by Dan Josefson
I shook my head.
“ ‘I have never felt so alone.’ ”
We heard the sound of people climbing the stairs on the other side of the kitchenette. Tidbit grabbed my arm. She leaned close and whispered. I felt her hair against my cheek and the hot rush of her breath and it wasn’t until she had run back into the hallway and closed the door behind her that I pieced together what I thought she’d said: “Don’t tell them anything. Make something up.”
Jenna and Kelly were still in the shower room when Tidbit snuck back into the bathroom. They were having a meeting with the girls who had already been searched about why no one had been paying attention to Bev and about finding a dress she could borrow now that her velour one was soaked. The rest of the girls were where Tidbit had left them. Laurel pointed to the stall where she had put Tidbit’s clothes. Tidbit got them and dressed quickly.
“Well,” Laurel asked her, “who was it?”
“The new kid,” Tidbit told her. “His name’s Benjamin.”
“Yeah? What’s he like?”
Tidbit pulled her shirt over her head. “A lot more freaked out than he was about three minutes ago.”
When Marcy finally returned to get me, it wasn’t Roger who came with her but a teacher who introduced himself as Spencer. Spencer took me downstairs and across the Mansion to my dorm. On the way he told me about what had happened with Han. As Alternative Boys and Ellie were gaining on him, Han had run up to someone’s house and tried to get them to let him in. “But before the woman in the house could open her door,” Spencer said, “three or four Alternative Boys tackled him off of her stoop and right into her azaleas.” It was clear that Spencer found this hilarious. I’m relatively sure he had invented the part about the azaleas—no one else who told me the story ever mentioned them.
“Anyway, the rest of the dorm shows up and puts Han into a wiggle and totally tears up this woman’s garden.” He looked over at me, to make sure I was properly awed by the story. “The woman, the one who lives there, of course has no idea what’s going on. Or maybe she did. She called the police and they sent like four cars and the paddy wagon. Who knew the Webituck PD even had a paddy wagon?”
We walked across a landing that overlooked the wide wooden staircase leading down to the Great Hall. Spencer said that after checking the boys’ stories and calling a few probation officers, the police had decided to charge only Ellie. Roger had gone down to the station to bail her out. Alternative Boys were now in a candor meeting, which Spencer said stood for claiming any negligence or dishonesty in our relationships. “You probably don’t have anything to say since you just got here,” he said. “But if anyone broke any rules with Han or knew about him breaking rules, or knew that he was planning to run, that’s when they have to admit to it. Then everyone needs to confront Han about running away.”
Spencer opened the door to Alternative Boys’ kitchenette, from where I saw the boys sitting on the couches in the lounge. Han sat on a plastic chair facing the corner of the room, wearing a sheet draped around him like a toga. Pudding slid over on his couch and patted the space next to himself for me to sit down.
“Hey,” Spencer said, “you’re back!” He was talking to Ellie, who was sitting at the desk where she had put my things earlier.
Ellie nodded. Her head rested in the palm of one hand, her elbow on the desk. She glared at some paperwork in front of her.
I went to sit next to Pudding, but Spencer stopped me. “Hold on,” he said. “You can leave your shoes over there.” He pointed to the corner of the lounge, where the rest of the boys’ shoes were lined up in pairs. “Students don’t wear shoes in the Mansion or the school building. In New Boys or New Girls, shoes get locked up, but not in Alternative Boys or Alternative Girls.”
“See, we’re trusted to be in the same room with our own shoes, Benjamin,” Pudding said. “You should feel honored.”
I put my shoes with the others and sat down next to Pudding. Each of the boys had a piece of notebook paper that he was either writing on or staring at.
“Hey, who’s this?” asked the other grown-up in the room. He was a short black man with a goatee and an eyebrow ring.
“Dedrick, meet Benjamin,” Spencer said. “He just got here today. Benjamin, Dedrick.”
“It’s not always like this,” Dedrick said. “Well, it’s usually a little like this.” He handed me a piece of notebook paper. “Write down any fibs you’ve got.”
“Fibs?” I asked.
“God, Ellie,” Spencer said, “didn’t you tell this poor kid about fibs? What were you talking about the whole time you did his intake? Your credit card debt?”
Ellie didn’t look up. “Screw you, Spencer.”
“Jeez,” Spencer said.
“That’s an f-word substitute!” Pudding was already up out of his seat and pointing at Ellie. “ ‘Screw you’ is definitely an f-word substitute! I heard it! She owes three dollars.” He was smiling wildly and looking around for support.
“Sit back down,” Dedrick said, putting his arm gently over Pudding’s shoulder. “You’ve got more fibs to write.”
“No, we can’t do anything until she pays three dollars. Everything stops. And I already wrote all my fibs.”
“No, you didn’t,” Dedrick said. “I can tell you still have fibs from the way you’re acting.”
“It’s true,” someone called out from one of the other couches. “You’re acting like an asshole.”
“No,” Pudding said, more serious now. “Everything has to stop until she pays. That’s the rule. Even for staff.”
“God, Pudding.” Spencer was across the room, where he was collecting and reading the pages the boys had been writing on. “She just went to jail. Could you show a little sympathy?”
“Yeah,” William said. “You’re being a real screwhead.”
“Sit down, screwface!” someone else shouted. I thought maybe this was Zach.
Pudding was smiling. “Those are all f-word substitutes! That’s verbal rape! Aubrey even said so. I feel so molested!”
“You wish,” someone said.
“And so what if Ellie went to jail,” Pudding added. “We’re in jail every day of our lives.”
“Every day of your lives,” Dedrick said, pushing him back onto the couch.
When things quieted down, Dedrick offered to take me aside to answer some of my questions. He led me into the kitchenette, where he could still see what was going on in the lounge. Fibs, Dedrick said, were functioning intimacy blockers. “It’s like if you have a secret, if you broke a rule or you know someone else did and you haven’t told anyone.”
I looked at him, waiting to hear anything that might be helpful.
“They’re called intimacy blockers because if you’re keeping a secret from someone, about something you did or that somebody else did, whichever, then you’re not in an honest relationship with them.”
“Okay.”
“So, what else do you want to know?”
I looked around the lounge. I didn’t want to sit back down. “How come Han’s wearing that sheet?”
“That’s to make it harder for him to run away again. It’s called being sheeted.”
“How long’s he going to sit in the corner?”
“Until Aubrey allows him back onto campus officially. Han needs to call him and ask to be allowed back. But in a little bit we’ll let him join the meeting for his friends to confront him.”
I nodded again. “Can I have one of the Welch’s sodas in the fridge?”
Dedrick looked at me curiously, then checked the fridge. “How’d you know about these?”
“I brought them with me. Ellie put them in there.”
“Oh. Well, no, you can’t have one right now. What’re these, grape?” Dedrick took a soda out and opened it.
“I need to talk to my parents,” I said. “I didn’t get to talk to them before they left, and I’m sure they didn’t mean to leave me here. I was supposed to just take a tour.”
I felt my face flush and shook my head. “You know about that?”
“Word travels pretty fast here.”
“My parents didn’t know about this place.”
“They didn’t leave you here by mistake, Benjamin.”
I leaned back against the counter and had another big pull of grape soda. “I just need to talk to them. Can you let me call them?”
“Not until they’ve done a New Parent Orientation, which they’ll probably do the next Parents’ Sunday. I’m not sure when that is, but there’s one every few months. Ellie’ll call them to let them know how you’re doing.”
“No, no,” I said, “no, that’s too long.” My back slid down the face of the counter until I was sitting on the floor. I pressed the palm of my empty hand against the cool tiles. “I don’t want to run away or anything, but I need to find a way to talk to them, just once, to straighten things out.” The sweet soda stuck in my throat.
“Are you telling me you’re planning on running away, Benjamin? Because if you are, there are—”
“I don’t mean that, it’s just—,” and I leaned over and vomited grape soda on the floor. It came up twice, forming a sticky, gray pool on the linoleum I hovered over, heaving and spitting out strings of bile. The sight of it made me heave again, but nothing else came up. Grape soda and half a Milky Way bar were all I’d eaten that day.
“Shit,” Dedrick said. “You’re going to have to clean that up. Wait here. I’ll get a mop and bucket.”
While he was gone and I was wiping spit from my chin, the door to the kitchenette swung open and then shut. Then Tyler, the Regular Kid who’d informed me earlier that my ’rents had left without me, stumbled in carrying a large cooler. He dropped the cooler and looked down at the vomit on the floor. “Did you do that?” He looked around. “Where is he?”
“I got sick. Dedrick’s getting a mop.”
“No, I meant Han,” he said. “You’re going to have to clean that up.”
“Uh-huh.”
Dedrick returned with the bucket and mop. “Oh, hi, Tyler.” Dedrick took him to where Han was sitting in the lounge. Then he returned to tell me to clean up quick. “You don’t want to miss this,” he said.
As I mopped up my mess, I could hear Tyler screaming. “What the hell were you thinking? You are such a goddamned coward! I’m so hurt that you’d just leave, just throw me and everyone else here away like garbage.” This went on for a while, as I finished cleaning and then dumped the dirty water down the sink. I entered the lounge to see Tyler still leaning over Han. “There are so many people in this dorm who care about you, or who want to care about you, and you just shit all over them. Again and again. And people give you more chances and you just pull this same crap!”
Tyler paused to catch his breath and wipe away the tears that were running down his face. Han didn’t look at him. He simply leaned forward in the corner, his elbows on his knees. Ellie got up and took the paperwork from the desk where she was sitting. She walked out of the lounge and left the dorm through the door at the other end of the hall.
Tyler paused once to ask why Han was wearing jeans under his sheet.
“Oh,” Dedrick said, “he was arguing about it and we just wanted to get him in the corner.”
“Well, that’s not okay,” Tyler said. “You’re the dorm parent.”
“Actually, I’m a teacher. But I get your point.”
Tyler started up again, and laid into Han for several more minutes. When he was done, he turned and asked Spencer, “Has the dorm had a chance to confront him?”
“Not yet, no.”
“Well, we should start. Han, you need to go and take off those jeans. Could you take him, Dedrick?”
Dedrick nodded and led Han down the hall to his room. Tyler pulled Han’s chair out of the corner and put it next to one of the couches. “Now it’s really important that you guys be completely honest with Han in this meeting. I understand that you’re angry with him and that can be difficult to express, but he’s at a tough point right now and needs to know exactly how you all feel. You’ve just gotten rid of all your fibs so there shouldn’t be anything interfering with your ability to be honest. I know that it can be weird to feel totally clean like that, but it should help you tell him how you were affected by his running.”
“We haven’t had lunch yet.” This was Carlos. “Can we eat first?”
“We can’t do anything until we finish this meeting,” Tyler said. “And we can’t finish the meeting until Dedrick, Spencer, and I feel like you guys’ve been honest with Han. So no, you can’t eat first. Try to focus.”
Dedrick returned with Han and sat him down in his chair. “So who wants to go first?” Tyler asked.
No one said anything for a long time. On the ride up to the school I’d been lying across the backseat, and from the angle where I lay I could just see the side of my mother’s face in the rearview mirror. I spent a large part of the trip looking at her that way, until everything else just sort of receded, the way at night, if you stare at one star, it gets brighter while the rest of the sky goes dim. There was only that image, her cheekbone and chin. She could have been anyone, just another person sitting in front of me.
“We can sit here all day,” Tyler said. “Carlos, why don’t you start?”
“I really don’t care that he ran,” Carlos said. “I mean, we could have gotten into a lot of trouble, but no one did. Except Ellie.”
“First of all, talk to him, not me,” Tyler said. “And try to go a little deeper, Carlos. I see you guys palling around all the time. And he abandoned you. You both hate this place? Fine. But he was going to leave you here by yourself. How did it feel when you saw him take off? Honestly.”
“Honestly? I was proud of him. I wish I’d run, too. I’m sorry you got caught, bro.”
“That’s bullshit! I don’t believe that for a second. Is there anybody here who’s not so codependent with Han that they’re willing to tell him how they really feel, or are we going to be here all day?”
“I think the same thing as Carlos said.” I think this was Eric. “So I don’t think it’s bullshit.”
“Even if every one of you all say the same thing,” Tyler said, “that doesn’t make it the truth. There’s no way that your friend leaves you and you feel proud. That’s retarded. And we can’t end the meeting until you all begin to deal with this. And there’s something else you’re not considering.”
He turned to Han, who had been patiently following the discussion, awaiting its inevitable conclusion. “I think that what Han desperately wants to hear is that you guys are angry that he would run. He acts like he doesn’t need anyone, but think about it. If he really wanted to get away without getting caught, he could have. It’s not that tough. But here he is, which shows that he didn’t really want—”
“No, there you’re definitely wrong,” Eric said. “He was really trying to get into that lady’s house. You should have seen him banging on her door.”
“Yeah, he was not playing around,” someone else said.
Tyler rolled his eyes. “Right, but he could have run at night. He ran in the middle of the day, right in front of everyone. If he had waited until night he could have gotten away.”
“But Roger has us all sleeping in the lounge, with trusted people sleeping in front of the doors.” This was Eric again.
“Oh, come on,” Tyler said. “Everyone knows all you have to do is slide the mattresses about six inches away from the door. The door in the kitchenette hardly even—”
“Tyler,” Dedrick interrupted, “I don’t think that’s exactly—”
“My point,” Tyler said, “is that slower people than Han have made it off campus. Pudding ran and stayed away for two and a half days, and h
e only got caught because he was bumming cigarettes in front of the police station.”
“It’s true,” Pudding said. He smiled, proud to have been singled out for this qualified success. “I’m a pretty slow runner. But Han might actually be slower.”
Han laughed. “No screwin’ way I’m slower than you,” he said.
“What the hell did you just say?” Tyler said. “That’s an f-word substitute.”
“See!” Pudding shouted.
“Han,” Spencer said, “you’re not supposed to say anything until the end of the meeting.”
“And you owe a dollar,” Tyler said. “You know you can’t say ‘screw.’ ”
“Stop it! Will you all please stop it!” William, the skinny kid who’d tried to show me his dick at the Dirt Pile, was standing, his face red. “Will everybody please shut up!” He turned to Han. “I can’t believe you’re sitting here joking with Pudding. Remember that other time we were all laughing together? When we had that art project due for Brenda’s class, and we snuck the big bottle of rubber cement into our room? We were all passing it around, huffing it and laughing our asses off. And you passed out while you were huffing and spilled rubber cement all over yourself, and the next morning you woke up glued to your sheets? Don’t laugh at that! Don’t laugh while we’re sitting here at a candor meeting you caused. If you had your way, we’d never have another thing like that to laugh about because you’d be gone.” William’s white T-shirt hung down from his knobby shoulders as he yelled at Han. His hands were balled into fists. William punched himself in the thighs as he spoke, except when he paused to brush the hair out of his eyes or hike up his jeans.
Alternative Boys were stunned out of their torpor. We all sat up straight. The meeting, it seemed, had entered a new phase. I noticed that Zach, the large boy sitting across the circle from me, was surreptitiously pulling hairs out of his nose to make himself cry.