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His room is narrow with a bed, a desk, and a chair. He pulls off his boots, falls onto the faux fur blanket, stares at the ceiling. He can see his "Building a Rainbow Poster" stuck to the wall with gobs of putty since tacks are illegal in the dorms. It seems like everything is illegal in the dorms. Even friggin' door locks are illegal in the dorms so you never know when some dork like Trudge Weisner is going to poke his pimply head through the door and catch you jacking off. He couldn't believe he would go to his grave without ever making love. But who would have him now? Fiona Farnsworth gives him doe-eyed stares during study hall, and from the choir pit where she sings robed in white; but Fiona is a pariah, a spooky girl into the occult. He finds her sexy, that black hair framing blue eyes, but socially she is taboo.

Terry had planned to cry in his room, but he can't; the whole scene is so surreal that he can't muster tears over it. He thinks, someone ought to make a movie of this, or a book. He'd like to write a novel about this place, all the angst seething beneath the veneer of a preppy playland. Terry Bevelacqua didn't come from money; it was his mother's remarriage to her own friggin' psychiatrist that launched him into this weird world of money and madness.

A novel seems like a good idea. He'll have to propose that to Mr. Mitchum as an independent study plan. Mitch is a nice guy, the youngest of the teachers. He's got a droopy red mustache, wears a cowboy hat, and has a foxy wife who's probably just half a dozen years older than the seniors. Once in a while the school will let some genius blow off all his classes and work with a teacher on an independent study. The kid usually has to be near the top of the class and all, while Terry is at the bottom. He would be failing everything without the aid of sympathy Cs and Ds that a couple of teachers gave him. But Mitch is a good guy. Maybe he'd vouch for him, agree to push him along on his novel. Terry will call it Characters All.

He sits at his desk, opens his notebook, scrawls the title on the page. He keeps his pen pressed to the page. He doesn't know where to begin. Maybe he'll begin with today and work backwards, mix up the chronology a little. He thinks about the ride home from Boston with his mother driving, her herky-jerky touch on the accelerator always bad, exaggerated in times of crisis. He thought he'd get whiplash the way she drove. They got stuck in traffic on the Mystic River Bridge and while they jockeyed for position his mother said, "I only wish it could be me instead of you." He swallowed the impulse to say, "So do I." He'd pictured himself opening the car door, walking out onto the swaying deck of the bridge and jumping, though he knew that it was too early for that.

He doesn't much feel like writing. He empties the bottle of rum and a splash of Coke into a tall plastic cup. As long as no one sniffs it, the drink could pass muster as a tall cup of Coke. This strikes him as a revelation; he'll have to tell everyone in the Butt Club about this discovery. If they're cool about it they can sit there and get shitfaced right under the Tink's nose. He decides it will be cool to take his drink over to the snack bar, see who's hanging around on a Friday night. He sticks his right foot into his left boot, smiles at the mistake. Screw boots, y'know? Lacing them up and all is too much hassle. He'll walk to the snack bar in his stocking feet.

The snack bar is a warm, bright place with 12-over-12 windows so you can see who's in there from outside. He can see Tad and Todd and O.B. sitting around a circular table by the vending machines, talking over textbooks. Idiots are studying on a Friday night. They are all right; when he first came to this school, Terry actually hung with them for a while. But in the two years since sophomore year they have grown stronger and smarter while his surgeries have left him thinner, wiser too, but not in a bookish way. It's hard to do homework when you're sprouting tumors in your arm.

Terry smells hamburgers frying in the snack bar when he comes padding in. O.B. looks up; he's got strong forearms from playing lacrosse. "Terry," he says. "How are you doing?"

Again that unsettling tone, as if he really wants to know.

"Great," Terry says.

"Good," says O.B. "Glad to hear that."

"Guys," Terry says. "Put away the books, it's freakin' Friday night for God's sake."

"Can't," says Todd, the first guy Terry's ever known who looks good in glasses. "I've got to ace this semester to have a prayer at early acceptance to Dartmouth."

Terry takes a swallow from his cup. Early acceptance to anywhere is just so far from his mind.

"Hey Ter," says O.B. "What have you got in that cup there?"

"Coke."

"Coke and what, rubbing alcohol?"

"Just Coke and a little 151, for medicinal purposes." It's dead in the snack bar. Terry decides to buy something to take back to the dorm. He feels around his pockets for change, finds it, studies the coins for a moment trying to discern whether they're quarters or nickels. He feeds the vending machine, selects a packet of mini powdered donuts.

"See you guys later," Terry says.

"Take it easy," says O.B.

"Don't take it easy," Terry says, "have a good time.

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