THE HEAD’S OFFICE WAS THE SIZE of basketball court. One wall to the side was mostly just a whole lot of little windows looking out onto the quad. His fireplace was as big as the one in the dining room. The desk reminded me of an aircraft carrier deck.
It was getting dark really early now, so that even though it was only late afternoon, the fireplace flames reflected in the glass of the framed diplomas hanging behind him.
The only other light was from the two amber desk lamps positioned at either side of him.
Pools of shadow gathered in the corners. A dark blue rug muffled my footsteps.
“Hello, Jack. Have a seat.” Carlton didn’t get up.
He was looking at a file in front of him. I sat in one of the two Oakhurst-crested wooden chairs facing his desk. “Looks like this might be our year on the football field, eh, son?” he said, not looking up. “Anglican will be tough next week, though. They’re a very disciplined team. And, of course, Essex is quite the force this year.”
“If you’re busy, sir, I can wait,” I said. “I know I’m a little early. If you have work—”
He looked up. “I’m just glancing at your file, Jack.”
My file? I didn’t know I had a file. “That’s all about me?”
“Teacher reports, routine paperwork, the like,” he said. “Grades—impressive, except for French. As for music . . . Mr. Hopper seems less than impressed.”
“That’s what I wanted to see you about, sir. Music.”
“Yes. This band of yours—which took particular liberties at that football game, and quite illegally, I might add.” Carlton closed the file and leaned back in his chair, giving me a serious look. “You know that the mountain is off-limits without faculty supervision.”
“Sir, that wasn’t—”
“Jack,” he said, getting all head-y, “I understand that transition at any age of adolescence is difficult. You’ve arrived at Oakhurst Hall at an awkward stage, when most of your classmates have been here for two years and understand our customs. Our traditions.”
Five heavy chapel chimes broke into the silence through the thick glass windows. Weirdly, somehow they sounded twice as loud in here. Like they were sealing my fate. I had this spacey flash that maybe he had them amplified into his office.
“But to take full advantage of the Oakhurst Hall experience, you must accept that we are now your family. In loco parentis, as they say.”
I knew that was Latin for “in the place of your parents.” But right then? All I could think was, All parents are loco.
Now the head leaned forward, his eyes squinting at me, concerned. “Jack, do you think Oakhurst Hall and Jack Lefferts are a good fit?”
Wait a second. This meeting had been my idea. And now Carlton was reading to me from some perp sheet file? A voice in the back of my head told me to cool it. “I think I like it here, sir, if that’s what you mean.”
“That’s fine,” Carlton said. “But liking the school isn’t enough, Jack. Being a part of the community means giving back to it. Admittance to Oakhurst Hall is a two-way contract.”
Contract? I hadn’t signed any contract. How was I supposed to answer that one? I let my eyes wander over to some pictures on the wall. A sailboat. Some dogs. Lots of shots of a Notre Dame college team. No new people. No women. All the old days.
“Well, I’m helping the football team,” I said. That was a stretch.
“Football has been very good for you, Jack. But your decision to not compete for the First Piano position? Quite unheard of. Especially since, as I’m sure you know, one of the major factors in your admittance was your talent at the piano.”
Ah. Got it. I mean I always figured that was the deal, but to hear it sort of sucked. Like I was a one-trick freak or something.
“And I’m sure that you know, by now, what the Thanksgiving concert means to everyone.”
“I know what it means to Mario,” I said.
He paused. Then he tried to sound casual. “Mario Miles is, of course, a very good musician. But the First Pianist has been known to enjoy exposure: not just on the ensuing tour, but farther down the road. This is a heavy mantle for some to carry. Especially if this year’s concert is televised. Which could bring a great deal of welcome exposure to our institution.”
As soon as he said it, I knew he wanted to take it back. Mario was good enough to play with the goddamned Boston Pops starting next Tuesday. But he wasn’t good enough to represent a school that didn’t have a clue what made the kid tick and didn’t care, and only knew what his T-shirts said. It was all pretty clear now: Communists don’t usually throw money back at the old school.
Carlton looked back down at the file and shuffled some papers. “Unfortunately, as things turned out this year, you and Mario seem to be far ahead of the rest of the pack. Now, we all need challenges to improve ourselves, Jack, and with your obvious skills, your ‘band’ hardly provides that challenge, do you think?”
“But it does, sir. It’s the first time I’ve ever challenged myself.” Then, luckily, Carlton’s phone rang, because I needed some strategy here.
“Yes, that’s fine,” he said, and a second later, a maintenance guy came in with some firewood. “Thank you, Julio,” Carlton said.
While the guy threw new logs on the fire, I checked out the titles of the books on the shelf. Lots of books about teaching and learning. A few Bibles. And one book called Reaching Every Student. That one triggered something. I didn’t even wait until Julio had closed the door. I wanted to get the first word in.
“Sir, not every kid can win a prize, or get into Yale, or make Oakhurst Hall look better than all the other Oakhurst Halls,” I said. “A lot of us aren’t wired that way. Most of us never get that kind of a rush. But we all get a rush with music. Maybe it’s heavy metal for the team or emo for Josh, but it’s all the same language. To kids, music isn’t a prize to win. It’s the only thing we all share. Music is sort of the way our emotions sound out loud.”
The new wood flared up, and I could see the reflection of the blaze in the window behind him. It was now completely dark outside.
“Rather like the emotion we feel on the hillside when Oakhurst scores a winning touchdown, yes?” Carlton said, reflexively glancing at the fire, like he was posing for a cover of the monthly school magazine. “The moment when an Oakhurst boy carries the ball into the end zone makes us all feel pretty proud, doesn’t it?”
“But that’s different!” I said, a little too loudly. “I mean, I can’t wait until that’s me. And I’m going to score that touchdown. I am. But what if our song made the school feel just as proud?”
His face dropped its magazine-cover cool; he was losing patience. “Well, Jack, this will be your first Thanksgiving concert, and, as I am sure you’ll see, our symphony makes us very proud as a community, as we gather together—not on a hillside for a game, or in a chapel for camaraderie, but in an auditorium, to revel in the expertise of our artists.”
The guy could preach. I had to give him that.
“And I think it’s admirable of you to take the point position on this, as a new boy. But I can hardly seriously entertain the notion of your group playing at that concert. Bands are an extracurricular activity, as you well know. There are other forums for this kind of thing—the winter dance, for example.”
“You can’t really dance to the thing we’ve written, sir,” I said. “It’s sort of hard to describe. But I think it’s something the students would really like to hear. I think it’d put them in a good place.”
I guess that wasn’t the right way to say it, because suddenly Carlton pushed his chair back scary quickly and shot to his feet. “A boy of sixteen hardly knows what place he’s supposed to be in,” he said, trying not to completely lose it. “And as for whatever place his peers want to be in? Right now, son, they are here. And I am their guide on the path to success.”
He took a deep breath. I think he knew how spooky it was getting. “And when they are here, reaching them is my job. Not yours. I’ve made my decision. It is the right one. Am I clear about this, Mr. Lefferts?”
“Yes sir,” I said. “Very clear.”
But I’d made my own decision too.
In fact, I’d just made a very good one: We were going to play at the concert, one way or another. Carlton had just picked the wrong battle. We were going to win this war.
“I’m glad we had this talk, Jack,” he said as he walked me to the door. “And good luck against Anglican.” Suddenly, and oddly, he was smiling. “Let’s give ’em hell!”
“Yessir!”
I think I might have actually said that. I might have even meant it.
• • •
As I walked out the door into the darkness, it was like being freed. And as I skipped down the stone stairs of the administration building, I knew that I could face the consequences of crashing the concert. If they booted me, they booted me. Because the me they’d be booting was a Jack Lefferts who’d learned how to play a sport with a team. To write a kick-ass song with another kind of team, maybe. A kid with a girlfriend in his future if he didn’t mess it up. The kind of kid Oakhurst Hall needed more than it looked like Carlton would ever know.
Of course, the big question was how we were going to pull this off. Would Josh, Danny, and Simon really want to risk it? And how could we get the equipment onstage? And when?
I didn’t want to show up Mario or the symphony. But we’d have to pull it off at the end—before Carlton and Ward and Booth and the SWAT team of Engleside, New Hampshire, could stop us.