Boarding School (6 page)

Apparently then, Mr. Stuart realized that I was neither involved in the conspiracy in question, nor was I deserving of his wrath. So he then tried to make up for his bluster by saying something kind to me. “Aw, vuja meeja vuz.” At least the man’s tone was now softened even if his meaning was still anyone’s guess.

Earlier that day I had taken a nap and had apparently slept on my hair funny. So throughout this particular evening, I had a small lock which was curled out and up on one side of my head which made it noticeably independent from the rest of my hair which always hung straight down. As I stood there dumbstruck, I watched as Mr. Stuart then raised his index finger to my head and touched my little flip of hair. As strange as this gesture seemed, I supposed that this touch from him was intended to show me that he no longer considered me a suspect in the just ended balloon/foyer caper. And then, as if he needed to point out to me that he was thoroughly soused, he spoke to me one last time.

“Aw, you… cute little vujaujamoo.” Then he passed me by and continued on up the staircase so he could see for himself if there were still any activities going on in the dormitory which required his supervision.

For a moment after he had left, I just stood where I was. I was still unclear over what it was exactly that had just happened to me. But before I had time to sort it all out, I could see the dean of students, apparently motivated also by the events which had just transpired outside, suddenly roar into the building through the front doors and walk straight to where I was still standing by the stairs. When he reached me, he also stopped and spoke to me.

“Did you see Mr. Stuart come through here?” he asked out of breath. The man was something like seventy pounds overweight.

“Yes, sir,” I answered quickly. I was worried that I was about to be in trouble again.

“Well, what did he say?”

At last, my first letter from my parents arrived from Europe a few days later. After I had found the air mail envelope resting against the side wall in my mail slot, I decided that I wanted a quiet place where I could read what my parents had to say to me in peace. So after lunch I walked down to the lower campus in search of a private spot.

When I reached the bottom of the long set of cement steps which led down the hill from the landing next to my dorm, I turned to my left and walked into the small two-story frame building which the Annex dormitory was attached to on this building’s upper level. Originally built as a lakeside tavern, this old structure later had become the Academy’s canteen. Today, the soda fountain was gone and the place was set up as a coffee house which meant that it was still being used every so often for school parties. As I entered what was now referred to simply as the Annex, I found more blue carpeting plus dark wooden high-backed booths placed all around the perimeter of the main room next to the windows. An adjoining room hidden behind two double doors along this main room’s west wall revealed a smaller bare enclosure which was adorned only with nine twin-sized mattresses spread around in succession on a dusty wooden floor. In addition, this smaller room had a recently added separate circuit of lighting which had ultimately given this little hideaway its name—the black light room. Obviously a great many hopes and aspirations had gone into the decorating of this would-be love nest, and I have to confess that as a still young and innocent teenager, I was intrigued by the idea that young couples in this part of the country were so willing to put their most intimate moments together on display in this manner. But at the moment, I was searching for a quiet place to read my letter and the black light room seemed too creepy to me to be appropriate for such an endeavor, and there were a couple of other guys talking in one of the booths in the main room. So I walked back outside and decided to try my luck around on the rear side of this building.

Lakeside behind the Annex was free of any people, but it was also free of anyplace to sit down. There were no beach chairs or wooden benches, and I didn’t want to risk getting sand in my pants by sitting down on the ground.
The
dock,
I decided, seemed to be my only option. So I walked quickly along the bank back toward the base of the hill that held the upper campus on its summit until I could step with my right foot out onto the dock. I didn’t have a lot of time before my next class, but now that I was here I wanted to place myself at the most picturesque spot I could find, so as the wooden planks creaked under my one-hundred-and-seventeen-pound frame, I kept walking until I had made my way clear out over the water to the end of the dock. And then I sat down.

For the next few minutes, then, I read all about the items my mother had purchased in New York and about the apartment they were settling into in Paris. There was clearly a great deal of activity now swirling around them both. I also learned about the room they had prepared for my future visits, and I found myself wishing for a chance to travel to them now so I could talk with them in person and tell them about all the interesting and disappointing things I had encountered so far at the Academy. But above all I wanted to insist that the next time we were wanting to select a school for me, it was going to be imperative that we check it out by visiting the place first. Because by now I was inclined to agree with my mother. This place was a great deal less than we had expected. And the more I read, the more aggravated I became over the fact that I couldn’t even talk to my parents anymore.

Long-distance phone calls in those days were expensive for a school that was so obviously hard up for money. And an overseas phone call would have practically thrown the Academy into bankruptcy, according to the way Mr. Stuart often talked about things. In fact, the owner of the school, according to what we had been told, was so worried about being charged back for collect long-distance phone calls made by the students, he had arranged for the few pay phones we had in our dormitories to be set so that nobody could ever call out on any of them. Only incoming calls were permitted, but the labels showing the phone number on each phone had been removed, so there were rarely any occasions when students would be able to talk with people from the outside world. These arrangements only added to the feeling of isolation I was already suffering from, and caused the mail to become far more important to me than it might otherwise have seemed.

Gee, if I had to get a message to my folks in a hurry, how could I do
it?
I wondered as I folded my letter and stuffed it into a pocket. I didn’t have any other relatives. Both of my parents were only children as I was, and all of my grandparents had passed away by this time in my life. And Matt was in the same boat as I was. The only family he had left was his aunt. And from the way he talked about her, his aunt was always too busy off chasing men and trying to get married to be reliable in any way to him.
So where would I turn?
I wondered.

“Hah,” I sighed as I gazed at the two boats which were tied to the dock next to me. The Academy had only two day students and each one of them lived way over on the other side of the lake near town. They both brought themselves to school every day in their own boats. When I had first learned of this, I thought it sounded like a really cool way for a kid to get himself to school in the mornings. So, as I began to inspect the crafts beside me more closely, I saw that the one in front was an in-board out-board of some sort with a wooden hull, and the one tied up behind was a nicely maintained Boston Whaler.
Could I
count on one of these guys to get a message out for me if I needed it done?
I decided that the chances of success for such an endeavor were probably pretty slim since I wasn’t even sure who these kids were yet.
I don’t know
if this school is really going to work out for me.
I knew I had no other choice, but with all the disappointments I had experienced already, this was how I had been feeling lately.

I then thought about the back country road which ran along the south side of the Academy and past the Annex parking lot. I could look down on this road from the window in my dorm room. It continued on past the Academy and went curving back up into a hilly and wooded neighborhood with perhaps fifteen houses in it. I had made friends with a boy named Jamie who was about my age and who was from this neighborhood behind the Academy. He lived with his mom and his step-dad in a green house with its own dock which we could see across the cove from the Academy stretching out from a point of land.
He
might help me,
I thought.
He’s got some guts.
Jamie and a friend of his named Charlie who also lived behind the Academy, and another boy named Danny who was always followed around by his German shepherd named Bandit, were the only people who lived near the Academy who had enough courage to step foot on the school grounds. The rest of the people who lived in Jamie’s neighborhood, as well as those who lived in the twenty or so houses which stood along a few roads which fanned out from the main one which led to the Academy’s front entrance from Highway 193, behaved as if our school were some sort of home for dangerous and misguided youth. On the rare occasions when we would see one of these neighbors driving past the campus, it would always seem as if they did so quickly and with their doors locked and their windows rolled up so they could avoid a chance encounter with any of us. And frankly, it wasn’t hard for me to sympathize with these folks.

An awful lot of the kids at the Academy looked as if they were refugees from a detention facility. It didn’t surprise me that the handful of people who lived around our school were afraid of us. After all, at that time the remnants of the hippie movement were still in existence. And I suppose it didn’t help matters much when students would blast songs like “Mississippi Queen” by Grand Funk and “Iron Man” by Black Sabbath from their open dormitory windows as many were inclined to do all day. So as a result, we almost never saw any of these people who lived nearby.
I guess,
I decided,
I’d have a hard
time relying on any of them either.

Realizing suddenly that it was getting late, I looked at my watch and then I stood up so I could begin to walk back toward land. It was time for me to get going if I didn’t want to be late for my fifth period class in the lean-to. That was the name for the odd-looking add-on to the two-story house I had seen the day my parents and I had arrived at the Academy. The two-story house turned out to be where Mr. Stuart lived, and the three sliding glass doors were classrooms where I was now supposed to be.

“Where ya been, Clint?” Matt asked me when we caught up with each other on the landing a minute or so later. We were both on our way to the same class.

“Just down by the lake. It’s pretty nice down there.”

“Yeah, but it’d be a lot nicer if we could go swimming.”

* * *

One fine and warm fall day, perhaps a week later, an incident occurred which confirmed to me that I had indeed come to a strange place filled with odd and perhaps even warped people. In the middle of the afternoon on this particular day I had skipped soccer practice so I could have some extra time to finish a paper which was due on the next day for my English class. I was returning to East Hall from Ulster Hall after buying a few supplies I needed from the school’s bookstore when, at the same moment I entered my hallway through the door on the east side of the building, I spotted another student entering my hallway from the other end through the door on the west side. Because he was a short kid for his age with a stocky build, he had acquired the nick name of “the Block” because apparently his appearance reminded everyone of a block of wood.

As I allowed the large wooden door to slam shut behind me, I started toward my room and pulled my key out from my pocket. Other people in this part of the country—I discovered shortly after my arrival—seemed perfectly comfortable in looking straight at someone and then not saying anything to acknowledge that person’s presence. But I had been raised to be polite, so I said “Hello” to the Block while he continued to stand on the threshold and hold the west door open. In an instant I realized that he was keeping that door open because he was waiting for someone to catch up with him. This seemed curious to me because the Block didn’t have a roommate.

“Hey, Clint,” he replied with confidence. “You’re not goin’ to practice today?”

“No, I’ve got a paper I’ve gotta finish,”! admitted as I slid my key into my lock and pushed open my door.

My first thought was that the Block had figured that our dorm would be empty for the afternoon and was holding the door open for a girl. After all, he lived in room four down at the end of our hallway, and it would be a quick task for him to sneak a girl into his room. And as it turned out, I wasn’t too far off with my guess, even though I couldn’t figure out where at an all-boys school a kid could come up with a girl to take to his room.

“Come on,” the Block called to whoever it was who was now clearly coming down the cement steps toward him. “Hurry up. Come on.”

That’s a funny way to talk to a girl,
I thought to myself. By this time I had delayed my entry into my room because I wanted to see who it was that the Block had enticed to come down to our floor for a visit. But what I saw next caught me completely off guard.

Suddenly a golden retriever appeared at the bottom of the steps and with some further urging from the Block, came into the building and began to walk around on the linoleum. I recognized this animal right away. Her name was Lollie and she belonged to a teacher at the Academy named Mr. Kelley and his family. For an instant Lollie panted and nosed around in the frenetic sort of way that dogs do.

“In here, Lollie,” the Block ordered as soon as he had the west door to the hallway closed and his own bedroom door opened.

Obligingly, the dog then trotted into the boy’s room. The Block then looked directly at me. “See ya, Clint,” he stated with a continued sense of confidence. And then my neighbor at the end of the hall followed Lollie into his room and closed and locked his door behind him.