UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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The transition from Hillpark to East Shoal was significantly easier than I’d expected. It was the same basic high school garbage wrapped in a slightly different skin. The only difference was that everything at East Shoal was completely insane.
There were several things I learned that first month.
One: The scoreboard really was a school legend, and Mr. McCoy really was dearly, dearly in love with it. McCoy had his own brand of crazy: he continually reminded everyone of “Scoreboard Day,” when we were all supposed to bring in an offering of flowers or lightbulbs for the scoreboard, as if the scoreboard was a wrathful Mayan deity that would kill us if we disobeyed. Somehow, he managed to cover this insanity with a mask of good test scores and even better student conduct. It seemed like, as far as the parents and teachers were concerned, he was a perfect principal.
Two: There was a cult entirely dedicated to discussing preexisting conspiracy theories and determining if they were true. They met in a janitors’ closet.
Three: The cult was run by Tucker Beaumont.
Four: Mr. Gunthrie, the most in-your-face teacher in the school (because of the yelling, see), was nicknamed “The General” because of his penchant for going on war-related rants and wielding his treasured golden fountain pen as a weapon. He’d done two tours in Vietnam, and he had a long family history of war-related deaths, which rendered me almost incapable of not calling him Lieutenant Dan.
Five: Twenty years ago, as the senior prank, someone had let the biology teacher’s pet python loose. It had escaped behind the ceiling tiles, never to be seen again.
Six: Everyone—and when I say everyone, I mean absolutely, positively everyone, from the librarians to the students to the staff to the oldest, crustiest janitor—was piss-down-their-legs scared of Miles Richter.
Of all the crazy things I heard about East Shoal, that was the only thing I couldn’t believe.