save everyone. And I feel that way about you, too. I want to save you. And I want to save Addie. But differently. Do you know what I mean? That’s what I realized. I want to save you differently.”
I blinked.
“Noah?”
I felt like a wisp of a feather on Pluto.
“Can you not call me kid?” I asked, sharp. A second later, mumbling at my sneakers, both of which stared up bleakly at me: “I don’t really understand. Was it Nigel?”
He shook his head. “That’s not—that’s not it.”
He didn’t elaborate, so I said, “It’s been a long day,” which it hadn’t been. I’d only been up for eight or so hours. “I think I’m going to bed now.”
If I didn’t agree, we would still be whatever we were before this conversation. That was how it had to work.
“Noah, I don’t want to lose you.”
“I think I’m going to bed now.”
“Noah?”
“It’s been a long day.”
He started after me, but stopped himself.
OPINIONS
Action Necessary to Secure Civil Liberties of Youths in Recovery
a society that discriminates against a segment of its population that numbers in the hundred thousands? A segment of the population that has been herded away, shut behind sophisticated, motion-sensing walls, whose communications are monitored and circumscribed, as if this supposedly free nation were the USSR. Why can students receive letters from parents and not phone calls or e-mails? Are a few regrettable incidents just cause for the total infringement of our civil liberties? Westing was pitched to its students as a “one-of-a-kind” institution, devoted to battling for improved conditions for all youths in recovery, but the function it really serves is to give governmental repression a kinder face. The beneficiaries are those students whose high NAAP scores apparently qualify them for a better quality of life than other youths in
Westinger. page 7
FUCKING POLO
For a time Zach and I managed to avoid each other, which was quite impressive, considering we lived in the same hall and saw each other once a week at Polo. We never fully committed ourselves to the effort, though—that way, we had the recourse of plausible deniability if one of us worked up the courage to say, Hey, what the fuck, man.
I was watching the year’s first snowfall through the window of my twentieth-century lit class when my phone buzzed. I checked it under my desk while my professor lectured about how Cheever’s “The Swimmer” is a quest narrative through 1960s American suburbia, as if any of us had any idea of what that meant, really.
can u meet me on the path bw Gall & Caf
Coming I responded.
halfway ;] he said.
So I ditched.
Down the steps of Bullsworth and into the academic quad, filled with brown and golden leaves half hidden by fresh snow. I stepped on a crumpled copy of the Westinger strewn on the ground, caught a glance at a headline that read “Director Speaks Out: Westing’s Mission to Help, Not Curtail Liberty.” A tangle of boys played football, leaves and fresh snow crunching beneath their sneakers.
The football sailed past my head, bounced off Lombardy Hall’s brick facade. I headed up past Lombardy, onto the nearest of the cobblestone paths that ran between the cafeteria and Galloway, whipping my phone out, checking to see if Zach had messaged to explain, elaborate, but nothing.
I saw him from afar, on a bench in a small clearing off to the side.
“Hi, Noah,” he said, raising his hand in a tentative wave.
“Hi, Zach,” I said.
“I wanted to show you something,” he said, rising.
“And here I thought you missed me.”
He froze momentarily, turned so he stood in profile, brushed a hand through his hair.
“Of course I’ve missed you. I’m crazy about you, naturally.”
“Naturally.”
He looked at me, but tentatively, like a scientist who’d just encountered a strange and erratic new species.
“I wanted to show you something. Okay?”
I sighed. “Okay.”
He led me into the woods, ducked under a branch, and another, jumped over a stump. He was rushing, leading me—I realized—to one of the traps we’d set with Polo Club. Together with the rest of the club in a conference room on the second floor of the library we’d pored over maps of the neighboring Vermont countryside, discussed which berries and mushrooms were edible, practiced tying knots, making fishing poles and nets and traps.
Dread squirmed inside me, but I couldn’t stop now.
I noticed the smell first.
The squirrel was a ruin. Some other animal—badger, maybe—must have gotten at it while it was stuck.
I studied Zach, and he studied me studying him, and I said, “I’m sorry.”
He nodded,