Copyright 2026 by James Breitbart, all rights reserved
[8,558 words]
* * * * *Chapter 16
Haley Ferris
The
three boys assigned to clean my apartment were noticeably sleepy and
grumpy Saturday morning, and they all had brand new tattoos on their
asses. Nolan’s was a red circle with some writing in a language I
didn’t understand in the middle of it. Theo and Asher had that thingy
with a pair of snakes that you see on ambulances.
“Nice ink,” I teased.
“Thanks,” Nolan replied.
“What’s it mean?”
“It’s a secret.”
“A tattoo on your ass is a pretty dumb way to keep a secret if you ask me.”
“The people who need to know what it means, know what it means.” Maybe
they taught you how to talk like that in secret society school. I’d
have to ask Jordie when I saw him next.
I turned out to see him sooner than I thought I would. He drove over to the school and showed up at my front door.
“Dude, did you see…”
“Shh!!! If my Mom hears she’ll flip!”
“Ok, we can go back to my place.”
We drove back to Jordie’s place and hung out in his room, with the live
feeds on his monitor. The new secret society taps had all gone back to
bed, and I soon found out why they’d been so tired. The tapes showed
that they’d all left their dorms around 9:00 and come back at 5:00 a.m.
Jordie kept playing the tapes over and over. All the societies did the
taps the same way. An upperclassman would knock on the freshman’s door,
ask them their name, and state the name of the society followed by
“accept or reject.” No one rejected.
Jordie was much more
interested in the secret society shit than the sex, but I could care
less. So they joined some stupid club where they hung out in the woods
in robes and chanted Latin shit and manipulated the student council to
put recycling bins in the dorms, and then when they graduated they’d
join some other secret society at Yale or Dartmouth and go on to
manipulate the stock market or whatever. Big fucking deal.
Later in the morning, the rest of the gang came over. Dylan was
especially happy. “We have our first customer. They want a tape of two
girls.”
“How much are they paying?”
“$800. $100 for each of us and $100 for ongoing expenses.”
“What are our ongoing expenses going to be?”
“Moving the money around and buying new cameras that we can put in a
light fixture. I’ve had like six people asking for shower scenes
already. Eventually, we’re going to need to replace the batteries on
the webcams. Also, we need to get into Mei-Ling Zhou’s mailbox before
she does.”
“Who’s Mei-Ling Zhou?”
“A girl who leaves
her laptop unattended in the library. I got into it while you assholes
were exploring the library and arranged for a key to a post office box
in town to be sent to her. There are debit cards waiting for each of us
in the PO box, each under the name of a different student. The money
gets automatically transferred from a bank account in the name of Jamal
Whitaker.”
“So how do we get into this girl’s mailbox.”
“A little social engineering. Ty, you’re the youngest, so we’re going to need you to be our actor.”
We drove over to the school and went to the mailroom in the basement of
the student center. Ty pretended to be a freshman who was panicking
because he’d lost his mail key, and managed to hold up the line of
actual students who were coming to collect packages. The lady behind
the counter sent someone to give him a new key and a condescending
lecture about being more careful next time. He got the key to the PO
box and gave us a thumbs up.
“So, we can get the money now?” I asked.
“Not yet.” Dylan answered. “We got half in advance, and we get the other half on delivery.”
“To the library!” Ty shouted. He was such a dork sometimes.
The library was unusually empty for a Saturday, probably because all of
the society students were still sleeping off the night before’s party.
There was a little coffee shop at the front of the library, and
students would get up from their computers to get a coffee or a muffin.
We snagged one of their computers, and I kept watch for her return
while Dylan quickly logged into the chatroom he was using to make the
sale. He had created the persona of a Wilson student who hated the
school, with the username ‘FuckSableCrimson69,’ taken from the school
colors. I wished I’d thought of it.
“Ok, it’s up,” Dylan said, “Now let me check the bank account to see if the money’s gone through.”
“You don’t have time,” I said, “she just got her coffee.”
Dylan logged out and we passed the girl as we left the library. Jordie
drove us to the post office in town and we got the debit cards.
“These definitely have the first $50,” Dylan said. The idea that I was
already $50 richer was appealing. Mom and Dad were stingy with my
allowance, and since I didn’t have a car and Wilson was so far from
town the only jobs I could get were at Wilson. There was no way I was
cleaning those bitches’ bathrooms or cooking their breakfasts.
“We should hit the mall tomorrow,” I said, dropping a hint for Jordie.
Since he was the only one with a car, he’d need to drive us. Maybe I
should start saving up for a car.
“Come over around 11:30,” Jordie suggested. “We can watch the secret student council meeting and then go over.”
I had zero interest in watching the secret student council meeting, but
I needed Jordie’s car, so I rode my bike over to his house the next
morning. When the camera in the library turned on, he pulled it up on
the screen. It was only showing some kid’s back, but we could hear the
audio.
“Since election season’s coming up,” a girl announced,
“we’re going to be joined by the student government team from the
Chronicle. You all know Julia, and you’ve all read Nolan’s memoranda.
I’m pleased to announce that Nolan is one of our newest members of the
Crimson Circle.”
There was a round of applause and I rolled my eyes.
“So, Nolan,” a boy asked, “you know the freshman class. Who do you think we should run?”
“I think the plebs are going to going to make a lot of noise around
diversity because they’re mad we shot down that committee, but we have
plenty of diversity in the societies, or at least in the Crimson
Circle. I’d say we nominate someone like Malik Jefferson for one of the
freshman seats. It’ll be hard for them to campaign against him. And we
can do the same thing for Granger.”
“Are we running anyone against Granger?” someone asked, “It’s pretty hard to knock off an incumbent.”
“They knocked off plenty of our incumbents last year.”
“Even if we don’t win, I think it’s worth running somebody to keep her
occupied. Now, I’d go the opposite track against Parvati Shah. Find
someone who can peel off votes from Republicans.”
“Stevie Halbrook would be good.” Someone said. I didn’t know who Stevie Halbrook was and I didn’t really care.
“That brings me to my next point. What percent of the student body do you estimate are politically conservative?”
“We do a survey every year and it hovers around 20 percent. That’s
ideologically conservative. If you count Rockefeller Republicans it’s
closer to 50/50.”
“And the ratio’s the same for members and plebs?”
“We try to keep it that way. The Illuminati wants its people in both parties when we grow up.” Jordie squealed with delight.
“So, there’s about 230 students in each class year, and 75 of those
students are members. That leaves about 155 plebs, of whom by your
count about 30 would be Republicans. If you peel off those votes to an
ideological right-winger, we’d only need 50 plebs to vote for the
member to win. So, if we get the Young Republicans to run candidates…”
“The national Young Republicans have a policy against getting involved
in campus elections. We’d need to create a new group that was focused
on campus moral issues,” someone said.
“Do we think that’s dangerous?”
“No, like Nolan said, they’ll only get about 30 students in each class.
It’ll split them off from both the reformers and the Young Republicans,
and headquarters is making a big push to keep the nutjobs corralled.
They think they’re going to need to moderate on the gay issues once
Generation Y starts voting. Nolan, your friend Jas would be the perfect
candidate.”
“I’m not allowed to mess with him. His dad’s…”
“We know, but the agreement with his dad was only that you wouldn’t
bully him. If we trick him into saying a bunch of dumb shit that will
get in the paper and get dragged back up if he ever runs for Congress,
we’re fine. That brings me to the next order of business. Headquarters
is gearing up for the midterm elections and they need opposition
research. Nolan, you’re going to get a list of names in your email.
They’re all Wilson alumni who are considering running for something
next year. We want you to go through the newspaper archives and report
on anything that mentions them, especially anything damaging.”
Jordie clapped his hands and started jumping up and down. “Holy shit! Holy shit! Holy shit!”
I rolled my eyes. “Can we please just go to the fucking mall now?”
Chapter 17
Nolan Pierce
After
the senate meeting, I walked back to the dorm to look for Theo, I found
him balls-deep in Asher Montgomery, at the same time he was sucking off
Ethan Rothschild. Like Theo and Asher, Ethan had a newly acquired
Silver Serpents’ tattoo.
“Mind if I join in?” I asked.
Theo took his mouth off Ethan’s dick, but kept fucking Asher.
“Go…ugh…right…ugh…ahead.” He had Asher on his back, and Asher’s cute
bare feet were sticking up in the air, his toes curling inward as Theo
fucked him. I went up to him and grabbed his right foot by the ankle,
guiding his toes into my mouth. This positioned me directly behind
Theo, and my dick rubbed against his ass as he thrusted. Ethan handed
me some lube, and after a bit of lubing up and repositioning, we formed
a four-man fuck chain. My dick was firmly ensconced in Theo’s ass as it
moved back and forth while he fucked Asher, at the same time as Ethan
was fucking me from behind. The stimulation was a lot, and I came
quickly, starting a chain reaction that soon left us all panting, and
three of the four of us with a load of cum in our asses. We all went to
the showers to wash it off.
“So, what did you want to talk to me about?” Theo asked.
“Society stuff. Turn all the showerheads on so no one hears us.” When I
was sure that I wouldn’t be overheard, I asked. “You’re in the Young
Republicans, right?”
“Yeah.”
“We want to create a new club of right wingers, like, Wilson Against Gays or something.”
“But you’re gay.”
“I know, it’s to split them off,” I explained my plan to divide the
pleb vote in the student government by running a faction of social
conservatives, finishing with, “and it’s a great way to make Jas look
like an idiot if we can get him involved.”
“I’m in. What do you need.”
“Young Republicans who Jas and his friends don’t know are in the societies who can suggest that they start their own club.”
“I can work on it.”
I had plenty of else to keep me occupied, between my official
responsibilities on the paper, reviewing the archives for dirt on
potential Congressional candidates, homework, and my active sex life. I
didn’t really think about it until the next Crimson Circle meeting.
Jake Freedman sat down beside me at dinner.
“We got your club set up.”
“How’d you manage it?”
“Caleb Merriweather got on a tangent about the Bible at last week’s YR
meeting and Sahana Iyer mentioned that it would be easier to keep a big
tent if people didn’t have to get preached at when they went to
meetings. It turned into a big argument until I pointed out that we
aren’t allowed to endorse student government candidates or discuss
campus issues. Renew Wilson will have it’s first meeting Sunday at
2:00, once they’re all back from church.”
“Crap, I’ve got a senate meeting then.”
“Your friend Whitfield is going, I’d suggest you try to pick up information from him.”
I knew that Lukas Weiss, who was a practicing Lutheran, was one of the
only kids on our floor who was genuinely friendly to Jas, so I arranged
for a tutoring session Sunday at 3:00. I found that it was surprisingly
easy to get the hang of conversational German, and was beginning to
suspect that my failure in Spanish had something to do with the
teaching.
“Was hast du heute in deiner Schultasche?” Lukas asked.
“In meiner Schultasche habe ich ein Heft, mein Deutschbuch, zwei Bleistifte und eine Wasserflasche.”
Just then Jas burst in, not bothering to knock. Lukas looked up.
“How was your club meeting?”
“It was great, you should have come.”
“I told you, I don’t want to get involved in American politics.”
“It’s not political like that,” Jas insisted, “it’s all about things on
campus. We want to stop hazing and illegal parties, tighten up the
dress code, take dirty books out of the curriculum, and put an end to
affirmative action. We’re going to present our demands to the student
senate at their next meeting, and if they don’t pass them, we’re going
to run our own slate against them.”
“Affirmative action sounds
pretty political to me, but are you going to youth group tonight?”
There were two youth groups that met Sunday nights on campus to
supplement the various chapel services, a Catholic one and a
generically Protestant one.
Jas thought for a moment, “sure.”
I’m pretty sure the youth group were the only kids who would actually
hang with him. A real test of faith, I suppose.
Lukas and I
finished practicing and he got ready for youth group while I went back
to my room, and emailed Julia and Grace about what I’d heard before
pulling up the story I’d started writing, which I was reworking as a
play. I decided that I wanted to base the main character on Owen. The
plotline about his parents’ divorce made the whole thing much more
cohesive, but I was worried that he would be mad if I splashed his
personal drama all over the Spring Theater Showcase, so I emailed the
draft to him and asked if it would be alright.
Owen came into my room at around a quarter to four.
“Did you read it?” I asked.
“Yeah, it was great.”
“You don’t mind me writing about you?”
“No, actually, can I play me?”
“You want to be in it?”
“I want to make my parents watch it.” Owen flopped down on the bed.
“One of them will go to the play – they’ll probably fight about it –
and whoever does will have to sit there and watch me act it out. They
never listen to me. I mean, they literally don’t listen. I try to tell
them I don’t like it when they criticize each other in front of me and
they just talk over me…”
I sat down on the bed with Owen’s
legs draped across my lap, gently massaging his feet while he vented
about his parents. When he was done, I kissed him, and we began making
out. I rode him cowboy style until he came inside me and then shot my
load all over his stomach, then we cuddled together until it was time
for dinner.
I managed not to see Jas again until Tuesday
evening, when he showed up in the crowd of Renew Wilson students who
had showed up for the public comment. Usually, there weren’t any public
comments, but this evening Carson Hale got up and read out a list of
demands. Campus funding for a ‘family values week’ where they recruited
outside speakers, a school-wide dress code for after classes, a rule
that would force the conduct council to proactively investigate hazing,
and a ban on affirmative actions in admissions.
“That’s racism!” Ezzy Calderon shouted.
Grace banged her gavel. “Order, order! I would remind the honorable
member that cross-talk is prohibited during public comment. For the
information of the commenter, the student senate has no legislative
authority over the admissions process.”
Hale looked surprised.
Clearly, he hadn’t done his homework. “Then I demand a resolution
urging the admissions office to discontinue affirmative action. We
believe that these actions are essential for a moral Wilson that will
remain vibrant into the 21st century. If the current senate
does not enact these proposals, we will have no choice but to seek its
replacement with a slate of candidates of our choosing.”
The
room erupted in crosstalk until Grace gaveled it down and asked if
anyone else had comments. There was a line of students who got up to
echo Hale’s threats, making Delvecchio and Calderon steadily angrier.
When Jas got up to speak, I shifted so that I was sitting behind a
pillar. He launched into a complaint about having to watch guys walk
around the dorm naked.
“And I cannot help but notice that in
recent days many of these students have obtained the tattoos of the
secret societies.” That elicited a gasp from the room. It was going to
stay out of the official article for the school paper, but it was
definitely going into my memo for the senate. Hopefully, his father
would see it and have a word with Jas.
When the public comment
period ended, Delvecchio got up and announced that there was no way in
hell he was voting for the anti-affirmative action proposal. Whitcomb
got up and nervously addressed the audience. “I agree with Senator
Delvecchio that the affirmative action proposal is ill-considered and
contrary to my own personal beliefs,” He got himself boos from the
crowd, and I wondered why Grace hadn’t tried to clear the gallery yet.
“However, I find myself in agreement with the proposal to proactively
investigate hazing, and I would like to hear a broader range of opinion
on the dress code. Furthermore, I believe that for this senate to
consider itself truly democratic, we must give all voices an
opportunity to be heard. Therefore, I move to submit the three bills
that have been discussed tonight to the Committee on Student life, with
the understanding that I intend to vote against the affirmative action
proposal.”
In a surprising twist, Delvecchio and Calderon
voted against Whitcomb’s motion. It was a simple procedural motion and
those were supposed to be accepted unanimously. After the meeting
ended, Delvecchio went over to where Whitcomb was sitting and started
shouting in his face.
“We had a fucking agreement and you
stabbed me in the back, you little shit! If you want to run with those
backwards Jesus Freaks then fine, we’ll get someone to run against you!”
Granger and Calderon went over and calmed him down, but the damage had
been done. He had given me a quote confirming that his faction was
coordinating behind the scenes. Edited to censor the curse words, it
would run on the front page of next week’s paper, right after the
paragraph describing Hale’s threat. Everyone in the student body would
know that Delvecchio was pulling strings.
Chapter 18
Asher Montgomery
Friday
evening, Theo and I walked together to the Silver Serpents meeting in
the basement of the science building. Our predecessors in the 1950s had
replaced the door with one to which only we had a key, and converted it
into a sort of clubhouse modeled after the allegedly
much-more-elaborate catacomb in which the Crimson Circle held its
meetings. There was a partition between the main hall where we held
ceremonies and the dining area where we ended the evening with wine and
cheese.
Mercedes Peale and Lydia Han sat down across from Theo, Ethan and I.
“So, Asher,” Mercedes said, “we hear you want to run for student senate.”
“And Ethan wants to run for Conduct Council,” Lydia added.
“You don’t want to run for anything?” Mercedes asked Theo.
“I’m going to be their campaign manager,” he explained.
“Well, before you start campaigning, you need to learn how to do the
job. I’m going to forward you a series of memos Nolan wrote for us on
this year’s meetings so far. I want you to read them and be prepared to
discuss them Tuesday evening. You’ll attend the meeting with Nolan and
meet with me after.”
The emails were waiting for me when I got
home, and I spent a lot of time Saturday and Sunday reading them over
and talking to Nolan. I knew Mercedes would take this seriously and I
didn’t want to fuck it up like I had with the paper. I neglected my
studies somewhat and had to hastily copy Nolan’s geometry homework
Monday morning, changing the proofs up enough so that we wouldn’t get
caught.
Tuesday evening, Theo and I walked over to the senate
meeting with Nolan and met Ethan in the hallway. We sat at the back of
the room, which quickly grew crowded with angry students.
“Holy shit,” I whispered, “are these kids all with Renew Wilson?”
“No,” Nolan whispered, “those kids down in front are with Delvecchio’s
group, and I think the kids in the back just came to see the fireworks.”
“I guess people really do read the school paper.”
“At least they do when we’re starring out cuss words on the front page.”
If I had to pick a cuss word to describe the meeting, it would be
shitshow. The public comment period opened with kids from Renew Wilson
attacking Delvecchio for making “corrupt backroom deals” and praising
Whitcomb for standing up to him. The President, Grace O’Malley, let
everyone who wanted to stand up and talk, and it dragged on for over an
hour. By the time the last speaker was finished, half the spectators
had left the room.
They then moved immediately into
considering the proposals. First up was the dress code. It was clear
that there was little appetite for the motion as reported, but Mercedes
proposed an amendment that would set up a commission to study the dress
code instead. Whitcomb and Holt, the only senators who might have
supported the original bill, were glad for a face-saving exit, and it
passed unanimously.
“What’s the difference between a commission and a committee?” I asked Nolan.
“A commission isn’t made up of student senators,” Nolan explained, “the
Student Life Committee will nominate kids to be on the commission and
the whole senate will vote on it. Then they’ll spend a couple of months
holding hearings where kids can give their opinions and submit a report
for the senate to consider legislation.”
“Can they actually change the dress code?”
“They can submit changes to the faculty senate, which has the power to
veto them. The last time anyone tried was back in ’91. The student
senate voted to allow jeans in class, but the faculty voted them down.
After that they got discouraged, and no one’s seriously tried to do
anything about the dress code since, but it might be a good campaign
platform.”
The affirmative action bill could have been handled
briefly, as Holt was the only vote in favor of it, but Delvecchio and
Calderon both had to get up and deliver speeches beating the dead horse.
The final bill was the hazing bill. “This could be interesting,” Nolan
whispered, “If no one flips their vote, it’s going to tie and Alvarez
will have to break it.”
They brought in a current member of
the conduct council who stated that they didn’t have time to
proactively investigate anything because of the cases they were
referred. That seemed to sway Allyson Granger, who put forward an
amendment to add a new conduct council seat for each class and form a
special panel to investigate hazing. She managed to split the vote, and
both versions of the bill failed.
Delvecchio made a beeline
for Nolan as soon as the meeting adjourned, but I couldn’t stay to
provide moral support. Mercedes had given me very clear instructions to
meet her after the meeting. She led me back to the Serpents’
headquarters. After stripping naked, I was taken into a backroom where
a panel of upperclassmen quizzed me on the meeting and the structure of
the senate. I felt like I had done a good job, and they seemed
impressed when I worked in a reference to the faculty being able to
veto changes to the dress code. I was told to keep my schedule clear on
Sunday and dismissed.
I ran into Nolan just outside the dorm.
“Where have you been?” I asked.
“Talking to Delvecchio.”
“Jeez, he chewed you out that bad?”
“No, he likes me. He thinks I’m on his side.”
“Really, why?”
“Because I’m a nerdy gay scholarship student and he hasn’t talked to
anyone who knows I’m in a society. He actually wanted me to run for one
of the senate seats.”
“Are you going to?” If we got one of our
people to run with the reformer’s backing, it would be the perfect way
to fuck them over.
“God, no. All Jas would have to do would be
to tell people he’s seen my tattoo and I’d be toast. I told him that I
want to stay with the paper and have to be unbiased, which he took to
mean that I would write shit that makes him look good while appearing
to be unbiased. He already gave me a scoop.”
“What is it?”
“He’s going to form his own political party. Students for a Fair Wilson.”
“Is that good?”
“No. The campaign is going to turn into a mirror of national politics
and kids are going to feel like they have to take sides. Our people are
going to turn into also-rans unless we form a party of our own.”
“Oh.” I went up to Theo’s room for a late-night strategy sesh. We
decided that the best way to peel off votes from Students for a Fair
Wilson without making policy pledges the upperclassmen didn’t want me
to was to cultivate an alternative image. Submit a few stories to the
literary magazine, maybe get another tattoo.
I spent the rest
of the week working on a story and my backlog of schoolwork, and when
Friday night came around, Mercedes told me to meet her at the front
entrance to the library at 11:30 Sunday morning. She led me up to the
second floor, to a locked room for which she had a key. It contained a
big table around which sat all of the society members in student
government, plus Nolan, Julia Mendel, and a bunch of upperclassmen I
didn’t recognize. They asked me questions about what policies I would
pursue if elected, and I told them I wanted to get the dress code
amended to let you wear jeans and flip-flops to class. To the extent
Nolan influenced the decision, I figured the bit about flip-flops would
get him in my corner. Then they asked if I would be willing to vote
however they told me to, without asking any questions. Of course, I
answered yes.
Mercedes told me to leave the room, but stay in the library until she came and got me. I checked out a copy of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and
sat somewhere that kids were sure to see me reading it. I noticed Haley
Ferris walking around like she was looking for something and decided to
make a show of being helpful. I marked my place in the book with my ID
card and went over to her.
“Hey, what’s up.”
“Oh, uh, I was just showing my friends around. They wanted to see where the rich kids study.”
“Oh, well, here it is.”
“There’s Jordie. Hi Jordie!” She waved him over, more enthusiastically
than I’d ever seen her, and introduced us. “Jordie, this is Asher from
my hall.”
Jordie smirked as he said hello to me. Haley must
have told him about my naked apartment-cleaning. I tried to make small
talk, but he wasn’t helpful. He kept needling me about the alleged gay
shit the secret societies did at their meetings. He was way off – all
the gay shit happened outside of meetings.
Finally, Mercedes tapped me on the shoulder. “Hey, Asher, can you look over my draft of the report for Pryzbowitz’s class?”
“Uh,sure.” I walked upstairs with Mercedes. “Who’s Pryzbowitz?”
“I made up a name to get you away.”
“Thanks.”
“Who was that guy? I’ve never seen him on campus before.”
“A friend of my dorm faculty monitor’s daughter.”
“The one who’s making you clean her apartment naked?”
“Yeah, that’s the one. Haley gives her friends campus tours, apparently.”
“That’s weird. Anyway, you’ve got the job.” She led me back into the
room. This time, the assembled members stood up and applauded me. I was
informed that I would be running for Position A, and Malik Jefferson, a
Crimson Circle from Atlanta, would be running for Position B. We were
officially running on the banner and platform of the Wilson Together
party, along with all of the incumbent members and a sophomore and a
junior running against plebs – sorry, Students for a Fair Wilson – who
had been elected last year.
Clive Denham planned to announce
the new party at next Tuesday’s senate meeting, in response to
Delvecchio’s announcement of Students for a Fairer Wilson, which was
going to run in the paper on Monday. On Saturday, Nell Van Allen would
announce that she was planning not to run for reelection to the Conduct
Council in order to serve as the party president, and it would select
ex-senators who had been defeated for reelection to serve as
vice-president, secretary, or treasurer. Jamie Calloway would run for
her place on the Conduct Council. Wilson Together was not going to
officially endorse candidates for the conduct council, but Ethan was
still going to get the Silver Serpents’ nod, which came with 15
guaranteed votes. Wilson Together was going to start its ‘official’
candidate recruitment process and announce candidates the following
Friday, at which point the official campaign would begin.
Chapter 19
Nolan Pierce
Once
the campaign season started, I was busier than ever. Asher set up a
‘brain trust’ to advise all the freshman candidates, so I spent a lot
of time in his room strategizing, on top of interviewing candidates for
the profiles being published in the Chronicle and being given ‘scoops’ by Delvecchio.
He he’d noticed my unfashionable clothes and accent, and probably
clocked that I was gay, and decided that I must be a pleb who would be
sympathetic to his reform agenda. The problem was that there were
plenty of plebs that knew I was actually in the Crimson Circle,
including Jas, who was running for Conduct Council, the other plebs on
my hall, and everyone who had PE at the same time as me. If any of them
said anything, Delvecchio would probably lose his shit and accuse us of
rigging the election coverage, which could well swing votes from Wilson
Together to Students for a Fair Wilson.
As it was, Wilson
Together had a decent lead, but we were still within the margin of
error for the two freshman class positions. Fortunately, we had access
to more detailed information than was being published in the official
paper. Students had to put in their student ID number to take the
online poll. We told them the poll was anonymous and the ID numbers
weren’t recorded, but in reality, we could link the responses to
individual students. We also kept track of comments on our articles and
the unofficial web forums. Our weak point was with the theater and arts
kids. They hated Renew Wilson with a passion, but thought that Wilson
Together was embarrassingly preppy.
I decided that Asher
needed a makeover, so Saturday after we finished our nude cleaning
sessions, we went to the thrift store in town. Wilson students often
donated clothes there that they had outgrown or didn’t want to keep
when summer break started, so it was a gold mine for last year’s
fashions. I was newly flush with cash, having been paid $500 by a
start-up literary magazine for a story about a boy who realizes he’s an
atheist mid-baptism, and I don’t think money was ever a problem for
Asher. Asher picked out some band t-shirts to supplement his Lands
End-supplied casual wardrobe. I went in the other direction, buying a
couple of pairs of madras shorts and chinos, a pair of boat shoes, and
a pair of Rainbow-brand flip-flops that I hoped would make me seem less
nerdy.
When we got back to the dorm, Jude Whitman was
waiting in Asher’s dorm with his tattoo kit. Asher took off his shirt
and shoes and lay down on the bed, smoking a joint with his left hand
to dull the pain as Jude tattooed his right bicep with the words “and
so it goes,” a quote from Vonnegut. When Jude was finished, Asher put
one of his new t-shirts on and looked at himself in the mirror. The
tattoo poked out under the shirt, just enough to be noticeable without
it being obvious that he was trying to be noticed.
“You want one, too?” Jude asked me.
“My parents would lose their shit if I got one they could see.”
“I can pierce your ears. They’d be less mad about that.”
“I’ll think about it.”
We went to the dining hall with Jamie and Owen, who had just gotten
back from rehearsals. I arranged for Asher to drop by and watch the
rehearsal Monday evening, while I would be at the paper. It would be
good for him to be seen supporting the arts, and Owen being on his hall
provided an excuse.
While Asher was watching the rehearsal, I
went to the senate meeting. They were supposed to be discussing a peer
tutoring proposal the wellness committee had come up with, but Renew
Wilson had showed up in force and was using the public comment period
to lob accusations that Students for a Fair Wilson was a front for the
societies. I grew nervous as soon as Jas got up to speak, and my worst
fears were soon confirmed.
“I know for a fact that Nolan
Pierce is a member of the Crimson Circle,” he announced, “trying to
sound grave, “he walks around the dorms naked and everyone can see his
tattoo.”
There were shocked gasps in the audience, and people
turned around to look at me. It would have been hilarious if I weren’t
a little worried that Delvecchio would haul off and punch me when he
realized that I’d tricked him.
Julia typed something on her laptop screen and angled it so that I could see.
Deny everything, say you’ll explain later, I’ll message Jamie and figure something out.
I
subtly nodded my understanding, and Julia angled the laptop away from
me and started typing furiously. Throughout the meeting, I could see
that the exec board was typing, too. The senators, whose laptop screens
were visible to the kids sitting behind them, stayed quiet.
As
the meeting wrapped up, Delvecchio approached me. Fortunately, he
looked more worried than angry. It seemed like he didn’t quite believe
Jas.
“Nolan, is it true?”
“Dude, I have no idea what Jas is talking about.”
“I don’t know who to believe.”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t know what to say to you. How am I supposed to prove a negative?”
I walked back to my dorm separately from Asher so as not to arouse further suspicion, but Jas came up to me.
“Hey, I just wanted to let you know that was nothing personal back there.”
I figured that it wouldn’t count as bullying if I let my irritation
show under the circumstances. “What do you mean it wasn’t personal?”
“It’s all thanks to affirmative action.”
“What?”
“The Ivies can’t take all the kids from a school like Wilson because
they have to look ‘egalitarian,’ so they secretly cap admissions at 20
kids per school. If I want to be one of the 20, I have to outcompete
everybody else here, and the fewer kids in the graduating class, the
fewer are competing with me.”
“So, your plan is to run for
conduct council so you can expel as many kids as possible because you
think it will bump up your chances at getting into Yale.”
“And I can write a great essay on how I stood up for integrity even when it made me unpopular.”
“It’s making you unpopular all right.”
“My dad always says you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.”
Somebody needed to have a word with his dad, but first I needed to
figure out what I was going to do. If I confessed, it would make
Delvecchio look like either he was in on it or he was being played.
Enough kids who didn’t care about national politics but didn’t like the
societies would probably swing to Renew Wilson to let our candidates
win, but that was likely to be bad for me personally. I was quickly
realizing that the Chronicle’s control over campus discourse
was weaker than it had been in years past thanks to MySpace and
LiveJournal, and there would be a virtual paper trail that could very
well follow me to college and beyond. If I denied it, kids would split
over who they trusted more, me or Delvecchio, unless I could come up
with some way to ‘prove’ my innocence.
I tried to put my worries out of my mind while I worked on homework. I had to read four chapters of The House on Mango Street, which
I wasn’t particularly enjoying, and write two pages on Greece and
Persia. Noah had finished his homework while I was at the council
meeting and gone to Henry’s room to make out with him while Owen was
still at rehearsal, so I was alone until I heard a knock on the door.
“Come in.”
It was Jamie, with Owen, Molly, and Jude Whitman, who had brought his tattoo gear.
“You’re getting another tattoo,” Jamie announced, “strip.”
I did as I told without hesitation, even though I was worried that the
tattoo would be somewhere my parents could see it. It turned out that I
was going to be fine. Jude produced an exact replica of Owen’s
interlocking male symbols on the right side of my hip, as Jamie
explained the plan to put Delvecchio at ease.
When Jude
finished with me, he pierced Owen’s ears and gave Jamie a tattoo on his
forearm, the scansion marks for the ‘now gods stand up for bastards’
speech in King Lear, while I typed an email to Delvecchio.
I
think I know what happened with Jas. Meet me tomorrow night in the
Beattie third floor common room at 9:00. Bring whoever else you think
needs to know what’s going on.
At 8:00, I stripped naked
and let Lindsey apply several layers of foundation to my Crimson Circle
tattoo. By 9:00, it was totally invisible. I walked out into the common
room, totally naked and clearly very nervous. Delvecchio had brought
Granger, Shah, and Whitcomb from the senate with him, as well as Simone
Adeyemi from the conduct council. They all three looked visibly
embarrassed to see me naked. Jas was there, too, and he’d brought Ben
Harkness and Ruth-Ann Bishop, his fellow freshman candidates for the
conduct council, and some of the older students.
I was visibly
nervous about pulling this off, which I hoped that the onlookers would
interpret as embarrassment about being seen naked. I cleared my throat.
“As you can see, I have a tattoo on my hip. I got it at the tattoo
parlor in town to represent me coming out of the closet here at Wilson,
but I think Jas may have misinterpreted the meaning.”
“But I…”
Jas started to object, but Lila Keene tapped him on the shoulder and
whispered in his ear. He sat down, looking humiliated. Delvecchio
looked embarrassed, too.
“I’m so sorry.”
“Thank you,”
I said with an air of wounded dignity, “Now if you don’t mind, I’d like
to put my clothes back on.” I turned around and walked quickly back to
my dorm room. The next morning, Delvecchio had a new post on his blog,
titled “An Accusation at Wilson.” It detailed the accusation Jas had
lodged against me and how I had refuted it by stripping and showing him
the gay tattoo, which meant that Delvecchio had just outed me to
whoever read it.
Before heading off to the showers, I knocked on Jamie’s door.
“Did you see the new blog post?”
“Yeah, it makes Delvecchio and Whitfield both look like huge assholes. Great work?”
“Do you think there’s any way we could get him to take it down? I don’t want my parents to find out I’m gay on the Internet.”
Jamie shook his head. “We need to keep that up there in case we need
something on Delvecchio after he graduates. Are your parents coming up
for family weekend?”
“Yes.”
“I would tell them then.”
By the time I got to my first class, it was clear that the blog post
had made its way around campus. Kids were looking at me and whispering
or giggling. In the showers after gym, one of the seniors came up to me
and grabbed my ass, the Crimson Circle tattoo once again prominently
visible.
“How the hell did you manage to pull this off?”
“It was easy. I just needed a little confidence and a lot of makeup.”
Chapter 20
Jasper Whitfield
The
elections were a disaster. Not only did I loose, so did all our other
candidates for conduct council. Even our incumbent, Marcus Viteri, got
unseated by Rowan Pike, a kid from Salem Massachusetts who was rumored
to practice witchcraft. We didn’t do any better in the student senate
elections. The freshman seats were taken by Asher Montgomery and Malik
Jefferson. Wilson Together held on to all of its incumbents and picked
up a seat from Parvati Shah, who had tried to switch to the honor
council on the Students for a Fair Wilson platform but ended up
splitting the votes with their incumbent.
After all the races were called on the Chronicle’s live
blog, Carson Hale stood up and announced that by his count, the
societies now controlled 18 of 20 seats on the conduct council and nine
out of 14 seats in the student senate.
We glumly filed out
of the room in the library where we’d organized our watch party.
Caroline Jeffords, who had run for the freshman senate seat against
Asher Montgomery turned to me with tears in her eyes. “I might have won
if you hadn’t pulled that stupid stunt with Nolan Pierce.”
“But he really…” she turned away before I could explain.
I walked back, alone, to my dorm, which was unusually quiet. Lukas was in our room doing homework and got up when I came in.
“I saved you a pudding cup from the dining hall.”
“Thanks. Where is everybody?”
“Election party. The Chronicle’s having its own party if you want to drop by.”
“I’m not in the mood.”
“Are you going to chapel Sunday?”
It was family weekend, and the Protestant chapel on campus did a big
service for all the students and their families. I’d wanted to bring my
parents and introduce them to my new friends, but now I didn’t know if
I had any friends to introduce.
“I don’t know. They’re all mad at me now.”
“Because of Nolan.”
“Yes. How do you think he did it?”
“With some makeup and someone to give him that tattoo. It was pretty easy.”
“Ugh!”
“Don’t worry. It’s family weekend. Everyone is going to forget all
about this by Tuesday. Besides, my parents can’t make it out for family
weekend. I’ll need someone to sit with at the chapel service.”
Lights out was at midnight, and I intended to obey the rule even if
nobody else did. At ten minutes to midnight I got up to take a shower
while nobody else was likely to be in the bathroom. As usual, I got
changed into my pajamas in one of the stalls. A big crowd of kids came
up the back stairs and opened the door just as I was leaving the
bathroom – Asher, Theo, Jamie, Finn, Dylan, Ashton Cole, Owen, Henry,
Noah, and Nolan, together with Ashton, Finn, Jamie, and Dylan’s
girlfriends. They were all slightly drunk and had apparently come from
the watch parties put on by either Wilson Together or the paper. I
glared at Nolan.
“Lukas says you used makeup to cover it up.”
“Yep.”
“I guess you got the better of me.”
“It was nothing personal.”
The group proceeded down the hall, and a few minutes later I heard the
sounds of raucous sex. I covered my ears with a pillow and tried to go
to sleep.
The next day, I found myself eating breakfast and
lunch alone and being stared at and whispered about in all my classes.
When I got to the dorm, parents were starting to arrive for family
weekend, planning to take their kids out to dinner. My parents were
driving up the next day and Lukas’ couldn’t come over from Germany, so
the two of us ended up eating in the cafeteria. At least the food
seemed better than usual, they were serving chicken marsala and mashed
potatoes.
Dad drove up the next morning, without Mom. My plan
had been to make a big deal out of introducing Lukas to cover up the
fact that I didn’t have any other friends I could introduce, but Dad
asked Lukas to give us a few minutes of privacy. As soon as he closed
the door, I could tell he was angry.
“Jasper, your mother and I are very disappointed in you.”
“But what did I do?”
“All those stunts you pulled with Nolan Pierce. Don’t think I don’t know.”
“But Dad, he really was in the Crimson Circle!” I protested. “I saw…”
“I know he’s in the Crimson Circle! I watched him get tapped! I was
supposed to be watching you get tapped, but you screwed it up by
tattling on him.”
“But they were streaking! And throwing an
illegal party after lights out! I think they were even drinking! You
always say that society can’t function unless rulebreakers are punished
severely.”
“Jasper, there are rules and there are rules that only apply to plebs. You should know that by now. I
was a member of the Crimson Circle in school. I did the Freshman 500
and all the other stuff Pierce and his friends do – well, I was more
interested in co-eds than he seems to be but the point stands. Do you
have any idea how humiliating it was when Jamie Calloway told me what
you did? I had to donate over a million dollars so he would stop the
three of those boys from stealing all your clothes and leaving you
naked at the fifty-yard line of the football field.”
I gasped in shock. “They would really do that?”
“That’s what we did to rats back when I was in school. I have half a
mind to ask for the money back and tell them to have at it.”
“Please don’t!”
“Your mother would kill me if I did. But don’t do anything to embarrass
me in front of the Circle again, and if you have to do that Renew
Wilson crap, keep your name out of the paper.”
“But they’re
for all the things you talk about – getting dirty books out of the
curriculum, bringing back decent standards for dress…”
“Jesus
Christ, Jas. Nobody actually cares about that shit! We just use it to
get the rubes riled up. Now, promise me you won’t cause any more
trouble.”
“I promise.”
“Good. Now, quit crying and
put on a tie. Your mother is going to be here in 15 minutes and we have
the donors’ reception with the headmaster before the game.
I washed my face and put on a tie and blazer. We ran into Nolan’s family in the hall, and dad introduced himself.
“Rick Whitfield, I’m Jasper’s father.”
“Nice to meet you,” Mr. Pierce, who was slightly underdressed in jeans
and a Carolina Panthers ballcap, took Dad’s proffered hand, “Y’all have
far to drive.”
“Oh, no, we live in the city. It’s not a bad drive at all.”
“What city?” A girl who looked like Nolan’s younger sister asked.
“He means they’re from New York,” Nolan whispered under his breath.
“Oh, wow! Can you see the Empire State Building from your apartment?”
“Actually, we live in a townhouse,” I blurted out without thinking.
“What’s that?”
“What do you mean?”
“Abby,” Nolan cut in “I think Jas and his dad have somewhere they have to be.”
“Actually, we were headed to the headmaster’s reception,” Dad said, “will we see you there?”
“Will they?” Nolan’s dad asked.
“No,” Nolan answered curtly
“In that case, it was good to meet you.” Dad led me away and we met Mom
at the headmaster’s reception. Then we went to the game, and then we
went to a private dinner the Young Republicans were hosting at The
Stonebridge Tavern. I was relieved to find that the other kids were
much less angry at me than they had been Thursday night. Kids kept
coming up to our table, introducing themselves to my parents and asking
how my classes were going.
After Dad dropped me off at my dorm, I climbed the stairs to find Jamie alone in the common room.
“Hi,” I said, “can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
“If I want to join the Crimson Circle next year, what do I need to do?”
“Your dad talked to you, didn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“Jasper, I’m sorry, but the Crimson Circle only taps freshmen. If you don’t get tapped freshman year, you don’t get tapped.”
“Oh.”
“Jas, I know you feel left out, and I know it seems like you’ve missed
the boat, but there will be other opportunities. There are plenty of
clubs that aren’t secret societies you can join in high school, and if
you want the partying and networking you can join a fraternity in
college, or join the Freemasons when you’re an adult. For now, just
focus on school and friends, and try to chill out a little.”