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?”