“Just needed to,” I said, still jogging in place, hands flopping at the end of my arms. “Wanted to see how far I could push it, you know?”
Fritz wasn’t buying it, I could tell, but he just looked off at the fields and gave a knowing nod. It was one of a hundred slight, deliberate gestures boys granted to one another at Blackburne. A warning shake of the head meant Watch out, as in Watch out for Mr. Downing—he’s on the warpath. A one-shouldered shrug was a studied gesture of indifference. Cutting your eyes away from a classmate you passed in the hall could be as cruel as sneering in his face. Fritz’s nod meant he didn’t believe me, but he affected understanding—he knew I wasn’t telling the truth but accepted my lie all the same. That nod about did me in. I had to blink away tears, which thankfully I could blame on the sharp weather. My emotions welled up and threatened to spill out of my throat, but I choked them down with an effort.
“Mail came,” Fritz was saying.
I was taken aback, and then relaxed. This was familiar territory. “And?”
“Nothing.”
“It’s early yet.”
“True.”
“Look, you’re gonna get in, Fritz. If not UVA, then Georgetown, or Washington and Lee, or William and Mary.”
Fritz stared over the fields. They were brown and rutted—nothing had even been planted yet. “Okay, but . . . ,” he began, and then sighed.
Since the start of the school year, Fritz’s anxiety over getting accepted into college had grown until he was muttering to himself between classes, in the dining hall, and when he plodded to the bathroom to brush his teeth. At night he twisted and turned, so by morning his bedsheets were an absolute wreck. It didn’t matter that his grades were excellent, that he was a shoo-in for the Latin medal, and that his family was rich and could trace its lineage back at least to the Jamestown colony. It didn’t matter that included among his relatives were one grandfather who had been a Pacific combat veteran in WWII, another grandfather who had been a shipping magnate, and an uncle who knew everyone of importance in Washington, D.C. Despite all of this, whenever college was brought up, Fritz looked panicked, as if he couldn’t get enough air.
That I had been accepted early to UVA didn’t help. Fritz was not petty or shallow—not once did he openly express anything but congratulations for my early acceptance. And yet I knew it had to be eating away at him. At Blackburne, seniors taped their college acceptance letters to the doors of their rooms, icons of our devotion to academic achievement. When I got the UVA letter, my first thought, after experiencing a fierce pang of delight, was to look in Fritz’s mailbox. It was empty—he hadn’t gotten a letter. At the time, I didn’t resent how his disappointment might cast an unwelcome shadow over my success; instead, I worried how I would break the news to him. I even considered hiding the letter. Of course, I ended up telling him that evening during study hall in our room. He gave me his typically lopsided grin and even hugged me, slapping me twice on the back, and then stood expectantly in the middle of the room. “Well?” he asked, and I got some tape out of my desk drawer and affixed the letter to the door, leaving room next to it for its twin when Fritz got his own letter. Every day, Fritz had to pass by that letter and the blank space next to it. Only once did I see him react to it. He was coming into the room—I was at my desk, working—and he paused in the doorway, a hand lifted in greeting, and glanced at the letter on the door. The look on his face was like watching the sun disappear behind a cloud. It passed and then Fritz entered, complaining loudly about a Latin test, but that momentary glance had been all I needed.
Standing by the one-eyed lion, Fritz looked out forlornly over the empty fields. He fingered the Saint Christopher medal he wore around his neck, a gift from his grandfather who’d fought in WWII. Watching him fiddle with that medal, I was annoyed. It was something of a shock to realize that. It felt like a betrayal, but it was also liberating. Tamping down my excitement about UVA had created a resentment that now swelled and threatened to burst. Fritz was being neurotic and self-indulgent and attention-seeking. I knew any minute he would sigh and talk in a defeated tone about college. And I couldn’t take it. Not then, not while I was consumed by my own guilt, wrapped up in my own garbage.
Oblivious to all of this, Fritz shook his head. “It’s stupid, but it’s just—there are all these expectations,” he said. “I mean, I go to Blackburne, so I’m supposed to be set, right? But what if I’m not? When I was a kid, I told my father I wanted to be a cowboy. He handed me a copy of Lonesome Dove and said that was as close as I’d get, that I was meant for things. But what? Granddad got a medal at Okinawa. Grandpa Joe built a shipping company out of nothing. My father is a defense contractor who minored in English. He built his own company from the ground up, and he can quote Shakespeare and Tennyson at the drop of a hat.” He stopped, grimaced, and then shook his head again. “Jesus, listen to me,” he said. “I’m sorry. After all you had to go through today with the J-Board and everything, here I am bitching about college and all the crap in my life.”
The J-Board, or Judicial Board, was the school’s organization of student-elected prefects, the students who embodied the honor code. When a student was accused of violating the honor code, the J-Board determined whether or not that student was guilty. Fritz was a prefect, and I had appeared before the J-Board that morning.
“It’s okay,” Fritz said, mistaking my silence for feeling awkward about the hearing, having had to sit across from a group of my peers, including my roommate, and be judged. Fritz shrugged with that half smile of his. “I knew you couldn’t have done it.”
The moment stretched and took on weight like a branch bowing under a load of snow. Long past the point when I should have affirmed my innocence, I said nothing. Fritz stared at me, his eyes widening. It must have been all over my face.
“Fritz,” I said, and then stopped. What could I possibly say?
“Jesus Christ,” Fritz said. His face was pale. “You fucking did it, didn’t you?”
“Fritz, I—”
“I stood up for you. I said there was no way you would’ve—”
“I know,” I said, rushing through my confession. “I know, I’m sorry—”
“Do you get what you’ve done? What kind of position you just put me in?” His voice rose, tightening like a screw biting into wood. “I have to turn you in, Matthias!”