THOMAS A. TROWBRIDGE THE FOURTH

In the late afternoon, the sun slants through the frosted windows of The Monk’s dorm room casting a triangle of light across the floor. Now that I’ve been at Baldwin almost two weeks, and there haven’t been any visible catastrophes, Dad’s decided I can take the bus home any time I want to stay late, so I’m hanging out, reading The Metamorphosis on The Monk’s rumpled bed amid a swirl of blankets and notebooks. We are guzzling energy drinks, eating corn chips, and listening to Led Zeppelin on his vintage record player. Thomas A. Trowbridge the Fourth is sitting ramrod straight at his perfectly organized desk, trying to write. Led Zeppelin shakes the walls of the room, a wonderful pounding bouquet of angst.

Thomas puts his hands over his ears and groans.

The Monk turns up the volume. He leaps onto his bed and jams out on air guitar, biting his lower lip, narrowing his eyes, and pretending to slide into the high notes. Then he scissor-kicks from the bed, struts across the floor, and begins leaping around and playing vigorous make-believe chords in Thomas’s direction.

“Do you mind?” says Thomas.

“Do I mind what?”

“Do you mind stopping, please? I’m trying to write.”

“Oh. Dude. You’re trying to write. I’m so sorry.”

“That’s okay, dude. Just try not to distract me while I’m working.”

The word dude sounds bizarre coming from the small, tight lips of Thomas A. Trowbridge the Fourth. It rings unnaturally in the room the way it does when my dad tries to win me over by using teen lingo. No matter what words he uses, in the end he just winds up sounding kind of desperate.

Thomas is too worried about his reputation with adults to ever use slang comfortably, even in his own room. It’s the downside of his legacy. He crosses to The Monk’s side, and in a fit of pique, yanks the arm of the vintage record player off the record with a hideously loud scratch.

“Hey!” screams The Monk, snatching the scratched record off the turntable. “I can’t believe you did that, dude. This record is part of my collection.”

“Everything is part of your stupid collection,” says Thomas, red-faced. “All your precious little oddities. Your weird friends. You’re obsessed with everything.”

“I’m not obsessed with you,” says The Monk. He flops next to me, places the record gently on his pillow, and puts his arm around my shoulders. I try to squirm away, but he holds tight. “In fact, I couldn’t care less about you anymore. I tried to help you be cool. I staged a whole intervention. I introduced you to my people, took you under my wing. But you’re a lost cause, man. I’m into this guy now.”

“Oh, of course,” says Thomas, narrowing his eyes. “I’m too boring for your collection, right? I’m not interesting enough for you?”

“That’s right,” says The Monk. “I tried my best, but you give me no choice. I’m dropping you, man. I have decided you aren’t worth the effort. You are status quo. You are The Man. You are corporate greed, dude. You are the top one percent of the top one percent. You are everything that is wrong with the world.”

“That’s a little harsh,” I tell The Monk.

“Yes,” says Thomas. “Thank you.”

The Monk tightens his grip on my shoulders.

I continue to squirm.

“See this guy?” The Monk asks, jabbing one finger into my chest. “Now this guy is worth collecting. He’s a nonconformist. And unlike you, he doesn’t give a shit about what people think of him. You, on the other hand, have sold out.”

“I haven’t sold out,” says Thomas. “You keep saying that, and I want you to know it’s really starting to get to me.”

“I just tell it like I see it,” says The Monk. “I gave you a chance. Now I’m done.”

He finally lets me go. I move from his bed to his desk.

The Monk picks up his record and wanders to the window to get a better look at the scratch. He rubs at it with his sleeve. “Jesus Christ,” he says. “Look at this thing. It’s totally ruined.”

“I wish you wouldn’t swear in front of me,” says Thomas.

“Jesus. Fucking. Christ.”

Thomas puts his head in his hands.

“Maybe you should give the guy a break,” I suggest.

“I can’t,” says The Monk. “Picking on Thomas is part of my religion.”

“You don’t know what religion is,” says Thomas into his hands.

“Oh, so pious,” says The Monk.

Thomas looks up.

“He doesn’t let me come out with him and his buddies anymore,” Thomas tells me. “He invited me along at the beginning of the year, and we had some good times, but now he says I’m not welcome.” Thomas glares at The Monk.

“That’s because you snitch on us,” says The Monk.

“I only snitch when you break rules.”

“Oh, so you’re admitting it now?”

“Maybe,” says Thomas. “Maybe I’m admitting it. Maybe I’m not.”

“You know what?” says The Monk. “I think I’m done with this conversation.”

He puts the record back on the record player and turns it on. The psychedelic music pours into the room. You can hear the scratch below the bass line, a loud, frightening rip every time the record turns. Rip. Rip. Rip. The Monk frowns in Thomas’s direction, but he doesn’t jam and he doesn’t crank the volume. Thomas turns his face away. He goes back to his writing. But I can see the hurt in his shoulders, in his neck, and in the way he is trying to slow his breathing down. The Monk grabs my copy of The Metamorphosis and pretends to read. He turns pages furiously.

We sit in silence for a few moments, but the air is almost too heavy to breathe. Finally, Thomas rises, red-faced, from his desk. He crosses the room and opens the door. He looks back at The Monk, maybe hoping an apology is coming his way, but The Monk does not look up. He turns so he is facing the wall instead. Thomas turns away too. His shoulders slump and he sighs, lingering for a moment in the doorway. Then he walks out of the room and slams the door behind him.

“You weren’t very nice,” I tell The Monk.

“You think?” The Monk mutters, still leafing through The Metamorphosis.

“Yeah,” I say.

The Monk looks up at me.

“What if I told you he reported me to the dean of students a couple weeks ago.”

“What? Why?”

“For breaking curfew. Good old school rule number A-4. All licensed juniors and seniors in good academic standing have permission to operate registered motor vehicles off campus as outlined in transportation bylaws, blah blah blah, but all drivers and passengers must be signed back into dormitories no later than ten o’clock Sunday through Thursday and eleven o’clock on Friday and Saturday nights. Trowbridge has the whole frigging handbook memorized. You think I was too harsh? What if I told you they gave me a demerit because of him?”

“What does that mean?”

“It means if they catch me breaking curfew again I’m screwed.”