The Domino Effect (6 page)

To the right of The Can, and closer to home, I could see the white spire of the Chapel just past the roof of the old Victorian that housed the fourth-year women. Even closer was the back of the gymnasium complex, divided into brick and cement compartments. And right next to Montgomery, off the bend in the path, was the other dorm for fourth-year guys, Carlyle House, an identical rectangle of cinder block, glass, and not a bit of charm, built back in the ’70s when Hamden Academy (thankfully) went coed.

There was more to the campus, like the academic building opposite The Can, and the new Language Arts building across the field to the left of Montgomery. Beyond sight from my window were the old wooden dorms over the hill, where the younger kids lived. I was glad not to be in those dorms anymore. I was a fourth-year student, on the back side of the school grounds, living all alone in a dynamite room that looked over the campus like I owned it.

I turned from the window when the music began, called by the notes of an electric guitar going ’round and ’round and ’round. Then an organ hummed and drums joined in with a boom-rollcrash! A saxophone smoothed out the melody:
ba-da-vum–voom, ba-da-vum—voom, ba-da-vum—voom, ba-da-vum
—
voom…

I shot across the floor with the opening verse of “Rosalita (Come out Tonight).” It had been awhile since I’d jammed along with my favorite Springsteen song, but the news about my backstabbing roommate not being at school was reason enough to try and coax old Rosie out of her room. I rocked out in front of the closet mirror in nothing but black bikini briefs. A push-up routine, picked up over the summer, had given some shape to my shoulders and chest, but I was still pretty much a noodle with nipples, to tell the truth.

I raked a hand through my black hair, letting it separate in the middle and layer into place, over the top and down the back where it hid my thick scar. My head had been busted in Queens, and my heart torn apart at Hamden last year, but I raised my fist and imagined myself a rock star on stage. I got chills thinking about all those people cheering for me, but I’d pretty much given up on being adored by the crowd. All I needed to save my last year as a high school kid was a couple of solid friends and someone to love. And touch. All over. That’s all. Everyone else could leave me alone. My fourth year had started off pretty good: no friend-turned-enemy in my room, solid Sammie next door, Meeks and Grohl on the first floor. Best of all, I had a someone to love. My Brenda Divine was across campus by now, I figured, safely in her room in the Victorian dorm.

The only problem on my plate was getting a tie fastened by 6:00. Dinner at Hamden Academy was a mandatory, semi-formal affair and, even after a year’s practice, I couldn’t get the knots just right without trying 10 times. So, while dancing around in my undies, I strung the first tie around my neck and worked a knot while The Boss and I continued to woo Rosie with promises of skipping school, playing pool, and being cool... staying out all night.

My tie was in place for the best part of the song, when the whole band, together as one, claps and yells about Rosie’s papa thinking that I’m no good. I danced on the mattress of my no-show nemesis in tie-bouncing near-nakedness, back in front of the makebelieve crowd as the energy built and the big news got dropped on Rosie’s old man. Two lines into the song’s final frenzy, I whirled to find a real-life audience standing in the doorway: Dorm Master Mr. Wright and Terence King from Houston.

“Hello, Daniel,” Mr. Wright droned over the blaring music. He had a hand on his hip and a face with no patience. “Sorry to interrupt your little performance, but I’ve been knocking for ages.” I stayed on top of the bed, still rocking a little from both momentum and shame.

It wasn’t too often that I was speechless, but being busted in nothing but a paisley necktie and eye-patch underwear had my tongue tied. I stepped from the mattress, walked across the room, put an end to the music, and returned with my wits.

“What’s with the pants?” I asked, with my hands out to the side.

Mr. Wright shook his head and entered with the stone-faced boy from Texas. I motioned for them to sit on the bare bed while I scrambled into some dinner clothes. Then I faced them from the opposite bunk, all of us with elbows on our knees, positioned for a serious discussion.

“Now, Daniel,” Mr. Wright began after adjusting his glasses and taking a giant breath. “As you are aware, we had an unfortunate incident at our meeting today, involving Mr. King here and the two other boys.”

“Mr. King” had his eyes on the floor. He had round cheeks, puffy like ravioli, but a sharp, clenched jaw. He scratched and matted the tight waves on his head. He had on some untied white high-tops, oversized designer jeans, and one of those short-sleeved alligator shirts.

“Danny,” I said, sticking out my hand.

“Terence,” he responded with a deep voice, his long arm reaching mine across the open floor. He pushed out his purple lips and squinted before turning his eyes down and away.

“Well,” Mr. Wright continued, “it’s my responsibility to oversee such matters, and considering no blows were actually exchanged, or even attempted, I’ve decided
not
to report this matter as a fight
per se,
but only as inappropriate behavior.”

“What’s that mean?” I asked.

“It means that the potential pugilists won’t have to face the headmaster with the possibility of expulsion, but instead must accept the punishment as determined by me — two weeks of Sunrises.”

“Ohhh!” I reared back, thinking of those clever-named but brutal 6 a.m. detention session. “At least it ain’t February,” I said to Terence.

He gave me about half a second of eye contact before turning away.

“Of course,” Mr. Wright continued, “this leniency comes with promises from each to refrain from any subsequent confrontations. Isn’t that right, Mr. King?”

“Yep,” he answered, then took a turn studying the white-paneled ceiling with cheap tube lighting.

“We all know the consequences will be dire if there is such an event,” Mr. Wright said, with all the authority a tired, flabby English/drama teacher could drum up. “And considering all three are scholarship students here, I feel it would be best to keep them as separate as possible to avoid any embarrassment for the school, as well.”

“You got a scholarship?” I asked Terence.

He smirked. I was impressed (with the scholarship, not the smirk). I turned back to Mr. Wright, thinking of the usual so-called students who hogged all the scholarships.

“What are those guys doing here anyway?” I asked.

“Pardon me?”

“Those guys. The wrestlers. What are they doing here?” I asked with raised palms. “I thought they had their own dorm or something.”

“The floor in the underclass dorm, previously allocated for the wrestling team, is being utilized to accommodate a significant increase in the student body.”

“Hey, good for Hamden,” I said with a shrug.

“Yes,” Mr. Wright agreed. “The headmaster is very pleased.”

“Too bad for us,” I added with a wink. I was a pretty good winker, too.

“Truly,” he agreed under his breath.

“You ever think about joining up with those guys?” I asked Mr. Wright. “That was some move you pulled down there.”

Now both of my guests had the straight face going.

“OK, OK, I get it,” I said. “So you want Terry to move in here-”

“Terence,” Terry said.

“What?”

“Name’s Terence,” he said, a note lower on bass.

“Whatever you want,” I agreed before turning back to Mr. Wright. “So you want Terence here to move in with me to be on a different floor than the guys upstairs.”

“Bravo,” Mr. Wright said, with his own brand of sarcasm.
Not bad.

“What about the other singles?” I protested. “I know Sammie, right next door, has a single, too.”

“Well, with you being the star of the basketball team-”

“Nah, nah, nah,” I interrupted. “I’m not the star of the basketball team! I bite at basketball. You must be thinking of baseball. It’s baseball I’m good at. That’s how you knew who I was, right? Because we had a good season last year and they gave me that award at dinner and everything. Remember?”

His flat face convinced me he wasn’t searching through any memory files. “You were on the basketball team last year, correct?” he asked mechanically.

“Yeah, but only because I had to do two sports. Not this year. No way.”

“Are you making this intentionally difficult for me, Daniel?”

“I don’t know. Maybe a little but I’m also setting the record straight.”

“Consider it an arrow,” he said, standing to signal the end of our discussion.

“One more thing there, Mr. Wright…”

“What’s that, Daniel?”

“Danny,” I said. “I go by Danny, and I’m wondering who else this has been unfortunate for?”

“Pardon?”

“You said before that ‘we’ had an unfortunate incident, and I’m wondering who this has been unfortunate for besides me and him?” I flashed Terence one of my winks, but he didn’t seem all that impressed. Tough crowd.

“Juh swee tro fat-e-gay,”
Mr. Wright moaned on his way out.

Once he hit the stairwell, I turned to Terence and poked my thumb toward the door.

“Did he just say he was fat and gay?” I asked.

“Fatigue,”
he said with the appropriate accent, “means tired in French.”

“I was gonna say,” I shrugged.

With fists jammed into his pockets, Terence strolled over to the window. “It’s that bullshit about
overseeing
I got a problem with. That and him being the dorm
master.”

“Say that again?”

“Never mind,” he said, repeating the
“Jccth”
sound he seemed so crazy about. On a trunk between the desks sat my small CD player. Terence poked a button and the lid flew open.

“So, ah,” I asked, reminded of my recent embarrassment, “you into Springsteen or what?”

“Nope,” he said and stared out the window.

Pebbles bounced off the glass. Terence stepped back and faced me.

“Oh, those are my guys,” I said. “You going to dinner? You can come with us, but you gotta get dressed first.”

He didn’t say anything, so I asked him again if he was going to dinner.

“Nope,” he said, turning to look over the posters hung all over the room: Bruce in concert from the early days, a NY Met here, a NY Met there, Christy Turlington for inspiration (now useless, thanks to Mr. ‘I’m not going to report this as a fight,
per se’).

“Alright then,” I said, grabbing my dinner jacket. “I guess I’ll catch you later.”

My new roommate said nothing.

This is going to be some year,
I thought on my way downstairs.

Too bad I wouldn’t see the end of it.

“And what else happened?” Meeks demanded as I walked to dinner with him and Grohl and Sammie, who had caught up to us on the path.

“Nothing!” I said to the freckled bag of bones who was already on my nerves. “I told you already,” I said, leaving out the part about being caught dancing in my undies “they showed up, we had our little chat, and then he told me he doesn’t like Springsteen.” I poked Grohl on the shoulder of his leather blazer. “Can you believe that? Doesn’t like Springsteen?”

“It’s, like, the ’90s, man,” Grohl said. “Why don’t you listen to somebody else?”

“I don’t like anybody else.”

He scoffed, patted the top of his mousse-piled hair, and checked the status of the shack. The smoking shack, a piece-of-crap Peg-Board shed, sagged beneath a weeping willow across the field from Montgomery. Kids could go there and smoke or just hang out, and there was usually a decent crowd during off-hours from studying and whatnot.

“And that’s it? That’s all Terence or Terry had to say?” Meeks asked.

“Oh, yeah — he had some problem with Mr. Wright saying
oversee
or something.”

“The hell for?” Meeks asked.

He was full of questions, that kid.

“I think it’s a racial thing,” Sammie said. “You know, like the guy who looked after the slaves was the overseer, I think.” “Hey, Sammie,” I said, “thanks for the history lesson, but you heard the man. It’s, like, the ’90s, alright? The 1990s. Don’t give me any noise about slavery.”