Tradition Read online

  That home was lost and gone—and I was the one who’d ruined it.

  • • •

  Back in my room, before jumping in the shower, I pushed the bed over to the corner of the room and sticky-tacked Coach Drucker’s little sign on the wall next to my pillow, so I’d have to see it every morning when I woke up: THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS FAILURE, THERE’S ONLY TRY AGAIN.

  The previous spring, I’d been at a particularly low point of feeling lousy. I was out behind the house, staring at the old tire swing, when Coach Drucker pushed open the screen door and sat down next to me on the tiny back porch Dad had built the year before and still hadn’t gotten around to painting. We were on the steps and he stuck his feet down into the high grass right next to mine. He’d obviously spoken to Mom in the kitchen for a while first.

  “You don’t deserve this, Jamie,” he said.

  I didn’t answer because I disagreed. I wasn’t sure what I deserved, exactly.

  “Kid like you. You’re supposed to go places.”

  I nodded. I’d been hearing the same line for months—ever since I’d dodged and avoided the hockey recruiters and thrown away my chances for a scholarship to college. I couldn’t get in anywhere without hockey. What was the point?

  When I didn’t say anything, he continued. “There aren’t many kids out there who have your talent. You owe it to the game.”

  You’re just that good, Jamie, everybody said. But was I? It had all started when I was in fifth grade and we were looking for something to do. We wrapped duct tape around a few Wiffle Ball bats, tipped over a dumpster next to the old Kroger loading dock and called it a goal, and I stood in front of it as the guys whacked tennis balls at me. By the time I was sixteen I didn’t really care, except it felt good to actually be good at something. You’re a goddamn phenomenon, Jamie. They say Babe Ruth could see the seams on the baseball as it gunned toward him. It sounds crazy, but I believe it. For me it’s the puck. I can see where it’s going no matter how fast it’s coming at me.

  “I’m sorry,” I said to Coach. It was the one clear thing I’d been able to say for months.

  “Nope. I’m not hearing that,” Coach said. “Things happen, Jamie. You got to accept that. You got to man up and move on.”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Well, I am,” he said, getting off the step and pacing out into the yard. He walked back. “My sister-in-law runs admissions for this boarding school in New England. Fullbrook. Hell of a place. I’ve never done this before, but I’m doing it for you. I’m calling in a favor. You didn’t get your shot this year, and you were supposed to.” He lifted his hat and wiped his brow. “Boys like you need exposure. You’ll get national attention there, Jamie. Big league.” He nodded and looked off across the yard. “Just think, I’ll be able to say I knew you when. I’ll be the guy who gave you your start.” He spun back to me. “I can only call this in once. You’re it. Gloria will understand.”

  Who you knew, where you went to school, where your family went to school, who they knew—those things just mattered in life, they unlocked doors and flung open heavy gates, even for an overweight farm boy like me. I was grateful, but I also felt like a spoiled piece of garbage, since I knew folks back home whose parents had been out of work so long the family could only pay for their groceries with their EBT cards. I was just a jerk who’d been given a second chance.

  CHAPTER 6

  * * *

  JULES DEVEREUX

  Headmaster Patterson stood beside the podium in the dining hall, resting one elbow on the edge as if casually leaning, except he wasn’t, because he never did anything casually. It was still almost eighty degrees outside, the sun hadn’t even set, and he stood in his dark three-piece suit, smiling his stiff, press-on smile, gesturing to everybody and nobody like the Queen of England.

  Javi was already there, all the way across the room, near the podium, and already holding court with a few underclass students. He had them giggling like kids at the circus. He needed his fill of attention, and I didn’t want to bring my cloud over there and rain on all the fun. Aileen stood by one of the tables closer to the door, and there were still a few empty seats, so I shot over to one next to her. “Mind if I take this one?”

  “I don’t care,” she said.

  The room filled quickly around me, and Headmaster Patterson cleared his throat in front of the microphone. “Please, everyone. Seats, please.”

  He cleared his throat again and was about to repeat himself, when Freddie burst into the dining hall holding a hockey stick above his head. He leapt up onto the closest chair and held the stick above his head with two hands. “This year!” he shouted. “Number one! Red Hawks number one!” Other guys on the team roared into the room behind him.

  Cheers erupted. Applause. My shoulders cinched around my neck. I don’t know why, but I laughed, almost painfully, as if it was kicked out of me.

  Aileen gave me one of her irritated glares. “Animals,” I said into her ear as the room got louder around us.

  “Feral, hungry beasts,” she replied. I laughed, honestly this time. She seemed to smile too, if only with her eyes.

  Something I knew about her I wished I didn’t: the boys called her the Viking. Not only was it mean and stupid, it was so patronizing. They meant it as a joke, but I thought the joke was on them. There was something steely and indomitable deep down inside her.

  “Mr. Watts,” Headmaster Patterson said without disapproval. “Okay, Mr. Watts.” He chuckled as he said Freddie’s name.

  The mammoth I’d met earlier, the Buckeye, began a slow clap, and the other guys from the team joined him. They kept at it until more and more of the room clapped and stomped with them. “Red Hawks. Red Hawks,” Freddie yelled, egging everyone on.

  “Okay,” Patterson said, backing away from the microphone. He didn’t clap, but he couldn’t keep his bald head from nodding along in rhythm with the clap and cheer.

  “Red Hawks. Red Hawks. Red-Hawks. RedHawks, RedHawks, RedHawksRedHawksRedHawks!”

  It was mostly guys stomping, cheering, hooting, thundering through the room, but some of the girls joined in too. Gillian and Shriya rallied a few of the younger girls.

  Ethan stepped out behind Freddie, slapped him on the butt, and laughed. Freddie hopped off the chair and together they swung around the table and wove through the crowd until they found their tables on the other side of the room. The Buckeye looked around the hall, a little lost, then saw us. People cleared the way for him as he came over.

  “Hey,” he said to me and Aileen. Then he stood there silently, waiting for something to happen. He put his big hands on the back of the chair next to me. He smiled at Aileen, but kept looking at me from the corner of his eye. I frowned and stared back.

  “Please, everyone,” Patterson said into the microphone again. “Take your seats now.”

  The Buckeye plopped down. He nodded as if I should too.

  “James Baxter,” he said, sticking out his hand. “But Jamie is good.”

  “Look, Bucky,” I said, taking his hand and squeezing it—none of that dainty my hand’s nearly weightless kind of crap. “You guys just busted in here like a pack of frothy-faced hyenas. It’s annoying.”

  “Just fun and games,” he said. He had the look of a guy who was about to tuck his napkin into the collar of his shirt. “I think if I stood on one of those chairs,” he continued, “it’d break beneath me. And I wouldn’t want to make a mess on my first day.” The Buckeye might be built like a bear, but there was something soft in his smile, hypnotizing, and I knew why immediately. It was a rare thing at Fullbrook. It was honesty.

  I realized I was one of the few people still standing in the room. I must have looked like I was about to make my own announcement. The Buckeye kept that smile aimed right at me, though—as if I amused him. “What?” I said, taking a seat. I could have made a speech—I’d done it plenty of times—but for some reason I found my cheeks burning. Even Aileen raised her eyebrows when I glanced at her,
and that bothered me.

  “Nothing,” he said.

  “What?”

  “No, I’ve got nothing to say.” He pulled the napkin out from underneath the silverware, unfolded part of it, and threw it over his thigh.

  “I thought for sure you were going to tuck that into your collar,” I told him.

  “Why?” he asked. “We eating meatballs tonight?”

  And that’s when I surprised myself with my own honest laugh.

  “Besides,” he said, tugging at the collar, “I don’t think I can get another thing in here.”

  It was true. Most people don’t have actual neck muscles, but he did. The thing was enormous, just like every other part of him. I could have taken a walk around that neck.

  “I welcome you all to the new school year.” Patterson paused briefly, before launching into his standard convocation address, the one where he used the word “august” with all three of its meanings, just because he could. Around the room, some people looked up at him, nodding along, but many didn’t. Most of us had heard a version of the address too many times before, and he droned on, killing time with his well-rehearsed nod toward earnestness. His voice only shifted as he began to wrap it up. “People say you raise yourselves when you attend a school like ours, or better, that you raise each other.” He lifted his hand into the air as he spoke, giving it his best to reach the aspirational, as he neared the end of the speech. “Do that, as students have been doing here since 1801, raising themselves, raising each other. This life, here at Fullbrook, provides you with tremendous advantage. Take your advantage. Run with it.”

  Some people began to clap, but he gestured for everyone to quiet down. “We’re proud of our traditions at Fullbrook.” He leaned one arm on the lectern again and grinned. “Though some traditions might be more important to a few of you than they are to the rest of us. Starting the year by taking a photo from my office, for example?” He paused for dramatic effect. “Was that necessary?” He tried to look stern, but as giggles bubbled around the hall, he had a hard time keeping a straight face. “With all I have going on, you’re going to make me start an investigation?” He waved to his secretary, who stood a few feet behind him, and she handed him a bag. “We take this kind of behavior very seriously.”

  I glanced at the Buckeye, who looked ashen. The guilt read all over his face, and I was certain that was what he and Ethan and Freddie had been burning by the river. Of course they’d been behind the annual convocation senior prank. “Don’t worry,” I said, leaning close to him. “They’re not really going to do anything about it. They never do.”

  “Now we’re going to have to search high and low,” Mr. Patterson continued, holding up the bag. He pulled out a framed photo. “For this exact same photo.” He nodded along conspiratorially as a low mumble rumbled through the room. “Am I going to have to bolt this one to the wall, guys?” He laughed, and many of the students and teachers laughed along with him.

  “See what I mean?” I told the Buckeye.

  “Now that we’ve had our fun, let’s get down to business. Make this year the best year of your life so far,” he bellowed. “ ‘Ut parati in mundo.’ Ready to take on the world!” He stepped back from the lectern, and there was a burst of applause. Then he clapped along with the crowd, his hands echoing in the microphone. But unable to resist one more line, he leaned closer. “First, let’s eat!” He smiled to himself as he stepped away from the lectern and the clatter of silverware on china rang out around the room.

  While we ate, the Buckeye asked a few get to know you questions, mostly to me, but I was trying harder to talk to Aileen. She didn’t add much. “You heading to Mary Lyon?” I asked her when people started pushing back their chairs and getting up. She was down the hall from me this year—which I was starting to look forward to. Of course, Shriya’s room was between ours.

  The Buckeye stood too. “I’d walk with you,” he said, “but I think I have clean-up duty. What do I do?”

  I couldn’t help myself. “Well, you clean up,” I said. I felt a little mean, but there’d be a bunch of people doing it with him, so he’d figure it out. I just wanted out of there. The day had already exhausted me.

  “I’ll show you,” Aileen said to the Buckeye. “I have clean-up duty too.”

  Nobody ever wants that job, but suddenly I found myself wishing I had it. “ ’Kay,” I said to her, way too chipper. “I’ll just see you back there.”

  She shrugged. “Maybe.” She couldn’t have cared less, I realized, but now that I’d said it, I had to make sure I did it.

  Out in the foyer, the senior carpet was packed—everyone taking advantage of their first day of being able to stand on it. I’d been pulled onto it a couple of times last year, and it had weirdly felt good, as if I’d been given a prize, but now that I could stand on it without a senior invite, it felt like the stupidest thing in the world. A land grab of a rug. Most of the guys leaned against the wall, scanning the crowd of students as they passed by on their way to the door. I knew exactly what they were doing. Their eyes floated from one body to the next like flies, landing, sticking briefly, and drifting on. They elbowed each other as they whispered into each other’s ears. The two guys closest to me were on the football team. “Nice,” one of them said loud enough for me to hear. I realized they were both staring at my bare legs.

  One more year, one more year, I kept saying in my head. Spring couldn’t come soon enough. By then I’d be accepted into college. Lands where trans-friendly bathrooms were the norm and mannequins weren’t seen as the ideal body shape.

  Headmaster Patterson stood by the door, laughing along with Freddie, who was telling him a story, gesturing with his hockey stick as if it was a scepter, and I decided I’d take the long way home: head out the basement door, loop around the other side of campus, and come up to the dorms from behind. I’d avoid everyone that way. It was the darkest side of campus, and unless Cray-Cray came zooming up the path for no reason at all, nobody would see me and I could let the night air blow all the Fullbrook intensity out of me—just let it get lost in the wind.

  That was the plan. I waited until I was sure no one was looking, made a beeline across the foyer, popped open the basement door, slipped in, closed it softly behind me, and took the stairs down one flight as quickly as I could, until I wound around to the second flight—and nearly jumped right into Ethan and Gillian’s laps. They were locked together in an open-mouth kiss, both half-sitting on the radiator against the wall on the landing. Of course they were here. It was another place I’d shown Ethan.

  I spun around to run back up the stairs, but they’d already seen me. “Jules?”

  Why did he have to say my name? Why couldn’t he just let me slip away and deal with the embarrassment, not add to it by saying something? “Sorry,” I said dumbly. “I didn’t know.”

  “Are you spying on us?” Gillian asked. She said it with a laugh, though. She said it as if it didn’t bother her at all.

  “No,” I snapped. This made Ethan laugh too, of course. “Sooo. Never mind.” I began to make my way back up the stairs. “I’m just leaving.”

  “Oh, don’t be all weird about it,” Ethan said. “Stop.”

  For some reason, I did. I turned and looked down the stairs at him.

  “Can this just not be weird, please?” he said. I wasn’t sure, but I thought he was asking both of us, me and Gillian. It confused her, too.

  “What?” she said. “Nothing’s weird.”

  “We can all just be cool, right?” he went on. “I mean, we were all cool with each other last year. Nobody had to get all worked up and crazy. Remember?” He smiled. He knew what he was saying, he knew what he was asking, but his voice—he was pleading. He sounded so much younger than he was.

  “Oh, for God’s sake, of course we’re all cool,” I said, realizing I’d been clenching the hem of my sweater. I let go. “Everything’s cool. I just don’t need to bust this whole thing up,” I said, waving my hand at them. “I
mean, you don’t need an audience, right?”

  “Ooooh,” Ethan said, cocking his eyebrows at Gillian. “I mean, we could film it, right?”

  Gillian forced a short, fake laugh, and I knew why. He must not have remembered, or maybe he didn’t even know, because he was more idiotic than mean. A video of Gillian had gotten around our sophomore year. Another girl had taken it, of Gillian in the locker room. I’d thought Gillian was going to die from embarrassment. But she didn’t. Time passed. Eventually, people stopped caring; other dramas flared up and attracted the flutter of gossip.

  “Don’t be stupid,” I told him. “Nobody wants to watch you. But seriously,” I continued, looking at Gillian. “Everything really is cool. We don’t have to be weird around each other.” Just to prove my point, I walked back down the stairs, right up to them, and put a hand on each of them. “Now, let me get out of here so you can get back to whatever you were doing.”

  I didn’t let them say anything else, because I hurried down the rest of the stairs and outside. I couldn’t be sure if Gillian and Ethan had been screwing around behind my back when Ethan and I were together, but whatever, they didn’t hide it after we broke up. She was all over him—he was all over her, too—and for some reason, every crazy story of their sex life came back to me. Did you hear Ethan and Gillian went skinny-dipping in the river? Did you hear Ethan and Gillian watched the sunrise from Horn Rock? Did you hear Ethan and Gillian snuck up to the roof of the arts center?