part of the plan.

  The music changed. It slowed down, and as Max stepped back from Javi, Javi grabbed him by the wrist.

  “Kiss me,” he said to Max. “Right here. Right now.”

  With the crowd all around them watching, they kissed and kissed again, hesitant at first, and then, with the care and passion that they’d been robbed of back at Horn Rock, they let their mouths close together and breathe each other in.

  The next song was a country tune, and for those who knew a box step, it was slow and soft and inviting. Max nestled in close to Javi, and I couldn’t hear what they said, but they took each other’s hands and fell right in line, stepping into rhythm with the song. Is that how easy it could be? I wondered. If only always, and not in these little bubbles, these few faint stars in an otherwise too dark night.

  I slipped away, not speaking to anyone. I had to hurry. I looked at the clock. It was almost time.

  CHAPTER 39

  * * *

  JAMES BAXTER

  Over by the punch bowl, Hackett was leaning in close to Lianne, whispering something in her ear. Her body cocked to the side, and although she gave him a quick smile, she took a step back. He reached for her and held her by the wrist and whispered again in her ear. Then he stepped them both forward, away from the table, and he twirled her beneath his hand.

  I watched all this as I hustled toward him without trying to look like I was hustling toward him. The music changed, the lights swirled in a lazy red-and-blue swoop, and Lianne looked to her freshman friends all bouncing on the dance floor nearby. Hackett twirled her again.

  “Hey, man,” I said to him. He threw me one of those sans souci smiles he’d been tossing at me since the beginning of the year. Toothy, wide, confident. When I took him by the arm, he let go of Lianne. He didn’t drop the smile. He only glanced over my shoulder. I didn’t look. I knew it was Aileen pulling Lianne to the side too.

  “You have something to say to me?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “How about you head back to your date, then?”

  “No.”

  He looked over my shoulder again and dropped the smile. “What the hell is she saying to Lianne?”

  “No.”

  “What?”

  “No.”

  Hackett tried to pull his arm out, but I held him tight. “Let go,” he said.

  “No.”

  “Stop saying that.”

  “No.”

  He struggled again, and I calmly wrapped him in a hug, trying to minimize the scene as much as possible.

  “What the hell is the matter with you, man? Let go.”

  “Are you going to shout for help?” I asked.

  “You are a freak of nature, dude. I don’t know what kind of game you are playing, but you better let me go right now.”

  I squeezed as hard as I could, listening to him groan. “No. You hear me? No.” And then I released him. I looked over my shoulder. Aileen had led Lianne and Margot and the others away from the punch bowl. At first I couldn’t find them. I looked around for Jules and couldn’t find her, either. It was a slow song and Javi and Max were dancing close, caught in the soft cone of blue light from above. Then the music switched again and leapt into something fast and galloping, and I saw Lianne and Margot and a bunch of the other freshman girls dancing. Max and Javi joined them.

  “You’re insane,” Hackett said to me.

  I swung back to him and pointed to his face. “I know you heard me.”

  “You’re on probation. You can’t touch me. You’re dead. You’re so dead.”

  I glanced at my phone. It was nearly time. “No,” I said again. “I’m right where I need to be.”

  The music had everyone swaying and bouncing into each other, and for a moment, I wished I could jump in and join them. For a moment, I thought I could melt back into the fun and forget about everything else, but I’d made Jules a promise and I was going to stick to it. I slipped away and walked briskly toward the bathrooms, and almost slammed into Aileen.

  “You okay?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “You don’t look it.”

  She could read it all over me. I was so anxious I was starting to feel it in my gut and crawling up and down my skin. “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “I think so.”

  “It’s almost time.” I looked at my phone again.

  “For me too,” she said.

  I squeezed her arm and took a step toward the stairwell, but she held my hand and pulled me back, the flicker of disco ball light running in from the main hall and flashing on her face. “Can I—” I began, but she interrupted me, stepped close and smashed her mouth against mine, and I felt like I was way up in those stars, getting a glimpse at what it felt like to watch the world spin far below.

  And then we were both running across the foyer to the door near the kitchen, and then down the stairs to the basement. The bass beat from the main hall thundered in the stairwell, echoing off the walls and in my head. Aileen pulled rubber gloves from her purse, snapped them over her hands, and ducked below the service window in the basement hallway to the small metal door by the dishwashing room. She was heading toward the circuit breaker. I bolted out the basement door, dashing into the cold, dark snow.

  The timing was everything. She couldn’t see what we were about to do outside. We just had to trust each other and brace ourselves for all that was about to come.

  CHAPTER 40

  * * *

  JULES DEVEREUX

  I couldn’t grab my coat without raising suspicion so I slipped outside using the stairwell by the bathrooms. It was kind of ironic it was the same place I almost tripped over Ethan and Gillian on the first day of school that year—ironic, or maybe more fitting. I couldn’t remember what we said to each other that day, but I knew I had the feeling that he hadn’t heard me, that same feeling that haunted me about him now always. He wasn’t listening. I was just a prop in the drama of his own mind.

  Not anymore.

  I couldn’t believe how cold it was, and because my dress was long, I had to hike it up so I could run, and my bare arms and neck and legs all had to face the freezing bite in the air. I bolted along the walkway and rounded the academic quad until I came to the huge bushes by the arts center, and then I reached into the thicket, scraping my arms as I pulled out Cray-Cray’s drip torch and then another.

  I’d
broken into his shed earlier and stolen them both, and the pouch he’d used back at the pep rally. I’d found a plastic bag with the little balls he used to fuel the fire, stuffed as many as I could in the satchel, and stashed it all in the bushes by the arts center with a pair of work gloves. Getting caught wasn’t my concern. I just wanted to be sure I could go through with it.

  When I had the gear, I stood and looked back at the dining hall on the other side of the great lawn. The windows still blinked with the blue-red flash of the dance, and the low bass thumped loud enough to drum out into the night air. I took a deep breath and ran out into the snow.

  My ankles stung. I loped like a long-limbed beast across the lawn of the academic quad, swishing my feet through the snow, almost skating, so I would leave footprints behind. I cut one line, then another, and then another, then went back over the same lines with the back of my heel, digging a groove all the way down into the dead grass. And just as I wondered if he was going to join me or not, I saw a lone figure running toward me, an enormous shadow. I wasn’t afraid. I was relieved.

  He was panting when he reached me. “You ready?” he asked as he tried to catch his breath.

  “Yes.” I handed him one of the drip torches. “Last chance to duck out, Bax. This is it.”

  “I’m not backing out,” he said, taking it from me. “I’m with you. You’re not alone.”

  He didn’t touch me. He just stood there, arms loose by his side, the nozzles of our drip torches gazing at each other. But I still felt held. Held but not trapped. Like he was holding me without embracing me. I was exploding with fear all over, but excitement too. Freedom. Like all my strings were finally clipped. Completely on my own—and not alone. I wasn’t abandoned. I was free.