Two

JASON

As I crossed over the icy path from our backyard to the official school campus on Monday morning, I felt it—all the eyes on me. Like I was walking into some sort of surprise party. A surprise party of doom.

Everyone had already heard the story, and school hadn’t even started yet.

If you want to get your secret shared with a thousand people in five minutes, tell a Friendian. The kid will tell their mom, who will tell all the people at her golf club, and then it will trickle down through the parents’ association, the alumni network, the board, and finally back down to the rest of the kids. And don’t even mention the staff. The janitors and cafeteria workers know everything about everything.

So yeah. Grab a megaphone. Text everyone you know. My dad was arrested. For embezzling the school’s endowment.

It was so weird. My dad? The guy who did warrior poses before he took his blood pressure meds with grapefruit juice every morning? The guy who’d instituted a stricter dress code (no cleavage, despite my complaints) and tougher rules about parking on HF’s campus? The guy who, my whole life, had told me that anything could be achieved with discipline?

I still couldn’t really wrap my brain around it, other than the fact that he’d been in jail all weekend, and my mom had spent most of that time in her bedroom. There is seriously nothing worse than hearing your mom cry.

I just felt . . . shocked. Sure, I’d seen my dad at the computer, moping around and whatnot when some stock went down. But I always thought he was day-trading with our family’s money.

I thought he had it under control.

“I told him it was glorified gambling,” my mom said on Friday night after it all went down, as we sat staring at his empty kitchen chair. “I told him we had your college to pay for. I had no idea it had gone this far, that the debts were so big.”

Now she was stuck on two-hour phone calls with his lawyer, trying to figure out how we’d post the $1 million bail. Think that sounds like a lot? My dad pissed away $50 mil, apparently. Of the school’s money.

Looking back, maybe I should have questioned it when he bought me stuff like a bike, a brand-new Jetta, and a sick amp for my guitar, with me barely asking. I guess I was so excited, I just didn’t think twice. We’d never had a lot of money before. I thought headmaster was just a cushy job.

Which was the only good thing about it, really. I mean, I realized early on that I could never live up to Jim Hodges’ insane expectations. So I became the anti-Jim: class skipper, homework ignorer, and assembly sleeper, not to mention dress code violator (jeans were only comfortable with holes!). It was easier to not do anything than to constantly field his critiques of what I could be doing better.

He thought it was my own little phase I’d grow out of, that it had nothing to do with him, of course. The morning he was caught, he’d said, “You’re in your own world, Jason. But some day you’re going to have to grow up and join the rest of us. And maybe then you’ll stop embarrassing me.”

Who knows? Maybe the great Jim Hodges had seen the end coming. Because right now it seemed like my own world was officially done with. This was purgatory. Hell was next.

They were staring.

Everyone knew. I caught sight of Chloe Benezet whispering to Dylan Sanders. Chloe used to be cool, shaving the side of her head and writing poetry, but since we broke up, she’d become just another preppy in riding boots. Dylan laughed at whatever she was saying. They looked like a couple of hyenas circling a carcass.

More stares from the rest of them, hanging out by their lockers. People who would call out my name and fist bump me just last week were now keeping a creepy distance, like I was diseased.

I knew if I could be funny, then no one would feel sorry for me.

“I guess you guys found me out!” I called out. “Yes, I got a nose job. Now can I have some privacy, please?”

That did it. Only a few people laughed, but at least most of them stopped staring. I sauntered down the hall as if it were all a big hilarious joke.

Mondays generally sucked, but this one went down in the books. It was almost like being the new kid all over again. Those days in middle school. Torture.

Jessica Katz snorted when I passed her desk in Algebra. In French, I could swear Monsieur Rydel was extra evil, curling his tongue over the “s’il vous plaît” when he asked me to read out loud from The Count of Monte Cristo. Even Dianne the lunch lady gave me a pitying grin when she plopped a carton of fries on my tray. “Rough times, huh, Jason?”

“Very rough,” I said. She’d always been nice to me, even when I was the new kid. She used to save me the end slices of the Sicilian pizza, because she knew I liked the pieces with the crust. And then it occurred to me that what my dad did could affect her, too. If the school was in trouble, she could get . . . I didn’t even want to think about it.

“I hope everything is okay.” With you, I meant.

“It’ll be fine,” she said, scraping the tray for strays. “HF isn’t going anywhere.”

I took my tray and sat down at my usual table at the back of the dining hall, next to the guys in my band. Zack was there, chowing down on some unidentifiable foil-wrapped object he’d smuggled in from home. He raised it in greeting.

Zack was basically the reason I’d survived middle school or HF at all—we’d met at an afterschool music program, and we’d started what later became our band Mixed Metaphors, with him as the lead singer and me writing most of the songs and playing guitar.

Zack called teachers by their first names, and they never bothered to call on him in class. He had a hot new girlfriend every semester, and he barely had to talk to them. His older brother got us into parties at UPenn, and even the dudes in his brother’s fraternity didn’t mind having him around. I had to give him props—he was untouchable. And I was too, just by virtue of sitting with him at lunch.

“What’s up, sucker?” I said.

“Not much,” he replied. “Hey, listen, as your friend, I should warn you that The People are talking.”

“Who’s talking?” Then I thought better of it. “No, forget it. I don’t want to know.”

I was pretty sure The People involved at least one of my exes, and including Chloe, there were enough of them to start an official Anti-Jason squad. Hey, it wasn’t my fault that girls always seemed to get mad at me.

The contents of Zack’s sandwich lodged in his cheeks. “It’s bad, dude. I heard that some kids think you were in on it.”

WTF? “So I’m an accomplice now?” I laughed, probably too loudly, over the lump in my throat. “I guess I broke into everyone’s lockers too, then hacked into their library accounts.”

He gulped his Gatorade, his dark hair hanging over the bottle. “I’m being serious, man.”

“I know, I know. But you told them it wasn’t true, right? I mean, he’s innocent.”

“Of course, bro. I tried. But I’m only one man. I can’t slow the tide of misinformation. It flows where it will.”

“Like shit?” I asked. I looked up and saw a few cute freshman girls staring at me, and not in a good way. Why was I on trial now? This was crazy.

“Exactement.” He was back to his lunch tube. “You know how it is. These people love drama. Don’t sweat it.”

Right. Easy for him to say. I got up to leave, wrapping up my uneaten food. I couldn’t keep the smile going, and I definitely didn’t want to break down in front of Zack, who had a black belt in apathy.

“Where are you going? I thought we were going to discuss band business. You’re cool, right?”

“Yeah, yeah. I forgot my phone. Tell the other guys I’ll see them at practice.” I needed to get out of the fish bowl. I needed to be alone.

In Rankin’s art class I could almost pretend things were normal. It was the last period of the day, and in art, at least, I didn’t have to answer questions. I didn’t have to speak at all. Which was good, because my brain was spiraling into a blur of dark thoughts, like that night Zack and I got some bad pot from his brother, and I ended up lying on the floor of his room, my heart racing, thinking I was going to die. None of which I’d mentioned to Zack as he went on about how it was totally kind bud and how he felt like butter melting over a plate of pancakes.

Rankin went around the room asking everyone what we were going to do for our Mint follow-up projects, due the following week. We were supposed to come up with a proposal for a piece for the Mint that would demonstrate “design at work” or some BS like that. I’d been too busy trying to calm my mom down and figure out if I had any savings from my summer jobs that we could cash out.

I stared out the window at the arts quad. In the center was the sculpture my dad had commissioned from Simon Lamberton, the guy who pioneered land art in the 1960s. It was supposed to look like flowing water, “the fountain of knowledge,” but right now it was just a gigantic hunk of metal. Lamberton’s assistants were constructing it right here, forging iron in our workshop in the arts center. My dad thought it would be a “wonderful learning opportunity” to install it where we could watch the progress, and some of the arts classes were even invited to help Lamberton’s assistants. (The great artist himself had never been on campus, to my knowledge. They were communicating with him via Skype.) He wanted me to help out too. “Come on, Jase,” he’d said to me. “This doesn’t happen every day. Take advantage. Use your talents.” What did he think, that I could be Picasso or some shit? Didn’t he realize that almost everyone got a C in Rankin’s class? Rankin was a hardass. My supposed art skills definitely wouldn’t help me here.

For the moment, though, no one was working on the sculpture. Since the ground froze over in December, it had been closed up with a padlocked chain-link fence.

I thought the statue was kind of cool, but it was controversial. Some of the parents were pissed that my dad was replacing the flagpole that had been there for the entire 150-year history of the school. My dad said it was a symbol of HF moving into modern times, part of the bigger capital plan for campus expansion, when the school was going to build five new facilities and branch out over another ten acres. This was just the beginning. In the meantime, original art would give us an edge, he said. How many schools could boast a museum-quality sculpture on their grounds? Of course, now I had to wonder where the money for that thing had come from, and I probably wasn’t the only one.

How many schools could boast a thief in the headmaster’s office?

Suddenly, Rankin was standing in front of me, his blond beard level with the top of my head. “Hodges? You with me?”

So much for not having to speak. I was not with him. I had nothing.

“Your idea? Yes no maybe?”

I shrugged and gave him the smile I usually gave teacher’s when I knew I was about to blow smoke up their ass. “Still thinking, sir. The wheels are turning and whatnot.”

“You only have two weeks to complete the project from start to finish, so I suggest you come up with something quickly.” He tapped my desk with two fingers, a warning signal. “Don’t blow it off, Hodges. You’re better than that.”

Was I, though? Of all the teachers in school, Rankin was the only one who pushed me. But I kind of liked Rankin, even if he clearly hated me. Yeah, psychoanalyze that.

Thankfully, we were on to the brainstorming part of class—free time. Drawing always helped calm my brain. It was something I was good at without having to try. And at least it would look like I was working.

I walked over to the paper drawer, where Dakota Cunningham was already standing with one of her clones, Junibel Simmons. The real Dakota was bad enough, but here was a weak imitation—skinnier, shorter, with frizzy hair and a nervous twitching mouth. Junibel just had that aura of desperation about her.

“’Scuse me,” I said, trying to push past them.

“Jason! Do you seriously not have a follow-up idea?” Dakota asked me, pretending to be all concerned. She’d been my middle-school girlfriend, but it wasn’t like we were still friends or anything. It didn’t matter. Everyone’s business was Dakota’s business. She turned everything into her own personal task force.

I shrugged.

“He’ll give you an incomplete. Why don’t you just sculpt something, one of the famous medals? I can give you one of my ideas.”

“I’ve got it covered.”

I’d done very well up until now never doing my homework. Why should I change a winning formula? My dad’s voice came into my head: Because you can do better. Then my voice back to him: Oh yeah? Like embezzlement?

“You could at least make an effort for once,” she said. “I mean seriously.”

Had my dad put her up to this? “This isn’t a group project,” I said. Back when we were ‘going out’ in sixth grade, we’d spent two weekends working on a papier-mâché manatee, but I’d bailed the day before it was due, because my friends were going to a rock-climbing gym. Our manatee ended up being flipperless, basically just a gray blob. By lunchtime, Dakota had publicly dumped me in the hallway, saying that she’d only liked me because I was new and now she realized I was a loser. Only she could get away with dumping someone for as nerdy a reason as a grade and still come away as the cool one.

“She’s just trying to help, Jason,” Junibel said.

“I don’t need help,” I finally snapped. Only after the words were out of my mouth did I realize that Dakota was, yet again, getting a rise out of me. All these years and she still made me feel like crap. I quickly smiled and tried to make a joke. “Unless you want to coordinate outfits. Then you can definitely help.”

Dakota sighed. “Fine. Keep playing dumb. You can flake on class, but you’d better not do this on prom night. We’re counting on you, and you’d better play covers.”

“Yeah,” Junibel said. “You need to learn ‘Don’t Stop Believing’ and ‘Apache’.”

Whatever. Mixed Metaphors would never play anything that involved a g-synth. We were strictly dance pop, inspired by ’90s Manchester bands. Dakota knew that. In our brief relationship, I’d introduced her to all of my favorite bands, like the Stone Roses. And I think she actually got into my music, too, though these days she probably listened to whatever everyone else listened to.

Dakota walked away and so did her clone, and all there was left was the scent of their flowery perfumes hanging in the air. That and Alice Drake, standing where Dakota had been, shaking her beanie-covered head.

“Wow,” Alice said with a smirk. “That’s some help we can all do without.”

She was nice enough, but I didn’t want anyone pitying me, especially not a girl who wore a beanie over a bowl cut. What was she going to do, beat them up? Alice was pretty much the last person who could improve this situation.

“It’s nothing,” I said, repeating the mantra of the day. “It’s cool.”

She shrugged and grabbed some paper. At least she knew when to give up.

I was almost safely back to my seat, paper in hand, when I ran into the folded arms of Arno Shepherd, a smirk slashed across his scrawny face. “How does your dad like jail?”

“My dad’s actually in Aspen,” I said very slowly and loudly, aware that everyone was listening. “Skiing. The conditions are great right now.” They all knew I was joking, but what was I supposed to say? I didn’t want to have to make excuses for the guy, because the truth was that I couldn’t. I had no goddamn idea why he’d done what he’d done.

The bell rang and I stepped out into the quad. The school day was over. I could finally walk home and lock myself in my room with my guitar. No one would bug me there. Not my dad, who was obviously in a jail cell. Not my mom, who would be on the phone for a zillion hours.

My feet crunched over the frozen grass. As I got closer to the sculpture, I heard a splat. And then another. I turned to see Dylan Sanders and Gus Flaherty pegging eggs at the hulking iron monster.

“Your dad’s a thief,” Dylan said. “Can we return this thing and get our parents’ money back?”

All the feelings I’d been bottling up boiled over into rage. Burning, bubbling rage. Screw this kid with his sweater vest and his three-generation Haverford Friends family. He didn’t know what the hell he was talking about. He and Dakota were perfect for each other. My fists balled up so tight, I felt blood swelling in my fingers. I imagined slamming Dylan against the fence so hard that the chain-link would brand his back.

But wait. I couldn’t let them get under my skin. I had to let this roll off me. It wasn’t really Dylan Sanders I was angry with. Or Dakota, either. It wasn’t their fault my life had been ruined. And if it had been up to me, I’d get rid of the sculpture, too.

So I shrugged. “Can I have one of those?”

He handed me an egg. It was cold in my hand, solid. I fired away and it exploded, leaving trails of gloppy goo on the $500,000 piece of crap that was my dad’s crowning achievement. And for the first time all day, I actually felt better.