Almost fourteen years earlier—half my life ago!—I’d stood in the center of my new room at Blackburne, holding a suitcase in each hand and staring around me in disbelief. The room was empty save for a bunk bed, two desks, a wooden dresser, a closet alcove with a single rail but no door, and a window that looked painted shut. The window was covered on the outside with mesh wire, presumably for security or to keep the glass from breaking. To me it looked like a cage.
My father, hands in his pockets, was doing much the same thing as I was, but I could tell, even without looking at him, what he was thinking. His first words confirmed it: he was going to look at the bright side, find the silver lining. “Well, your roommate’s not here yet,” he said. “Looks like you get to choose which bunk you want.”
I just looked at him. My parents were going to leave me here, abandon me in this cell, and my father was cheerfully offering a choice of beds. “Doesn’t matter,” I muttered.
“Sure it does,” Dad insisted. “Bottom bunk’s easier—you don’t have to climb in and out of bed—but then you’ve got somebody sleeping on top of you, and you’re staring at the bottom of a mattress all night—”
I tuned him out and continued to stare miserably around me. I couldn’t believe they’d talked me into this. “Blackburne will be a whole other world,” my mother had said. “You’ll have so many opportunities.” Words like opportunities and education and personal growth had floated around my house for months. My teachers had been highly impressed that I was applying to Blackburne. Even my small group of friends, who I thought—with a tinge of desperation—would miss me if I went to boarding school out of state, had started looking at me the way I imagine people who wait tables in L.A. look at one of their waiter buddies who finally lands a small TV role: with a combination of amazement, suspicion, and mute respect. All this had been wrapped up in the kind of mumbled good wishes fourteen-year-old boys give to one another. When I’d gotten my acceptance letter from Blackburne, I had thought, like an idiot, that this was a good idea.
As my father listed the pros and cons of bunk beds, my mother unzipped my bags and started hanging shirts and pants in the closet. Dad was a pediatrician, much beloved by his patients back home in Asheville. Mom had been a nurse’s assistant and now managed my father’s practice. They were both good, decent people, obvious in their care and love for each other and for me, their only son. At fourteen, I thought they were completely mortifying. I even hated them a little, not just for threatening to drop me off here and drive away, but because, deep down, I loved them fiercely and was stunned to realize this as I stood in that room, imagining our good-byes.
I probably would have started weeping, maybe even thrown myself onto the floor at their feet, pleading to go home with them, if my roommate hadn’t shown up just then. I was suddenly conscious of a tall, muscular boy standing in the doorway, his hair in cornrows and a tiny diamond stud in his left ear, a duffel bag slung over one arm. “Hey,” he said to me, jerking his chin up in greeting. “ ’S’up.”
“Hey,” I said.
“Guess we’re roomies, huh?”
“I guess. Yeah.”
He grinned, a warm, bright smile that lit up his face and even made the room a little less barren. “I’m Daryl,” he said.
“Matthias.” We shook hands. I remembered my parents and introduced them. Then Daryl’s parents came in, tall and slim and dressed as if for church, his dad in a three-piece suit and his mom in a dress and hat. We shook hands all around. I remember being astonished once again at how easily my parents, especially my father, could talk to anyone. Daryl took the opportunity to ask if I cared which bunk I got, and when I shrugged, he tossed his duffel onto the bottom bunk. “Got to get up early for football workouts,” he explained. “Don’t want to be climbing down out of bed and waking you up, shaking the bed frame.”
Eventually, our parents left. Daryl shook his father’s hand and then hugged his mother, telling them not to worry because he would be tearing up the place soon. He punched me on the arm when he said this, as if for emphasis, and I gave a sickly grin. I was too embarrassed to cry in front of Daryl, and a little in awe of him, so I screwed my face on tight and suffered my mother’s tears and my father’s proud smile. Daryl and I watched our parents drive off, their taillights flashing red as they neared a curve on the road around the Hill, and then their cars slipped around the curve and vanished. I cried into my pillow that night—fierce, silent, jagged sobs. If Daryl heard me, he didn’t say anything, for which I was grateful.
It was our hall prefect, John Cole, who gave Daryl his nickname when he told him to take his diamond stud out. As a prefect, a member of the student-elected Judicial Board, John was in charge of our floor as a kind of resident advisor, or RA, making sure we woke up on time, made our beds, behaved somewhat better than caged animals, and went to sleep at lights-out. Our first week of school, he also talked to us about Blackburne’s honor code, which had been in existence since Colonel Blackburne began his school in 1876. My parents had sung high praise for the wonders of such a code of conduct, which, to me, seemed only to offer more reasons for which I could be expelled.
That first week, John Cole took everyone on our floor outside onto the Lawn, where we sat in a ragged circle under one of the oak trees. John was from New Hampshire, and for that alone I held him in some respect, having never been farther north than Virginia. John was fair-skinned with bright blue eyes and straight brown hair neatly parted to one side. If he’d worn glasses, he might have been pegged as a geek, but he was self-assured in the way only high school seniors can be. A wrestler, he also displayed a kind of monastic discipline, an economy of movement and expression that made him seem older and wiser than seventeen.
When we had all sat down underneath the boughs of the oak tree, John asked us if we knew about the honor code. Dutifully, we murmured yes. We’d all been given a small white pamphlet outlining the honor code and the role of the Judicial Board. John nodded thoughtfully. “The honor code is the oldest institution here at Blackburne,” he said. “Older than some of these trees, probably. It has not changed since it was first implemented. Think about that. Over a hundred and twenty years.” He looked each of us in the eye as he said this last part. I glanced away, slightly embarrassed.
“It hasn’t changed because it’s simple and it’s effective,” John said. “Don’t lie. Don’t cheat. Don’t steal. Don’t permit others to do those things, either. Simple.”
Miles Camak raised his hand. “So, you just get kicked out if you do one of those things?” he asked.
“Yep,” John said.
Miles scratched his cheek. “Okay,” he said, somewhat doubtfully.
John gave a little smile. “Hard to imagine, isn’t it?”
“Harsh,” murmured Roger Bloom.
“Yes,” John said. “But it’s the only way an honor code can work. Really work.” He looked at us. “Imagine that you’re taking a test and you see your neighbor cheat. Could you turn him in?” Silence. “Could you, Matthias?” he said, turning to me, and heat rose in my face and the back of my neck as everyone stared.
“I—I don’t know,” I managed.
John seemed to consider this, while I had the distinct impression that I had failed some sort of test. John didn’t change his expression, though, so I couldn’t be sure.
“Centuries ago, in Japan,” John said, “the samurai followed a code of conduct known as Bushido. It means ‘the way of the warrior.’ One of the most important tenets of Bushido was a sense of honor. The samurai valued honor above life. If a samurai felt he had failed in his duty, he would commit seppuku, ritual suicide.” He paused, lifting an eyebrow. “Now that’s harsh,” he said. Several people chuckled.
I glanced at Daryl, making a face like Can you believe this guy, but Daryl was staring at John, a bit wary but obviously engaged. Quickly I looked back over at John, too.
“The honor code seems cruel, I know,” John said. “I thought the same thing at first. But it makes this place what it is. There are no locks on the doors to our dorm rooms. You can forget your backpack in the library and come back the next day and it will still be there. Your word takes on real meaning. Someone tells you something and you know it’s the truth. There aren’t many places on Earth where that happens. This is one of them.”
Over the next few days, the guys on my floor would whisper “Bushido” to one another and we’d crack up, but we did it secretly, out of earshot of John Cole. And although we didn’t want to admit it, his earnest speech about the honor code, instead of sounding corny, had struck home with most of us. We were now a part of this century-old tradition.
However, the most immediate impact John Cole made on us was telling Daryl to take his diamond stud out of his ear or he’d give him detention. Daryl did it grudgingly, and the next morning, John woke us up for breakfast by knocking loudly on the door, throwing it open, and proclaiming, “Morning, Matthias! Morning, Diamond! Rise and shine, boys!”
“Don’t know what Diamond that motherfucker be talking about,” Daryl muttered, but the nickname stuck, and pretty soon he was Diamond to everybody.
Being fourteen and hopelessly naive about most things, including myself, I was captivated by Diamond. I had known hardly any black kids at my predominantly white junior high. His forceful personality, his easy use of profanity out of earshot of teachers and prefects, and his casual acceptance of me as his roommate bowled me over. Combine that with a keen intelligence and the physique of a Greek statue, not to mention that he seemed destined to be a starting varsity running back, and Diamond was like a demigod who allowed me, a pitiful mortal, to enter his sphere. Within a week, I was infatuated with the guy.
That my infatuation could be considered in any way homosexual was my secret fear. To be labeled gay at an all-male school was the worst, most devastating blow that could be leveled at a student. Being called a pussy just made you weak, and cocksucker was just another, harsher word for asshole, but being called a faggot was to be cast into the outer darkness.
To say categorically that I was not and am not homosexual, and that I did not harbor any such inclinations toward Diamond or any other student at my school, must come across as me protesting a bit too much. I can only say that it’s true. I didn’t lust after Diamond—I lusted after his attributes. I wanted to be like him so I could shut down any potential bullies with an angry stare, and conquer girls with all the rough ease of a 007. As I was nothing like Diamond, I could only gaze at him and hope that somehow some of his Diamond-ness would rub off on me, transforming me overnight from an awkward, metal-mouthed beanpole into a cocksure Casanova.
This did not happen. Diamond, as I’ve said, was cut like ancient statuary, whereas I had a concave chest and arms like rubber bands. In the bathroom, where we showered four at a time, I’d glance surreptitiously between his legs, wondering if what I’d heard about black males being well endowed was true, but the truth was that Diamond seemed, like everyone else I showered with, pretty much adequate, while I would peer in disgust at the wilted carrot between my own legs. (Jay “Beef” Organ, whose massive organ swiftly became legend, was the exception. “Boy’s hung like a cable car” was Diamond’s own assessment.) Even the tight cornrows sweeping across Diamond’s scalp seemed to mock my own limp brown hair.
Ever hopeful, I continued hanging out with Diamond. I tried to listen to his music, a funky mix of Tupac Shakur and Wu-Tang Clan and Digital Underground, but I secretly preferred my old classic rock CDs, putting on my headphones and surrounding myself in a sonic fume of Led Zeppelin, the Doors, and the Rolling Stones. Diamond’s quick wit proved even harder to copy, and I usually just resorted to profanity whenever a clever response was called for. “Yeah, well, fuck that” became my stock phrase until one day Diamond told me that I was going to be tagged Fuckhead for the rest of my life unless I pulled my head out of my ass and got my motherfucking shit together, dig?
All of this took place in a whirlwind of classes and study halls and sports—I was on the “Cub” soccer team for third formers—so that we were often too busy for any real introspection. What free time we had, we spent trying to improve our position on the social ladder, or sleeping. So I didn’t realize that my clinging to Diamond, eating with him at every meal, or trying to copy his every move, could be viewed as annoying, or that he might find my constant questions and assumptions about him offensive.
I remember asking him once about girls and making some inane comment about how I’m sure his dance moves would “floor the bitches,” with an intended sexual pun on floor. He looked up at me from his desk. “What, I can dance ’cause I’m black?” he asked.
“What?” I said.
“You heard me,” he said. “It’s a black thing, right? I can dance, I can ‘floor the bitches’ because I’ve got a higher level of melanin than you do?”
I stared at him from my upper bunk. “What the fuck are you talking about?” I asked.
He pointed at me. “See, that’s another thing,” he said. “You got to cut out this cussing shit all the time. ’Cause it’s old, and all it does is make you look desperate. I cuss ’cause it’s who I am. You do it ’cause you think it’ll make you look tougher. Which it doesn’t.”
I was stunned. No one had ever so openly laid bare my insecurities. So I went on the offensive. “I want to go back to the part where you called me a racist,” I said.
Diamond’s eyebrows went up. “Nobody called you a racist.”
“Yes, you did,” I said indignantly. “You said—”
“What I said”—Diamond leaned forward in his chair, stabbing his finger in the air for emphasis, as if he were impaling his words—“was that you were suggesting I can dance well because I’m black, which I was trying to point out is a racial stereotype. So happens I can dance well, but that don’t make the stereotype less bad, is all I’m saying.”
“So I try to give you a fucking compliment and now I’m, what, some kind of bigot?”
“Man, what the fuck is wrong with you?”
“Uh-oh, better watch your mouth, Diamond,” I said. “Somebody’ll think you’re just trying to look big.”
We went on for a bit, insulting each other and becoming loud enough that John Cole came down the hall—it was a few minutes before lights-out—and told us to knock it off or we’d get stuck with demerits. We went to bed, still pissed at each other. The next morning, Diamond got up early and went to the weight room. Then he came back and showered and went to breakfast, all without saying a word to me.
After he left, I sat in our room and realized with horror that I had made precious few friends other than him. There was Trip Alexander, a tall, reserved boy from Dallas who played Cub soccer and was in my English class, but we didn’t socialize much outside of class or the soccer field. Miles Camak was in my biology class and liked the same music I did, and we’d swapped a couple of CDs. Everyone else in our class was either a brief acquaintance, a stranger, an undesirable, or someone who was friends with Diamond and simply tolerant of me as Diamond’s roommate. I determined to start making some new friends and marched to breakfast as if on a mission. I sat with Trip Alexander and spoke with some other kids in our class, and was surprised to find how easy it was.
Later that evening, Diamond apologized to me. “Didn’t mean to come off so strong, man,” he said. “It’s just that the work’s harder than I thought and football’s kicking my ass. I mean, I’m kicking it right back,” he added, with a grin, “but it’s worn me down a little, got me frazzled. We cool?”
I nodded. “Sure,” I said, “I’m sorry, too,” and gave Diamond a fist bump. But deep down I was still angry at Diamond for how much influence he had on me. Looking back, I realize I was mad at the wrong person.
I became closer friends with Trip and Miles, playing Ping-Pong with one or the other of them in the attic of Raleigh, going with them on weekend afternoons to watch one of the thousand or so movies in the school’s old A/V center on the top floor of the library. Diamond and I still hung out and ate together most of the time, but I was pulling away from him a little. And then I fucked up.
Fletcher Dupree was a kid in our class who was both popular and annoying as hell. Today he’d be diagnosed with ADHD and slapped on Adderall, but back then, he was probably described by adults as just “high-spirited.” He had a knack for figuring out your most vulnerable area and then exploiting it publicly for laughs. At a packed lunch table, Fletcher had asked Roger Bloom, an oversized football center, why he liked listening to George Michael, and then looked on with disbelief and mock disgust as Roger, who obviously did like George Michael and was embarrassed at this public outing, tried to stammer a response while everyone else roared with laughter. One Saturday night when it was hotter than a boiler room in Hades—Raleigh Hall did not have air-conditioning, and so we all had floor fans blasting away constantly—I stripped down to my underwear under my single bedsheet, trying to fall asleep. Soon after I did, Fletcher snuck into our room and yanked the sheet off me. Then he burst out laughing and ran down the hall. Next morning at breakfast, I had to hear from Fletcher all about how I wore tighty-whities. Never mind the guy who was creeping around the dorm and pulling bedsheets off people—apparently I was the pervert for wearing only jockey shorts in bed when it was ninety-seven degrees. But Diamond had laughed at Fletcher’s comments, too, which only fanned the coals of resentment I had stoked.
One night after study hall, as a bunch of us headed back to dorm, Fletcher’s voice rose out of the dark. He was complaining about his roommate, Max Goren, who snored “like a goddamn elephant seal,” which made a few of us chuckle. Then Fletcher asked, casually, “Hey, Matthias, what’s it like rooming with Diamond?”
My first instinct was to say it was fine, that he was a good guy, which was true. I knew, however, that this would probably result in some sort of ridicule from Fletcher about how much I worshipped my roommate, which would crack everyone up. So, sensing an opportunity to dig safely at my roommate, I said, “Oh, he’s cool. But, man, does he stink when he comes back from football practice. It’s like a fucking water buffalo or something.”
To my horror, from out of the dark I heard Diamond say, “Fuck you, Glass!” Fletcher brayed with laughter, as did everyone else. In vain I tried to apologize to Diamond, who just muttered, “Whatever,” and then ignored me while everyone laughed at how Fletcher had set me up and how spectacularly I’d fallen for it.
All that evening before lights-out, I apologized to Diamond, begged him to forgive me, told him I was stupid and insensitive. I even told him I was scared of Fletcher and thought if I made him laugh, maybe he’d think I was all right and not tease me. “That just shows how fucking stupid you are,” Diamond said, heading for the bathroom with his toothbrush. I stayed in my bunk, staring at the ceiling until Diamond came back in, hit the lights, and got into his bunk, causing the entire bed frame to shiver.
The next day at breakfast, Diamond carried his tray to the far side of the cafeteria, away from the area where we always sat. After a moment of standing indecisively with my tray, I slowly headed for our usual table. Fletcher Dupree was already there, along with a few other classmates, and my heart sank, but he didn’t seem to notice me, so I sat down at the table as far away from him as possible. Then Fletcher seemed about to sneeze and held up his hand as if in warning, and when everyone had stopped eating to look at him, his eyes shut, nose crinkled, mouth open in a grimace, he threw his head forward in a fake sneeze and uttered “Water buffalo,” throwing the table into an uproar. After a few seconds, I calmly picked up my tray and, ignoring the catcalls and pleas to return, went to sit alone at a window table, staring out at the brightening day. Trip Alexander and Miles Camak came over to sit with me, and we ate mostly in silence, but their gesture meant a lot.
It was a brief respite. By the time I got back to my room, I found Diamond staring at a sheet of paper tacked to our door. It was a list of all the varsity football players and their jersey numbers, with a note stating that we needed to have these numbers memorized by the end of study hall tonight, or else. “Motherfucking don’t believe this shit,” Diamond said, scowling. “I got a Latin test and a bio lab today.”
“What does ‘or else’ mean?” I asked.
Diamond shot a sideways glance at me, and then looked back at the sheet. “It’s Third Form Night tonight,” he said.
Third Form Night was a time-honored ritual at Blackburne. Immediately after study hall, the varsity football players would corral the third formers in the auditorium in the Montbach Fine Arts Center and lead us through a program of school spirit. Unofficially, it was a hazing, but no one knew what that meant. Did we have to do push-ups? Run laps? Eat onions? Fourth formers rolled their eyes and laughed when we asked about it. All we knew was that some of us would be chosen at random and told to identify the jersey number of a given varsity player. If we failed to correctly identify the player’s number . . . Well, it was understood that we needed to correctly identify the number. Period. Not knowing what would happen was worse than having the fatal knowledge.
Diamond ripped the sheet off our door and handed it to me. “You better start reading,” he said. “I already got one from Coach last week. Motherfucking bullshit.” Before I had the chance to do more than stammer a quick thanks, he retrieved his backpack from our room and headed to class.
All anyone could talk about at lunch was Third Form Night. “They make you eat a stick of butter if you screw up,” Roger Bloom said in a low voice. “With Tabasco sauce.”
“I heard they make you run around the Hill until you pass out,” Miles said.
Trip protested this. “You can’t run until you pass out,” he said. “You’d have to run, like, a marathon. That’s like torture.”
“Think they care?” Miles said.
“Glad I’ve had a week to look at the list,” Roger said.
“A week?” Miles was incredulous. “That’s not fair!”
“Who’s gonna run with you while you run around the Hill?” Trip insisted, still arguing against the run-until-you-pass-out theory. “What, they’ve got golf carts or something? It’s a crock.”
“Why’d you get an extra week?”
“I play JV football. They gave it to all of us. But if we screw it up, we’re dead meat. Worse than you guys.”
Classes passed in a blur, all of us sitting at our desks like men awaiting the long march to the gallows, praying for a reprieve. At soccer practice, we played with a frantic energy that impressed our coaches, who didn’t realize we were scared half out of our wits. We trudged reluctantly up the Hill after practice, not wanting to turn our backs on the fading day. Dinner was miserable, and even though Trip still swore they couldn’t really hurt us because the teachers wouldn’t allow it, his was a lone voice. A trio of sixth formers walked past our table and slowed, grinning at us like cats surveying a rack of mice.
For the first six weeks of school, all third formers had to go to the large lecture hall in Stadler for the evening study period. We shuffled in, all of us carrying our rosters to hopefully memorize over the next two hours. Mr. Downing, an old bulldog of a Latin teacher who had taught at Blackburne for thirty years, sat behind a desk on a dais at the back of the room where he could oversee us. He barked at us to get seated, and we obeyed. When the bell rang for the start of study hall, I got out my English grammar book to complete an exercise on fragments and run-on sentences. I couldn’t look at the football roster. I was too nervous, and so I reasoned that homework would calm me down. After about half an hour, I did feel a bit calmer, and spent the rest of the first study period looking over the roster of fifty-odd names.
When the bell rang for break, everybody got up to stretch and go to the bathroom. I put my head down on my desk to take a brief nap, but startled cries brought me and everyone else out of the room and into the hallway. Posted on every door to every classroom was a photocopy of a stylized, roaring lion’s head drawn in black, red, and gold. They had not been on the doors when we had gone into Stadler. Even Trip Alexander was quiet now.
The second study period was essentially useless. No matter how hard I looked at the roster, names and jersey numbers slipped out of my mind like water through a clenched fist. I looked at the clock on the wall, watching the second hand slowly sweep its way around. How many times had I willed that clock to go faster! Now I wanted it to stop, or start winding backward, maybe all the way back to the day my parents had first uttered the word Blackburne so I could say no and end this nightmare.
With five minutes left in study hall, I heard Trip gasp. I looked over and saw, with a start, a face looking at us through the square window in the door. It was a monstrous face, red and yellow and black, the eyes leering, the mouth open in a fierce grin. The face vanished. From the low, astonished cries around me, I knew I hadn’t been alone in seeing it.
Behind us, in a low, gravelly voice, Mr. Downing said, “They’re gonna getcha.”
A whoop from the hall was answered by half a dozen other whoops, as if a troop of crazed Indian braves were waiting outside. I shot a look at Diamond, sitting two aisles over. He turned to look at me, the first acknowledgment he’d made all evening that I existed, and my bowels turned to ice water. Diamond looked scared.
Slowly, from outside the room, came a vibrating sound that grew in intensity. Whoever was in the hallway was stomping their feet, slowly at first and then faster and faster. A rebel yell broke out, followed by whoops and cries. Eyes widened and sought desperately, frantically, for escape. We all cowered in the lecture hall, waiting for the stroke of doom.
The bell rang. Immediately, the door to the room burst open, and three enormous sixth formers, their shirts off, their faces and chests slathered with red and gold war paint, bounded in. “Run, boys!” one of them hollered at us. He waved us on like a paratrooper waving new recruits through the open door of an airplane. “Go! Go!” We bleated like sheep and ran through the doorway, leaving our books and backpacks behind. Older boys lined the hallway, shouting at us and waving us to the exit doors at the far end. We burst out into the night between another double cordon of football players, some with flashlights, all of them waving us down the walkway to the fine arts building. They shouted and screamed at us, and we yelled back incoherently as we stumbled down the path and then up the stairs and into the lobby of the building. I barely registered seeing two teachers in the lobby, standing to the side as if viewing an art gallery. Then we thundered into the auditorium, where upperclassmen in white football jerseys guided us into rows of seats and yelled at us to remain standing. I recognized John Cole as one of them, gleefully haranguing a new boy.
Onstage, the varsity football team was stomping and clapping and hooting at us, the noise threatening to crescendo to an almost painful level. Spotlights from the ceiling washed over them, bathing them in white-hot light. Suddenly one of them shouted, “L!”
“L!” the team shouted back.
“I!”
“I!” they shouted.
“O!”
Enough of us had gathered our wits to shout “O!” along with the team.
“N!”
“N!” we screamed, shaking the rafters.
“S!”
“S!” I screamed, so loud I thought my vocal cords would bleed.
“Go-o-o Lions! Fight team fight!” the team finished in unison. Pandemonium—hollers, fists thrust to the ceiling, veins taut in foreheads and necks. Everywhere I looked, I saw a screaming, exultant football player. We tried to match them, but we were like Girl Scouts trying to drown out the audience at a metal concert. Never in my life had I been subject to such raw, impassioned noise, and it both terrified and thrilled me.
We were led through a few more cheers, which we dutifully screamed as loud as we could. It proved cathartic—I was able to shed some of my earlier fear by yelling my head off. But then I realized that the football players were ushering someone onto the stage, where a lone, empty chair awaited under a spotlight. They brought the boy to the chair and made him sit down. To my dismay, it was Diamond.
“All right!” one of the varsity players onstage said, this one with a shaved head and no neck to speak of. “We’re gonna see how well you boys know your varsity football players. Diamond! Who am I?”
Diamond, surrounded by a semicircle of varsity players, looked up at the boy addressing him and tried to smile, though it looked like a grimace. He licked his lips and cast a glance around. “Uh,” he seemed to say.
“What?” No Neck said, incredulous. “You don’t know?” He plucked his jersey front and shook it. “Number forty-eight! Come on, Diamond! Who am I?”
Someone next to me said, “Don’t worry, they won’t hurt him.”
I turned to see a boy about my height, with brown hair grown a little long in front. He gave me a slight, lopsided smile.
“What?” I asked.
“They won’t hurt him. Your roommate.” He nodded at the stage. “Look.”
I looked. Diamond had gotten No Neck’s name wrong, so they were making him do push-ups, bellowing out the count. At twenty, they made him stop and hustled him offstage while they brought up the next third former.
“It’s just a game,” the boy said. “There’s a teacher at every exit. Plus they don’t want to hurt us, anyway. It’s just a way to get everyone pumped up.”
I checked the exits to confirm what he was saying about the teachers, and there they were, one or two at every exit, watching silently, arms folded. And Diamond was safely back in his seat several rows up, smiling with relief. I let out a breath I didn’t even know I’d been holding in and then glanced at the boy next to me. I felt a bit foolish about having been so scared.
But the boy seemed to read my thoughts and just shook his head. “My father went here. That’s the only reason I know. Otherwise I’d be pissing my pants.”
Relief and gratitude swept over me. “Thanks,” I said. “I’m Matthias.”
He smiled. “I’m Fritz.”