Page 19 of The Bad Weather Friend

Speer moved to the other window and stared atthatshade. “Galsbury said he needed to prove himself capable of secrecy for three months. She’d promised, ‘When I trust you, I’ll do you once every month thereafter, my pretty boy.’”

“‘My pretty boy’?” Benny scoffed. “Who talks like that?”

“Maybe younger wives of headmasters. But Galsbury is farther from pretty than the distance betweenassandposteriorin the dictionary.”

“So he made it up.”

With one finger, Speer eased aside the shade and peered at the soccer field from another angle. “He assisted her for less than a month before his lunulae turned blue. He’d spent two hours a day in the lab for more than two months when he was caught eating ants.”

Benny repeated his unanswered question. “Where is he now?”

“Supposedly, he was expelled and sent home five weeks ago.”

“Supposedly?”

Speer turned from the window and crossed his arms, right hand on left shoulder, left hand on right shoulder, as if warding off an expected hard blow to the chest. “Two weeks ago,before dinner, a student named Mengistu Gidada was walking the meadow behind Mrs. Baneberry-Smith’s lab, carrying a book and memorizing a poem by William Butler Yeats. He saw a face at a window, at the southwest corner of the building. It was Prescott Galsbury, who by then had supposedly been expelled. That night, Mengistu couldn’t sleep. He became convinced Galsbury had been seeking help. The next morning, when he went back to the meadow, the window was boarded overfrom the inside. I’m the only one he’s told because he’s afraid of being sent home, where his father will demote him from first son to last son and cut off something more important than Mengistu’s hair.”

“You’re saying Galsbury is being held prisoner?”

“Mengistu is one of the sane, and he doesn’t lie.”

“But come the next holiday, when Galsbury goes home, he’ll tell his parents everything.”

“Briarbush doesn’t close for holidays. If your parents say you should go home, you go. But quite a few, like Galsbury, were sent here because they were problem kids who needed to be in residence full-time to be rehabilitated.”

The word evoked a shiver from Benny. “Rehabilitated.”

Speer whispered, “My word for it ischanged.”

“Were you a problem kid?”

“I didn’t think so,” Speer said. “But I’ve been here three years, and I’ve never been home for a holiday. Or spoken to my parents. We aren’t allowed cell phones or computers with online connections.”

The boy’s posture—arms crossed on his chest, hands gripping his shoulders—seemed desperately defensive, as if he hugged himself because no one else ever hugged him. He was so pathetic that Benny wanted to say something to make him feel betterabout himself. Every reassurance that came to mind seemed stupid. Instead, he offered condolences: “I’m sorry about Galsbury. He was your friend.”

In the shadows, Speer looked older than fourteen, as though each of his years at Briarbush had the abrading power of a decade. “Galsbury is nobody’s friend but his own. He wasn’t sent here to be changed. He was already what they want us to be. He was sent here to berefined. When they’re done doing to him whatever they’re doing, he’ll return. He’ll maybe become proctor of Felthammer House, in charge of enforcing the disciplinary actions Master Drudge imposes on us. Years from now, he’ll maybe be valedictorian of his class. One day, governor or senator. Or the head of a hedge fund. Whatever. I’m not worried about Galsbury. I’mscaredof him. And I’m afraid that sooner or later I’ll be made into what he is.”

He lowered his arms and settled again in his chair. Benny returned to his chair as well. They sat in a silence different from the one they had shared before, staring at each other until Jurgen said, “Willyoube going home for the holidays?”

Only then did Benny realize that he didn’t know if Briarbush Academy was just a boarding school to be attended during seasons of education or if it was his new home. His mother and stepfather were traveling the far corners of the world for the next year and perhaps for years thereafter. There would be no reason to go home to Beverly Hills for Thanksgiving with Rudyard and Sally Bromley, where the butler would weep for unknown reasons and his wife would sing dark Celtic ballads with bitter intensity. The only other choice was to take a holiday in Hell with Grandmother Cosima and be subjected to her efforts to depress him to the point of suicide.

Evidently, Benny’s face boldly displayed his train of thought, for Jurgen didn’t need to hear an answer to his question. He said, “I’m sorry, Ben. Sorry for you, but happy for me. We’re both sane, and we’ll keep each other sane, and while we avoid being changed, we’ll have some fun.”

Jurgen didn’t look like a boy who knew how to have fun, but maybe he just hadn’t had much opportunity to be amused.

Benny found the rheostat on the cord of the lamp beside his chair and dialed down the light until it matched the moody glow produced by his roommate’s lamp.

After another silence, Jurgen said, “Can I make a suggestion?”

“Lay it on me,” Benny said.

“The majority of the boys in this school are of a kind, and the others are being shaped into their kind. I’m not sure how they know we’re not their kind, whether it’s intuition or they smell something, but they know. We’re in a hostile environment. You get me?”

“I get you.”

“My advice is to develop an edgy image, as if you’re mental. I’ve got my pointy fingernails, slicked-back hair, my silences. I often stare hard at people for five or ten minutes. Sometimes, I express admiration for Satan. Some of these guys will push you around unless they think you’re unstable. In the end, they’re all cowards. They’ll walk wide of you if you give them any reason.”

Benny’s assessment of Jurgen Speer had changed dramatically in less than an hour. “In the dining hall, when meat is served, what if I hold it down with a fork and stare at it intently while I calmly stab it forty or fifty times instead of just slicing it, stab it so hard I sometimes break the plate?”

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