9.11 - 31. Chapter 31

August 24, 2001

“You are up early, even for a school day,” Grand said as I walked into the kitchen.

“I got roped into riding to school with John and Marie,” I said grumpily. “This is not how I want to start my school year.”

“Surely you could have chosen to ride by yourself,” Grand said.

“I didn’t want to be rude to Aunt Claire,” I said. “She asked me if I’d go along to help John feel comfortable.”

“That is a good thing for you to do, and you seem to be getting along with John,” he said.

“But I’m not getting along with Marie, primarily because she’s trying to slaughter me behind my back,” I said.

“It is possible that all the things you have heard that she supposedly said and did are not true,” he noted.

“Do you think that Erik found out about Kyle and me from Marie?” I asked him pointedly.

He frowned. “That appears to be the case.”

“And don’t you think it’s odd that since Marie and Noah started dating, that Noah doesn’t call me back anymore?” I asked.

“Maybe he is just busy,” Grand said, then thought about what that implied, that it may mean Marie was sleeping with Noah, and he frowned.

“I am wondering when critical thought abandoned this house.” I said, using terms that made me sound like him.

“I beg your pardon,” he said in an annoyed tone.

“There are facts spread out in front of us, solid things that we know, and the effort is not on drawing conclusions from those facts, but in rationalizing those facts to draw the conclusions people want,” I said. I’d spent some time last night reviewing my classes from last year, and we’d had a section on critical thinking and the scientific process. I liked to use big words, and scientific terms, when talking to Grand, because it resonated with him, and because I think it impressed him that I appeared to know what I was talking about. Plus it really bugged him to have his own terms used to refute one of his weak arguments. He said nothing in response, which was an unqualified victory in my book, especially since it enabled me to focus on eating. My cell phone rang, and it was John telling me they were pulling through the gates. “I have to go,” I said to Grand, grabbing the last of my toast. “Have a good day.”

“You have a good day as well,” he said. Before I could make it out of the room, his words stopped me. “I will consider what you have said.”

“Thank you,” I told him, and flashed him a big smile.

I made it out the front door and down the steps just as the limo pulled up. I opened the door for myself and hopped in, with the car taking off as soon as I closed it. “Good morning, Will,” Aunt Claire said.

“Good morning,” I said, and gave her a friendly kiss on the cheek. “Hey,” I said to John and Marie.

“Hey,” John said. Marie just gave me a dirty look.

“I cannot believe you won’t let me take my phone to school,” Marie said to Claire, returning to the argument they’d obviously been having before I got into the car.

“I am not sure how I can be clearer,” Claire said, sounding pretty irritated even for her.

“What if there’s an emergency? What if I need to get in touch with you or Daddy?” Marie asked.

“There is a phone in the office that you can use, or you can track down your brother,” Claire said.

“No way,” John objected. “She’ll just end up taking my phone.”

I was sitting across from Claire and Marie, with my foot lightly touching Marie’s purse. While they were arguing, Marie’s purse began to pulse against my foot. “Your purse is vibrating,” I said to Marie. I lifted it up and held it out to her, and while I was doing that, the purse seemed to just hang there, its contents rattling from the phone and damning Marie. John started laughing, even when his mother and Marie gave him evil looks. I kept my face impassive, practicing for school, even as Marie snatched her purse out of my hand.

“Leave my purse alone,” she snapped at me.

“Hand it over,” Claire said to her.

“I have a right to privacy,” Marie said. “I’m not going to let you root through my purse.”

“You will hand it over, or you will not be going to school today,” Claire said.

“Cool. I’ll hang around and do nothing all day, just like I did this summer,” Marie shouted.

“I am sorry that you two have to deal with this,” Claire said to John and me.

“Like they’re so fucking perfect,” Marie said. She gestured at me. “He damn near destroyed his own house.” They all looked at me, but I didn’t react, just like Darius had coached me to do.

Marie shifted to John, her next target. “And he’s managed to do most of the freshmen girls before school even starts, not to mention half the sophomores.”

“Dude,” I said to her. “That’s raw.” I wasn’t referring to what she said about me, but what she’d said about John. I don’t think my Aunt Claire and Uncle Jack knew just how busy John was, or how much he got laid. He got laid a lot, or at least he got a lot of blow jobs, and now his parents would be suspicious, thanks to Marie.

“We’ll talk about that later,” Claire said to both John and Marie. They both just sat there, totally pissed off. Claire evidently decided to strike up a conversation with me. “I understand you got to spend some time with your father.”

“Time?” I asked. “We were in the same house, had meals together, and talked about the weather. I guess that counts.”

“And what does he think about the weather?” she asked, making me laugh.

“He sees rain, and doom and gloom, at least in my life,” I said.

“So do I,” Marie said, getting an icy look from her mother.

“He will have a reprieve from you, at least for today,” Claire said to Marie. “You can miss the first day.”

“The first day?” she asked, outraged. “I can’t miss the first day. I’ll get hammered all semester for it.”

“You should have thought of that before you acted so rudely,” Claire said. She got on the phone and started chattering in Spanish. We all heard her directive, since all of us knew Spanish, even if we didn’t hear the rest of what she said. “I want you to search her room completely, from top to bottom. I will go through what you find when I get home.”

“You’re going to search my room?” Marie asked. She was getting a little unhinged.

“Yes,” Claire said. “This right to privacy you speak of is not a right, it is a privilege. One that is being revoked.”

Marie looked at me, with sheer hatred in her eyes. “You know, if you’d just drop dead, I wouldn’t have any problems at all.”

“Marie!” Claire exclaimed.

“So what’s your first class?” I asked John, totally ignoring them and their drama.

“English,” he answered glumly.

“Dude, it’s better to get it out of the way early,” I told him.

“I like taking English at the end of the day. Something to look forward to,” Marie said, but neither one of us acknowledged her.

“That makes sense,” John said to me, as if Marie hadn’t said anything. He and I talked on about his schedule until we got to school, while Marie and Claire said nothing. When the car pulled up, we got out, and they went back home, presumably to fight and argue some more.

“Dude, what the fuck?” I asked him.

“That’s what it’s like at home, all the time. Marie is such a fucking bitch, she’s even convinced my dad that she’s out of control,” John said. That was saying something, since Uncle Jack tended to dote on Marie.

“I’m sorry,” I said sincerely. “You can always come up and stay with me. Remember I promised you I wouldn’t molest you.”

He laughed. “What if I want you to?”

“Prick tease,” I joked, cracking him up. I saw Noah standing off to the side, probably waiting for Marie, but I ignored him, just like Darius recommended. John and I walked toward our homerooms, and then split off when our routes separated.

I got to my homeroom class and said hi to the people I knew in there, which was pretty much everyone. I sat next to Brandon, the dude I’d played water polo with; the one who sucked almost as bad as Noah.

“How was your summer?”

“Pretty awesome,” he said. “Spent most of it in Hawaii.”

“Dude, so did I? Where were you?”

“We were on Kauai,” he said.

“I was on Maui,” I told him. “Even bought a kick ass house there.”

“You bought a house?” he asked, and snickered because he didn’t believe me.

“Yeah. It’s the shit, or it will be when it’s done,” I said. “It’s right on a point overlooking my favorite beach.”

“How much did you spend on this house you bought?” He still didn’t believe me.

“Two million to buy it, and probably another million to finish it off,” I said. That’s what Malcolm was projecting it would end up costing. I had a feeling he’d end up going over budget.

“Cool,” he said, since he’d kind of made an ass out of himself. The teacher came in, took roll, then we had to listen to a bunch of lame ass announcements. By the time that was over, we barely had time to get our locker assignments before bailing for our next class. “See ya,” Brandon said, and headed in a different direction.

My first two classes went fine, and I was pretty focused, which was the norm for me, but there was this weird feeling I had. It was like people were looking at me, and while they didn’t say anything, I got the feeling that they were snickering at me behind my back. People had been all friendly in homeroom, but now they were being almost snarky. I knew that this had to be some shit that Ferris and Marie cooked up, I just didn’t know what it was.

After my first two classes, I had a short break, so I took some time to find my locker. There was something taped to the outside, a picture of sorts. I walked up to my locker, pulled the paper off, and looked at it; it was a picture of a genital wart. I recognized it because it was one of the same pictures I’d seen when I’d done my own web search after Erik told me he had them. Some girls walked by me, whispering to each other, then started giggling. So this was their first attack on me, and this is how they were going to get to me. They were going to tell everyone I was one big walking genital wart. I made sure to keep my face completely impassive as I thought about it. “Gross,” I said, wadded the paper up, and threw it in the trash.

“What was that?” I looked sideways to find this dude named Pete. He was a junior, and a pretty good guy. He was on the water polo team too, only unlike Noah and Brandon, he was good.

“Some gross picture. How the fuck should I know?” I said dismissively. I put stuff I wouldn’t need for class in my locker, pulled out my lock, and locked it up. I hoisted my lightened backpack onto my shoulder and started walking with him.

“I thought you were going to play this year,” he said, referring to water polo.

“Too much shit going on,” I said.

“Sucks. Could have used you,” he said. That was pretty big praise coming from him.

“Thanks. I’ll keep it in mind,” I said. He nodded and then took off in a different direction. I sat in my next class and tried to focus on the teacher, but this was math, and I was bored. This class was way too easy for me. I sat there, pondering my situation, ignoring the weird looks I kept getting from people. How did I combat this thing? Pass out copies of my STD test results? That was lame. I focused on the bigger picture. If Kyle didn’t get warts from me, who did he get them from? And why did he tell Erik he got them from me? And how did the person who put that picture on my locker know that was my locker? Hell, I only knew about that when I got to homeroom.

I didn’t know who Kyle got warts from, and I probably wasn’t going to, but the second question was pretty easy to answer. It made sense that he’d blame me, since Erik knew we had been fucking around. And that made his lies about us sleeping together into July even smarter, as part of the bigger lie, because then he could throw it back at me even easier. He probably figured that Erik would be pissed off at me, just like last time, and blame me, and not Kyle. He’d taken a chance on that, only Erik had gotten a clue. He’d figured out the same thing about Kyle that I had; that the dude just wasn’t worth it.

Erik must have walked up to me on the gazebo and been pretty confused. I’d kind of thought he was a dick at first. I mean, I’d told him I was sorry for hurting him by fucking Kyle, but he hadn’t really been all that friendly. No wonder he acted that way. Kyle told him he was still fucking me, and that I gave him warts. Marie and Ferris were there to back him up. Yet despite that, Erik had believed me, and he’d trusted me.

The last question was probably the easiest to answer, but I’d have to wait until later on to do that. Class finally ended, and the day dragged on, until it was finally lunchtime. I detoured to my locker and found another wart picture taped to my locker, only I put this one in my pocket, even as I looked around to see if anyone was watching to admire my reaction to their handiwork.

After that, I went and got food, then took it out to where my friends and I hung out. I got the same kinds of strange looks from some of these people, but they all knew me, so they were more inclined to give me the benefit of the doubt. Besides, if I wasn’t sleeping with them, what the fuck did they really care if I had warts or not? Still, I wasn’t feeling all that welcome until I saw Alex.

“Hey!” Alex said enthusiastically, and gave me a man hug. “Back from traveling around the world?”

“I was mostly in Hawaii, dumb ass,” I said. “That’s a state.”

“Whatever,” he said.

Alyssa and Jackie came walking up to us, with another girl tagging along. Alyssa was Marie’s best friend, if you took Ferris out of the equation, while Jackie was more of her own person. I liked her, and we got along well. The third girl with them must be new, because I’d never met her before, but she had red hair.

“Hey Will,” Jackie said in a friendly way. “Hey,” she said to Alex much less cheerfully. They used to date, and evidently it didn’t go all that well. “This is Phoebe.”

“Nice to meet you,” I said, and shot her my grin. I held out my hand and she shook it nervously, then Alyssa whispered something in her ear. They giggled, and hurried off toward the bathroom. I seethed internally at this machine Marie had put in place, at all these people who were planning to make it seem like I was one walking cesspool of disease. John walked up nervously with one of his friends, another freshman who was as hot as John, only with darker brown hair.

“Hey,” John said. “This is Cam.” I shook his hand briefly and he looked down shyly, blushing. What a little hunk. Cam: a perfect name for the hot guy. I introduced them to everyone there, making sure that they knew John was my cousin. That got him an in to this group.

“How’s it going?” John asked.

“Shitty. Someone put a picture of a dick with genital warts on it on my locker,” I said to him. Cam’s eyes bulged at that. Had even he heard about this? Even the freshmen?

“Seriously?” John asked. I nodded. “What a bunch of shit.”

“Whatever,” I said, remembering that I was supposed to be Joe Cool, like Darius.

After that we just ate and bullshitted. Noah would normally eat with us, but he wisely stayed away from me, as did Ferris. Neither one of them had the social power to force their way into this group, at least not without Marie here. If she were here, it would be a lot less pleasant, and I’d be having a tougher time keeping my cool.

“Heard you got your ass kicked,” an obnoxious voice said from behind me. That would be Blaine Ledington, who was a junior. His father was an investment advisor, and rumor had it they struggled to keep up with their lifestyle and with the tuition here. Blaine was one of those guys who would probably be cool if he didn’t have a stick up his ass.

“Got my nose broken,” I said. “They fixed it, and now I look hotter.” People who heard me say that chuckled, and I remembered what Erik had told me. Evidently, people were willing to be nice to me, and laugh at my dumb ass jokes, because of who I was. It just made them seem shallow, and made me feel like I was hiring a bunch of whores for friends.

“Heard you got something else too,” he said. “Slut.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” I asked, and not all that nicely.

“The wartmonster,” he said, and laughed. I glanced briefly at the group and realized that it was all over school. I hadn’t realized how many people knew about the rumor, but it was pretty obvious that it was the topic of the day. Everyone was probably talking about what a big slut I was, and how I’d ended up with HPV. Most people avoided looking right at me, unless they didn’t know I was looking at them, in which case they were snickering.

“Not me. I’m clean,” I said calmly, even though I was enraged beneath the surface.

“Sure you are,” he taunted. I was trying to decide whether to lay this guy out or not. I could probably take him, but then I’d get suspended for fighting and I’d end up dealing with my father, and that would be worse.

“Well next time you’re sucking my dick, stop and take a look around. You didn’t get ’em from me,” I said. People just chuckled until he freaked out, then they laughed. They were probably wondering if he really did blow me or had HPV himself. I decided to let them wonder. He gave me a nasty look, then walked away. I was pretty much done with these people, so I took what time I had and walked up to the office.

“Can I help you?” the frazzled front desk lady asked me.

“I’d like to speak to Mr. Sessions,” I said. He was one of the assistant principals.

“You can see if he’s in his office,” she said, waving me away. I walked down the hall and found that he was.

“Well hello, Will. How’s the first day going?” he asked me nicely. He was in his early 30s, and a nice guy. I got along with him pretty well.

“I’ve got a problem,” I said. “Someone put some nasty pictures on my locker.”

“Do you know who did it?” he asked.

“No, but whoever did had to know where my locker was before I did. I went to it right after we got our locker assignments, and the picture was already there.”

“So it would have to be someone who had access to the list of locker assignments,” he mused. “What are these pictures?”

I pulled the picture out of my pocket and handed it to him, watching him get grossed out. “They’re pictures of a dude’s dick with big genital warts on it,” I said candidly. He raised an eyebrow in feigned horror, as if something like that had never happened before. “Someone is trying to spread rumors that I have them.”

“I’ll find out who knew about the locker assignments,” he said. “Stop by after school.”

“Thanks,” I said. “And by the way, I don’t have them.” I’m not sure why I told him that, but I felt like I should.

He smiled at me. “It doesn’t matter if you do or you don’t, no one should be putting pictures like that on your locker.” I nodded and walked out, heading to my locker to get my books. There was another picture there, so I saved that one for Mr. Sessions too.

To give me a reason to ignore everyone, I pulled out my phone and checked for messages, and only had one, from Kai. I hit play and listened to it. “Hey Will, hope day one is going alright. Don’t let those bitches get you down. I took my dad up here to your house this morning and found the binoculars you had put in for him. Dude, that was the bomb. You are awesome! Thanks so much. Gotta run.” Last night I’d told him about the drama I was dealing with in a phone call that was way longer than he liked, or was used to, so I got that reference, but what the fuck was he talking about when he mentioned binoculars? I didn’t have binoculars put in for his dad.

I headed to class, and the day just kept dragging on. We finally finished, and I met up with John. “I have to go meet with Mr. Sessions. Tell the car to wait, OK?”

“Did you get in trouble?” he asked, all concerned.

“No, but someone’s been taping dickwart pictures to my locker all day long,” I said.

“Fucking ridiculous,” he said. “We’ll be there when you’re done.” I went up to the office and found Mr. Sessions waiting for me.

“Here’s the latest picture,” I said, and handed it to him.

“That looks really unpleasant,” he said, making me laugh. He handed me a list of people. “These are the students who knew which lockers were assigned ahead of time. They were helping to get ready for the first day. Do you know any of them?” In other words, he wanted to know if I’d suspect any of them.

There were four people on the list. I knew all four of them, but there was only one person on this list who could have done it. “Ferris,” I said, and was unable to keep the animosity out of my voice.

“Do you two have issues?” he asked.

“We’re not really friends, but we know the same people,” I said.

“I’ll have a talk with him,” Sessions said.

“I’d appreciate that,” I lied. A talk would do me no good at all, and would probably fuck up my strategy, since then Ferris would think that he’d won, that he’s gotten to me, but knowing that he was probably the one who’d done this was worth it. “Thank you Mr. Sessions. I’ll see you on Monday.”

He shook my hand and didn’t act like I had cooties, which was a pretty cool thing for him to do. I walked out to the lot to find the car. I was probably only running about 20 minutes behind schedule, but still, traffic was pretty cleared out. I scanned the sea of cars and saw the big Escalade limo that Stef liked. As if to clue me in, Pedro got out and stood next to it.

“Hey Pedro,” I said, being friendly.

“Mr. Will,” he said.

“It’s Will, not Mr. Will,” I corrected. He opened the door for us even as he grinned at me.

“So what did Sessions have to say?” John asked.

“Guess who knew what lockers we had before school started?”

“Marie?” he asked nervously.

“Probably, since Ferris would have told her,” I said.

“Ferris was one of the people on the list?”

“Yep,” I said. “Four people were on the list, and he was the only one who could have done that.”

“I told you they were scheming together,” he said. “It will all blow over soon.” He was reminding me, in his own way, not to freak out about this. I nodded. “Besides, I hear he’s got his own problems to worry about.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Guess who Ferris has been fucking around with?” he asked.

“Marie?” I asked, joking.

John laughed. “Nope. Kyle.” He thought I’d laugh about it, but I didn’t.

“Kyle has been fucking Ferris?”

“That’s what I heard,” John said.

“How’d you hear that?” I asked, wondering how trustworthy his sources were.

“Ferris was over last night talking to Marie. I stopped to listen, just for a minute,” he said, with his adorable smile. “Marie told Ferris he was lucky Erik didn’t find out he was fucking around with Kyle too.”

“What did Ferris say?”

“He said ‘no shit’,” John said, doing a pretty funny Ferris imitation.

“So that’s what the little shit was doing. They told Erik that Kyle got HPV from me because Kyle and I were still messing around,” I said. “Kyle and I were so over. What a bunch of shit. Hell, Kyle probably got it from Ferris.”

“Why’d they tell Erik that?” John mused.

“So Erik would blame me, get all pissed off at me, and come over and beat the shit out of me,” I said, answering his question.

“Or maybe he’d just fuck you, to see why his boyfriend kept going back for more,” John joked. That totally freaked me out. “What?” he asked, seeing the confusion on my face.

“You think they were trying to get Erik pissed off enough to try and sleep with me?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t hear anyone say anything about that,” he said, just so I’d know this was pure speculation.

“So they get Erik all pissed off, he comes on to me and lures me into bed, fucks around with me, and gives me warts,” I concluded.

“That’s a whole bunch of guessing,” John said, reminding me that I was seriously speculating.

“Maybe,” I said. “Erik doesn’t work that way, anyway.”

“No?”

“Nope, he doesn’t. But Kyle does.” We were still a ways from home, so I took out my phone and called Erik.

“S’up?” he asked.

“You have to ask,” I flirted. John rolled his eyes at me. But Erik sounded like he was in a hurry, so I was pretty to the point. “When Kyle told you he was still fucking around with me, was he trying to get you to kick my ass?”

“Dude, let it go. It’s so over now,” he said.

“That’s easy for you to say. You escaped to Oregon. I have everyone at Menlo looking at me funny, and some asshole has been putting pictures of dicks with warts on them on my locker all day long,” I snapped.

“What?!” he demanded, getting pretty mad himself.

“Three different pictures, taped to my locker,” I said, letting him hear how annoyed I was. “So I want to know what he was trying to pull off.”

Erik sighed, knowing he was going to have to relive this whole thing. “We’d already broken up when I found out I had these fucking things. I went over and tracked his pathetic ass down, and told him what a piece of shit he was for giving them to me.” He paused to calm himself down. “So we argued about it, and I got pissed off enough to throw a few punches. He’s pretty fucking strong, but I was so mad I was about ready to kill him. I tackled that son of a bitch to the ground and pinned him. He didn’t enjoy it as much as you did.” I could tell how upset and pissed off he was as he told me about this, so that last little quip was his attempt to throw some humor in to stabilize his own mood.

“I definitely enjoyed it,” I said, playing along.

“He told me that if I wanted to be pissed at someone, I should be pissed at you, since he got the warts from you. He told me you guys had been fucking around until July, and he’d only figured out he’d gotten them after you left, otherwise he would have kicked your ass,” he told me.

“Whatever,” I said, acting like Kyle couldn’t kick my ass. Which he could, any day of the week.

“After I yelled at him and called him about every name I could think of, he told me that next time I went after you, I should fuck you instead of breaking your nose.” He got quiet for a second. “He said then I’d at least see what it was like to fuck a bottom who knew what he was doing.”

“Dude, for the record, you are such a better lover than he is,” I said. John looked at me funny and giggled, so I kicked him.

“Thanks,” he said happily, then got all somber again. “He said that at least if I fucked you, I wouldn’t have to worry about giving you anything, since he got the fucking warts from you.”

“He wanted you to fuck me and give me HPV?” I asked, stunned. John looked really upset, because he knew the fallout from this could be hellacious.

“More or less,” he said. “I wouldn’t have done that.”

I struggled hard, and managed to stay calm. “Dude, I know you wouldn’t have, because you didn’t. You could have, but you didn’t.”

“I couldn’t have done that, even if I was pissed at you,” he said.

“I know,” I said, validating him. “How’s Oregon?”

“Awesome, especially since I’m not there in Paly,” he joked, and was obviously glad to be away from all this shit.

“It’s not so bad here,” I said, flirting. “I’m here.”

“You’re right. I gotta go.”

“Take care,” I said, and hung up. I looked at John. “They were trying to prod Erik into giving it to me.”

“He said that?” I nodded. “Dude, that is so fucked up.”

“Seriously,” I agreed.

“Who is ‘they’?” he asked.

“Definitely Kyle, probably Ferris, and maybe your sister,” I said to him.

“They’re going down,” he said, like it was an oath. I just stared at him, amazed. “I’ve got your back this time.”

I was pretty shocked at that, and didn’t say anything. We had been so close at one time, then he’d been a total little bitch to me, and now, here he was, pledging to help me get through this. “Thanks,” I said. He looked at me, worried since my voice cracked. “I thought I was in this all alone.”

“You’re not,” he said. The limo pulled up to their house and he got ready to get out. “There’s a party this weekend. My advice is that you skip it. Let this shit die down, and let your friends start to kill the rumor.”

“Not much in the mood for a party anyway,” I grumbled.