Fall Read Online Free Page A

week I made a start on the
Iliad
, among other things. I read a lot during the week—after school, after dinner, during prep. After prep I went to the weight room. I liked going to bed with a mind full of someone else’s words and my muscles full of blood. I don’t think I really analyzed it at the time—I simply got into that routine and liked it.
    The sameness of each day somehow never gathered into a blur. The beginning of every year in boarding school holds a sense that something, this year, has to be different. I’m wandering the same halls, I’m restricted to the same things, but I’m older, bigger, smarter, and something has to change. A new knot in the tie, a conversation with someone you’d never talked to before—things like that would distinguish each day. The potential for anything to be truly different was so limited that tiny things would make a day stand out.
    Julius was gone for the rest of that week. He hadn’t left school, but he always disappeared after prep and came back to the room after Lights Out. He said “Hey, man” in the mornings when I was brushing my teeth. I kicked his soccer clothes to the side of the room, hoping he would notice that they bothered me.
    Sometimes even though I exhausted myself with weights and was too tired to read I would still be awake after Lights Out. Usually at around midnight, once the Duty Master was settled in his own room, there would be a small storm of noises somewhere on the Flats. Pranks were one of the first signs that friendships were being made. You could hear footsteps thundering down the hall upstairs and you would know that at least two new roommates were getting along well enough to disturb the sleep of someone in another room—usually someone who hadn’t made any friends yet.
    On the first Thursday I heard a huge bang, water splashing, a shout, and at least four feet banging down the hall. Someone upstairs had been doused with water, and because I heard no more noise I knew that whoever had been doused did not retaliate.
    When you sleep at home you normally don’t expect to be awakened by strangers throwing buckets of cold water on you. The kid was probably in shock, had no idea what to do. When it happens the first time, you don’t realize that you can retaliate; and he probably had no one in his room who was willing to help him get back at the others.
    I was thinking of what it was like to sleep on a wet mattress when Julius came quietly through the door. When the Duty Master came around for Lights Out I had told him that Julius was in the bathroom, but I didn’t know where he really was. A smell of cigarette smoke sneaked in behind him. I could tell he was trying to be quiet, and I couldn’t decide whether to tell him I was awake or not.
    I thought for a second that all the noise upstairs might have woken up the Duty Master, that he would come around inspecting rooms and find Julius there undressing and would know that he had been outside. I realized that if that happened I would probably get in trouble as well for covering for Julius. I remember thinking that I wouldn’t mind getting in trouble with him.
    But there was silence upstairs now and silence down the halls— just Julius taking his clothes off, the noise of the coins in his pockets. He sniffed, then sucked back the mucus in his throat and said “sorry” very softly. He turned on the water to brush his teeth andsaid “sorry” again after he finished, and said “sorry” after he banged what was probably his knee on the bed below before crawling into it. I decided to whisper, “It’s okay, man, I’m awake.”
    He said, “Oh,” and then again, “sorry.”
    In the morning I was dressed and sitting on the top bunk, reading. Julius was late and was frantically tying his tie, his wet hair dripping onto the silk and soaking his collar. He asked me if I was going to the party.
    “What party?” I said.
    “Tomorrow night at Brown’s.”
    Jeffrey Brown was the son of the