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Characters All By Gerald M. Carbone '82 Illustrations by Philip Bannister

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Also read the story by the second-place winner, Rosalie Davis '79, "When the Pears Are Ripe," and the story by the third place winner, Nathan J. Fink '11G, "The Big Light"

On the day that a doctor tells you that you have one year to live and you are only 16, this is what you do: You have your mother drive you back to your dormitory at prep school because as screwed up as it is, it's not as weird as home; you go to the smoking room in the basement of the dorm where you tell the burnouts who hang out there to give you a cigarette because what the hell, you might as well smoke since you've already got cancer anyway. You bum a cigarette off Fast Freddy, a speed freak from the Cape, who claims that his father is Ted Kennedy's doctor, and that Senator Ted once made drug charges disappear without mess or fuss after the Centerville Police busted Freddy with a pound of pot and a scale on the table. You light the cigarette, smell the sulfur of the match, and inhale until your lungs ache. This is how the cancer will kill you, the doctor said; it will spread up your arm, into your chest, lodge in your lungs. Unless, of course, he cuts off your arm, the right one, including the collarbone. Or they could try chemo; of course you'll vomit copiously and your hair will fall out and still the chances are seven in 10 that the cancer will kill you anyway. So the doctor recommends the amputation. But you know before you even leave the office that there's no way you'll let the doctors cut off your arm.

He was done with doctors. They had already chopped off his right thumb, the thumb on his glove hand, and still they had missed the cancer spreading up his arm, toward his lungs.

"Give me another one of them cancer sticks," he tells Freddy.

Freddy taps a cigarette out of the hard pack.

Terry lights it, inhales. "Hell with it, might as well smoke," he says. "Already got cancer."

"I'll tell ya," Freddy says. "There are times in this world when there is just nothing better than a cigarette. It's like—it's like the perfect moment."

Right now Terry Bevelacqua can't see perfection in a cigarette, but he is willing to try.

Mr. Tinkham, the dorm parent, walks into the Butt Club at a quarter-to-five to clear out the smoker. "Douse 'em guys," he says. "It's time for supper." Tinkham's also the religion teacher, and he's got a big-time apostle complex; he wears this blonde beard like you see on the guys in the Last Supper; he's supposed to be a non denominational chaplain but all he teaches is the King James Bible. Terry doesn't like Tinkham; the Tink's not the kind of guy you want to go to and say, "Mr. Tinkham, I've got one year to live, what should I do?" because the response would be so predictable.

Supper is meat pie tonight, and though everyone makes fun of it, Terry notices that no one leaves any on his plate. It's actually pretty good, ground beef in a flakey crust, topped with a salty mushroom gravy. It's always good, but tonight it's never tasted better. If he were on death row and they offered him one last meal, Terry would ask for the meat pie they serve at Gorton Academy.

After supper, Terry gets one of the day students to drive off campus and buy him a pint of Rum 151, because what you do when you are 16 and learn that you have one year to live is that you get blind drunk. Jonesy comes back with the rum and the Coke and Terry gives him a couple of bucks extra for the buyer, the 18-year-old townie who got the rum. Terry smuggles his bottle over to Room C, a tarpaper shack on the marsh. The marsh is forbidden territory, for to get to it you have to dash across Route 1. Out here in the country, Route 1 is not a busy road, but crossing it is forbidden nonetheless.

Room C is hidden in a copse of trees on the marsh. Some genius once stole a plaque from the door of Room C in Hazleton Hall, and nailed it to the shack. The shack's not tall enough to stand up in, but it's comfortably appointed with three couches and tapestry bought by preppies with money and taste. It's lit with an oil lamp that casts a small ring of light. Teachers have doubtlessly heard rumors about Room C's existence if not its precise location, but the place has never been busted. It is a secure place to party. Terry can smell the sweet scent of pot as he approaches the shack. He calls out, "It's cool!" so he won't surprise the people inside.

There is a thrill in the air in Room C tonight, because everyone knows about Terry's cancer. This is True Life Drama man, no melodramatic chick shit. The dude's got cancer man, for real. Terry ducks into the smoky lamplight and it's like he's a celebrity among the three people there.

Troll says, "Terry how you doin' man?" He sounds like he really means it; Terry finds this unsettling.

"Not good enough," Terry says. "But I'm about to get a whole lot better." He clunks his bottle of rum onto the table, an old cable spool.

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