S'wanee: A Paranoid Thriller (17 page)

Banjo was angling for Wellington membership someday, and their lodge was certainly the party hub on campus, seemingly the only one. It was packed and hot every night, and the taps always flowed, and the girls flocked because the boys were there, but nobody seemed to hook up, even the upperclassmen, no matter how drunk everybody got. The girls were friendly and talked to Cody, but it was buddy-buddy, almost familylike. He hoped that once the first week’s “I’m-not-a-slut” reticence wore off, they would loosen up, and college would fulfill its promise of the frenzied sexual free-for-all that MTV always told him it would be. At least Banjo and Elliott weren’t faring any better.

“No thanks. I have to study tonight,” Sin replied each time Banjo invited her along. “Geezus, I wanna flog the Tiger Mom that scarred
that
one,” Banjo groused on the way out the door. Sin had taken on additional electives, and Cody thought her academic zeal and discipline impressive and slightly guilt-inducing.

Beth must not have cared for the rowdy Wellingtons either, because she never showed up. Maybe the Highlanders were cooler or artsier, or maybe she was just above it all and had found her own unique social circle up on a different pinnacle somewhere.

Miss you/love you TOO, kiddo!
Marcie signed her brief e-mail with a smiley heart, just back from a road trip to Bucks County, Pennsylvania, where she’d been “out of network” a couple days. Cody forgot when he had e-mailed her but was glad she was keeping busy and assumed she’d gone with her still-nameless boyfriend. A little diversion, wherever or whoever, was good for her, especially now.

Cody’s lone regret was the absence of football tailgate parties, like the GAP windows at his old mall had promised. They didn’t even have a homecoming. “We have reunions in the spring instead,” Ross told him. “All the alums come back. Huge party weekend.” S’wanee’s football team had long been irrelevant, bordering on afterthought, as the school was too small to compete with once-rivals Vanderbilt and Duke, over whom ancient, black-and-white victories, rare even then, were still proudly touted in the Fowler lobby. Ross said their stadium was currently under renovation, and Cody assumed it must be on the far edge of the Domain, as he’d seen neither it nor any signs of construction. For now, the football team borrowed the stadium of a boys’ prep school near Chattanooga for “home” games, and bussed—shuttle-vanned, more likely—students to and fro on Saturdays. Cody’s work schedule meant he’d never go, but he could overhear the live WUTS play-by-play, albeit muffled and fuzzy, through the Widow’s office, where she seemed to listen with less sporting excitement than weird, dotty-esque nostalgia.

“That Joe Scranton, there was nobody like him,” she warble-mused to herself, somewhat misty, when Cody poked in for more staples. “Nobody could catch him.
Nobody
.” Unwilling to share the experience, she clicked off the radio with her hanky hand and bugged her eyes to “Can-I-help-you?” challenge size. “Sorry ma’am,” Cody said, backing out to leave her to her own private battiness. The game, and empty stapler, could wait.

“So, Cody, when you gonna break the curse?” Ross asked in front of everyone at dinner one night. “It only gets worse if you wait.” Some of the Hazers tittered and looked to Cody expectantly. “I would do it while it’s still warm out,” Ross added. “It can be more…um…embarrassing in the cold.” Pearl
tsk
ed and covered her ears and headed back toward the kitchen. “Oh Lord, I don’t want to know about this,” she said in her guttural laugh. “Don’t tell me when, and
don’t
get caught.”

“So how do I break it?” Cody asked, game for anything, or so he thought. As Ross explained the thing, the one and only thing, that could forestall an avalanche of disaster and ruin and save Cody’s college career, the titters morphed into hoots and catcalls. Skit unleashed her best “sexy” whistle, as Cody finally pieced together the taunting “S’wanee Curse/Streaker” mystery connection.

As luck had it, it rained on Thursday afternoon, and between Econ 101 and Western Civ, and while most of the campus lunched, inside and dry, Cody emerged from the men’s room of Convocation Hall in a terry robe he had borrowed from Elliott. He was barefoot in the outdoor alcove, and Banjo and Elliott marched behind, holding Cody’s clothes and shoes in a messy stack.

“The whole Curse Course,” Ross reminded him. “If you skip even one, the curse lingers.”

“Yep, yep.” Cody nodded, adrenaline coursing, strangely thrilled. Shapard Tower, brushing up on the classics, for once played the kind of Count Dracula music one would expect from a college chapel.

Cody dropped the robe, and Elliott took it, and Cody went sprinting off, stark naked, into the downpour. He raced across the full expanse of the Quad, rounding the roped-off big evergreen and targeting the front door of All Saints, where the curse had begun. He tapped the door and ran down the length of the chapel and through the deserted Burwell Garden, splashing his hand in the goldfish fountain along the way. He circled around the sparkling Spencer Hall, where white-coated professors huddled by the windows and laughed and waved, as if they’d been tipped off to his arrival.

He tapped the front glass door and pivoted around toward the DuPont Library. Several of his Purple Hazers lined the sidewalk, standing in the rain, cheering him onward.

“
Day-um
!” Skit hooted and whistled, sizing him up and down.

Luckily, the Widow Senex wasn’t outside to wonk-eye his naked glory as Cody tapped the front door and turned for the longest sprint, all the way across campus, whizzing behind hedges and army-green mailboxes up to the Klondyke on University Avenue. Naturally/of course/had to happen, there were several adult visitors and sightseers coming out with bags of T-shirts and hats and souvenirs, and Cody had no choice but to flap past them, tap the door, and race away.
Have a great S’wanee Day!

Now for the gauntlet—all the way around McClurg Student Center, the hub of campus, surrounded by windows, at lunch hour rush. Students, teachers, and staff, already glued to the windows on both levels, cheered and jumped and laughed with him, not at him. Cody the Naked Gladiator fist-pumped the air triumphantly, basking in the mass adulation, as he rapped the front door.
Curse, be gone!

The final stretch was back across the Quad, where his dripping-wet-in-solidarity Purple Hazers yelled and egged him on to the Promised Land. Banjo held a champagne bottle between his legs and mock wanked it into a frenzy. Cody raised his arms and crossed an imaginary finish line as Banjo shot his champagne wad all over him and Elliott wolf whistled with the others. Sin aimed her camera phone, but Ross covered and pushed it away.

“No pictures!” Ross laughed, but meant it. “Not cool. Not cool.”

Everyone ringed around to congratulate and shield him. No run had ever been more exhilarating or mind-clearing.

Unfortunately, Proctor Bob was there to congratulate him, too. With a traffic-ticket-looking pad. “Been expecting this all week,” he said, smiling, writing out a ticket, to instant boos and hisses. “Oh, c’mon!” Paxton yelled, and Sinkler yelled, “Dude, get out of here!” right in his face. “Careful now,” Proctor Bob said, unsmiling. He tore off the ticket.

“Sir, please,” Ross added, the voice of reason. “It’s tradition. He
had
to.” Elliott helped Cody back into his robe, and Proctor Bob handed him the ticket.

“Rules is rules,” Proctor Bob said. “Tradition or not.”

“What does this mean?” Cody asked, increasingly concerned, flipping over the funny ticket.

“Up to the dean.” Proctor Bob shrugged. “Indecent exposure is typically a semester’s probation.” Cody’s neck iced up the back.

“Sir…I’m on scholarship,” he said, twice, since he swallowed halfway through the first time.

“Or maybe a fine,” Proctor Bob continued. “There just has to be some sort of
restitution
, you know.” Ross, looking guilty, pulled Proctor Bob over to the side for a private chat. “This frickin sucks,” Banjo whispered, and Elliott said, “The dean’s your adviser, right? He’ll be cool. It’ll be cool.” None of this was fun anymore.

“Oh sure, there’s
that
,” Proctor Bob said, turning back from negotiations. “If he’s so fond of his birthday suit, there’s always
that
.” He and Ross were both smiling now, coconspirators in the prank. “We can wrap this whole thing up today.” Proctor Bob shrugged, as Ross explained yet another square in S’wanee’s crazy quilt of customs. Shortly after, still in his robe, Cody padded past a sea of easels onto a brightly lit stage-in-the-round.

“We only have our subject for thirty minutes,” the smocked art teacher told the packed room. “So sketch quickly, please.” She nodded Cody toward the stool stage center. “Thank you for volunteering.” Hundreds of eyes stared passively.

On the front row sat Beth, hair clipped back, Clark Kent glasses, bright red lips, sketch pad at the ready. She didn’t acknowledge him at all.

“Mr. Marko?” The teacher smiled expectantly. “You have to get to your own class soon, don’t you?” She twirled her finger in the air. Cody took a breath and untied and dropped his robe. Dozens of pencils from all sides scratched on paper quickly.

Beth pursed her red lips and never glanced at his face. But she sketched very slowly.

•   •   •

Toward the end of the week, Cody was running out of clean clothes and had started double-dipping from his hamper, fishing out the least gamy. He was reminded of this not only by the clean-and-pressed clothes his classmates always wore, but also by the rolling racks that workers shuttled down the sidewalks between classes. The dresses and khakis and kilts were plastic-sheathed on hangers, no doubt from a professional laundry service Cody couldn’t afford.

After class, Cody got change from the Klondyke and took his hamper to the Rebel’s Rest basement, which was lined with gymnasium storage lockers but laundry-free, even in the back catacombs.

“Pearl, where’s the laundry room?” Cody asked in the kitchen, his hand full of quarters.

Pearl stopped chopping with her big knife and looked at him blankly. “That’s a good question.” She seemed stumped.

“I sent the machines out for service,” she said a beat later. “I need to get them back. I plumb forgot.”

“I can just go use another dorm’s,” Cody said.

“No,” Pearl said quickly. “I’ll get them back fast.”

And she did. That night, two brand-new high-tech machines showed up in the basement. And they were free.

•   •   •

“We’re not going to the Lodge tonight,” Banjo decreed on Friday when he and Elliott picked Cody up after work. He carried a large utility flashlight. “We’re going on an expedition. Truffle-sniffing.”

Twenty minutes later they stood on the edge of Morgan’s Steep in the pitch-black. They’d passed night-runner Caleb in fluorescent safety armbands and heart rate monitor along the way—“
Toolissimo!
” Banjo branded.

“A Wellington told me about the S’wanee Truffles,” Banjo explained, leading them down the muddy path toward the Perimeter Trail. “Watch your step,” he warned, flashing back his beacon. He and Elliott were already buzzed.

“Why are we doing this tonight?” Elliott asked, slipping on a stone. The path was steep and narrow and treacherous, especially in the black. “I got a hankering for ‘shrooms,” Banjo replied. “You need them more than anybody, Elliott. Uptight little prick.”

According to Banjo, who’d heard it from a drunk Wellington, a student in the late sixties had discovered a weird variety of wild mushrooms growing in the vast, tangled S’wanee ecosystem. The school had tested them for hallucinogenic properties and then sold the formula to the Defense Department as a potential weapon. “The school made a killing, and the dude got his gown from it,” Banjo explained.

The trio inched past a stone cave entrance with a stream running through. It was silent and still down here. Cody stepped with confidence, like his feet knew the way. He’d watched the DVD so often, he felt familiar with this path, even in the dark. More
déjà vu
, he thought.

“Atta boy. Now
that’s
what I’m talking about!” Banjo said, inching closer to a massive downed tree trunk, thick enough to be a bridge across the boulders. He slowly ran the flashlight across the bark. Sprouting off the dead trunk were hundreds of dark fanlike clusters. It looked like a sculpture.

“The S’wanee Truffles are dark purple,” Banjo said, inspecting them close. “The black ones are junk.” He pulled out a Swiss army knife and a small ziplock bag.

“Are these purple or black?” Banjo asked, holding the scraped-off mushrooms to the light. “I can’t tell.”

“So black people really
are
color blind?” Elliott hectored, and Banjo said, “Shut it, white devil!”

“Whatever they are, I’m not gonna eat them,” Elliott said, and Banjo said, “
Das Puss
! They’re not poisonous; they’re just trippy!” In the near distance, a loud rustling jolted them all.

“Dude, let’s get out of here,” Cody said, and Banjo agreed. “Yeah, black people are afraid of ghosts, too,” he said, leading the hustle back as he tucked away his army knife and ziplocked booty.

Back at the Rebel’s Rest, the trio sat staring into the empty fire pit. Cody had ignored Arianna’s advice against drugs in favor of Dean Apperson’s call to experiment. He’d taken a tiny, rubbery bite and swallowed with the others.

“You feel anything?” Banjo asked. “Nope,” they both said.

Paxton and Sinkler stumbled past, back from their night out. “What are you losers doing?” Sinkler asked.

“Leave us alone,” Banjo grumbled. “We’re tripping.”

“Cool,” Paxton said, and Sinkler said, “Good times.”

But they weren’t tripping at all, and an hour later, Banjo stood up.

“Guess we got the black ones,” he said, and went inside, muttering obscenities.

“Dude, let’s just get drunk in my room,” Elliott suggested, and soon they settled into a reliable, predictable beer buzz. S’wanee Truffles be damned.

•   •   •

All in all, a good week, Cody felt. He’d settled into his new academic routine, neutralized the dreaded S’wanee Curse, forged new friendships, definitely gotten noticed, upped the ante with Beth by baring it all, experimented with harmless drugs, and, most important, made a new home, his first home, for himself. It had been one long great S’wanee Day.