For whatever reason, maybe from a level of discomfort, Harris persisted by saying, “I’m just sorry you never got that part, the part we call house loyalty.”
“You can go fuck your house loyalty,” Sonny snapped. Now what am I doing? “I brought your pin back. You sound like one of the kiss-ass grad assistants who works for the coaching staff. I’ll tell you what you don’t get, Harris: You think this fraternity makes you important. You’re no different than all those sorry-ass boosters who think a basketball team will make them important.”
“What are you, a thinker now, Youngblood?”
It was the question Sonny might have asked himself. “Maybe; stranger things have happened. I’ll tell you something else: I could turn this fraternity in. All that hazing shit, that lineup shit, that’s all illegal.”
He watched Harris and Pinky to see what sort of response there might be, but neither of them spoke; neither of them looked in his direction, either. He went on, “I could turn your ass in to the office of student life and they’d close this fucking fraternity down.”
“You could try that, I suppose,” said Harris quietly. “It’d be your word against ours. But if all you can see in hazing is abuse, then you still miss the meaning of humility and subordinating oneself to the group.”
“I know more about humility than you’ll ever know. Whatever it is I don’t get, the university must not get it either. They’d close you down, so then you could go lookin’ for a new set of brothers. How would that be? Then what would you do to feel important?”
“It’d be a chickenshit thing to do, Youngblood,” added Pinky. “Somehow I don’t see you as a chickenshit.”
“You don’t get it either, Pinky,” said Sonny with a laugh. Even though this kind of verbal confrontation was foreign to him, he somehow felt comfortable, being pissed but in control at the same time. Will I be different now, and will this be part of the difference? he asked himself before continuing, “As far as that goes, what do you get, other than drunked up every chance you get? It’s got nothin’ to do with chickenshit. If I don’t turn your sorry ass in, it’ll be because you’re not worth it.”
“Fuck you, Youngblood,” said Pinky.
“Maybe you ought to go now, Sonny,” said Harris.
“I am going.” Sonny thought of Barb in the car and how any more time he wasted here would postpone the drive to the state hospital. Or some other potentially meaningful activity. His breathing was even. “You aren’t worth it,” he said again. “Your fraternity is about as important as a fucking booster club, and about that far away from anything real.”
If there was any reply, Sonny didn’t hear it. He was gone out the door. Approaching the car slowly, he told himself, I just made a speech.
Barb wanted to know why he was laughing.
“I just got something off my chest; it’s a good feeling.”
“I’ve always thought so. Okay, let’s go to Anna; I want to see your mother.”
“Let’s go to Anna.”
At the edge of Carbondale, he was driving too fast, with the rock ’n’ roll too loud. He felt a touch of euphoria. Barb wanted his hand again; she took it into her lap at the same time she turned down the volume.
About the Author
James W. Bennett’s uncompromising, challenging books for teens have earned him recognition as one of the nation’s leading—and most provocative—novelists for young adults. His fiction has been used in curricula at the middle school, high school, and community college levels.
His 1995 novel, The Squared Circle, was named the year’s finest by English Journal and the Voice of Youth Advocates.
Bennett has served as a guest author at Miami Book Fair International, as a featured speaker at the Assembly on Literature for Adolescents of the NCTE, and as a writer in residence (a program he established) for secondary schools in Illinois. He has also been the director for the Blooming Grove Writers Conference.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion there of in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or here in after invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1995 by James W. Bennett
Cover design by Mimi Bark
ISBN: 978-1-4976-8401-0
This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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The Squared Circle Page 22