Boarding School Read Online Free Page A

Scholar at the University of Paris. As far as I could tell, he was the only member of the faculty who was Ivy League. With an academic pedigree like his, it was no wonder that he seemed to treat we lesser people with a sort of aloof disinterest. / wonder what this guy’s doing in a dump like this, I thought to myself.
    “Say, that’s a fine head of blond hair you have, Cliff,” the little man behind the desk finally attempted to communicate with his latest charge.
    “Yes, sir, and my name is Clint, sir.” I tried to sound polite. Impressive education or not, this first acknowledgment of my existence struck me as being kind of lame. But then I noticed that he was going bald, so I presumed he was simply recalling better days.
    Fortunately our meeting with Mr. Stuart didn’t last very long and a few minutes later we were standing up again and about to leave the man’s office. I now knew that instead of being assigned a room upstairs in the main dormitory, I would be living in room number two on the lower level (basement) of a building they called East Hall which turned out to be the small one-story structure we had noticed when we drove in. And I had a roommate.
    “Oh, there’s one more thing,” Mr. Stuart offered as he stood up again and guided us back out into the hallway. “The kitchen is closed tonight. In fact, our food service doesn’t actually begin until tomorrow morning at breakfast.”
    This was an astounding bit of news. How in the world, I wondered, could they have required the entire student body to show up today and then not have a meal prepared for them tonight? After all, it wasn’t as if there were any alternatives available to us. The Academy was out in the middle of nowhere. There were no shops nearby. No mini malls or pizza delivery. The nearest McDonald’s was twenty minutes away in Worcester. The only place where a person could find something to eat other than the school dining room was back in town, which was too for away to make walking feasible and I wasn’t sure yet if I could find my way back there anyway.
    “So what is everybody supposed to do for dinner tonight?” my mother challenged.
    “Oh, well,” my headmaster seemed to stammer for a moment. I guessed that he wasn’t used to being put on the spot by a parent who was more than willing to place him there. “Most everyone has already gone up to Boston tonight to attend a James Taylor concert.” Then Mr. Stuart looked at me. “I imagine we could make arrangements to get you up there, and we could tell you what section all of our people are sitting in so you could make connections with them and get a ride back afterwards.”
    This idea sounded insane to me. I liked James Taylor’s music and I even knew how to play some of his songs, but suggesting that I go to a city I didn’t know to find people I had never met and who would not know to be looking for me—remember, this was happening long before cell phones had ever come onto the scene—so I could hopefully gain a ride back, struck me as the height of irresponsibility with my welfare. “No thanks,” I answered. “I’ll just stay here.”
    “Are you sure?” Remarkably, Mr. Stuart felt called upon to press his nutty idea.
    “Yeah, all I want to do is get to my room and get unpacked.” Then I looked at my parents. “I’ll be all right without dinner tonight. I’m really not that hungry anyway.”
    As soon as my parents and I had returned outside and could speak freely again, my mother was quick to voice her disdain for Mr. Stuart to my father. “Did you see the bags under his eyes and how red his nose is? He has got to be a heavy drinker.”
    It turned out that East Hall was right off the south end of Ulster Hall across a small parking lot which doubled as an outdoor basketball court. It seemed to me as if many people had been parked in this lot earlier in the day, but when my dad backed our car up to the front of my dorm, we had the place to ourselves.
    “We’ll