Boarding School (46 page)

“Of course you can live without it,” Juan shot back. “If that happens, we’ll just have to go through withdrawals, then. And that’s gonna happen to us one day anyway.”

“Oh, man! Withdrawals?” Matt now sounded afraid of Juan’s plan as well.

Suddenly Juan sounded irritated with the static he was getting over his idea. “Hey, you guys. I don’t know what kind of a fantasy land you’re lining in, but we can’t be junkies for the rest of our lives, you know.” Juan felt indignant that any of us would resist his plan. After all, each of us had already admitted several times recently that we were fed up with our lives at the Academy and we wanted things to change.

“Yeah well, what if they do worse than cut off our cocaine?” Matt retorted. “What if they injure us so bad, we can never recover? Remember, Clint? The leader once threatened to cripple you for life.” Matt was right. He had raised an issue which required serious consideration from the rest of us.

“Well while we’re on the subject, there’s something else we need to think about,” I added.

“What!” Juan demanded. We could all now see that our friend’s patience were wearing thin with this discussion.

“Don’t you think that if the police wanted to help us, they would have done something by now?” I asked.

“What do you mean?” Carlos’ interest, at least, was piqued by my question.

So I continued. “For all these months, customers from all over New England and even New York have known right where they could go to have sex with us. So if all those people can find us with no trouble, how come the police can’t?” I paused for a moment to let my question sink in, then I went on. “The only reason I can come up with for why they haven’t shown up to save us is because they don’t want to. Who knows? Maybe Fatso’s paid them off, or something.”

“And maybe some of the police have been our customers even. No?”

Carlos added.

These were serious matters which demanded careful scrutiny from all of us before we proceeded with any plan to break free from our enslavement. “All I know is,” Juan’s voice was now quiet and introspective, “I’m gonna go insane here pretty soon if we don’t do something. I’ve just about lost myself completely now, and I’m worried that if we don’t do something soon to stop this madness, I won’t ever be me again. Do you guys know what I mean?”

We all understood. Each of us felt the same as Juan. In fact, I already knew that Matt and I would never be the same boys we had been when we had first arrived at the Academy those many months ago. But I didn’t believe that either of us felt quite as hopelessly trapped as Juan seemed to feel on this night. In the past Matt and I had talked about our feelings a fair amount, and we had both developed the ability to switch off that part of us which was repulsed or ashamed over what we were doing. Even so, we had nearly reached our limit with this way of life as well.

“Ok,” I agreed in a voice which was now as quiet as Juan’s. “I guess I’m ready to go along with your plan, Juan.” Then I looked at my roommate. “What do you think, Matt?” I asked.

Matt looked at me for an instant as if he was grateful finally that I was being civil toward him again. “I don’t know,” he answered quietly. “I guess I’m in, too.”

The three of us then looked at Carlos. This boy was probably the most terrified among us, and we could almost hear the gears turning in his head as he handled the small gold cross he always wore around his neck and weighed the merits of our arguments. His expression kept shifting from fear to thoughtfulness and then back to fear again. “Ok,” he finally replied. His voice also was now much quieter. “I guess it is time. I can’t stand this anymore neither.”

And so there it was. In a matter of a few minutes the four of us had decided to end the months we had endured of sex and drug abuse. Regardless of the consequences, we had chosen to take back our lives. We were going to execute Juan’s plan as clandestinely as we could, but we were going to put an end to this way of life which we had become so used to, before it took us over completely and caused us to believe that there would never be anything else for us in life besides prostitution. No longer, we resolved, were we going to be hooked on drugs and enslaved for sex. And as Matt and I said our good-nights to our friends and left the room next door to return to our own bedroom, we had no idea of the peril in which we had all just placed ourselves.

I often think back to this conversation that the four of us had that night and I wish that I had suggested instead that we simply tough it out for another month or so. After all, we had already held on for this long, and in only a few more weeks it was going to be time for us to go to our respective homes for summer vacation. Then we could have set ourselves to the tasks of putting our lives back together and convincing our families to send us to different schools in the fall. But at that age, a boy’s perception of time is usually skewed. Especially when he is involved in something he hates: weeks can seem like months and months can seem like years. And so none of us were willing to be patient any longer. Of course now in hindsight, I can see that we were in over our heads when we believed that we had the power to take back our lives in that place. Even with all we had been through by this time, I guess we still didn’t understand all that much about the type of people we were dealing with. Because in less than one week after this conversation, we discovered that our plan to call in the police was the greatest mistake of our young lives.

* * *

A few days later on Thursday afternoon after we were done with our classes for the day, Matt and I ran into Jamie and Charlie, the two neighbor kids who lived behind the Academy. For some reason they had been given the rest of the week off from school and had come across the cove in Jamie’s rowboat to see if we were interested in going out on the lake with them. They said they knew of a few places where we would be able to find tadpoles. The boys were waiting for us on the landing when we arrived at our dorm, and since Matt and I had an hour or so to kill before we were scheduled again to be taken to the Friendly Inn, we invited our friends into our room so we could visit with them for a while.

With “I’m Your Captain” by Grand Funk Rail Road playing from my stereo, the four of us then spent perhaps fifteen minutes or so talking about the normal kinds of things that young teenaged boys talk about, and it felt good to fill our minds once again with frivolous kid issues. In the course of this discussion, I began to realize just how much of my youth had been stolen from me since my arrival at the Academy. And as I silently turned this matter over in my mind, I realized further that my enslavement by the upperclassmen and their willing accomplices in the faculty had actually cheated me out of time I would never be able to get back. So as I half listened to the refrain at the end of the song, I took heart in the notion that—thanks to Juan’s plan—Matt and I and our Venezuelan friends next door would soon be returning to the lives we were entitled to live.

Eventually, since it was clear that we couldn’t go along that afternoon, Jamie and Charlie decided that the time had come for them to leave us and return to their adventure on the lake. And as they were leaving, they walked past Frank as he was coming into our hallway to see us.

“Hey, Clint. Hey, Matt. Can I come in for a minute?” Frank had acknowledged the other boys as he passed them in our hallway, but he didn’t stop to engage them in conversation in any way.

“Hey, Frank,” I replied first because I was closer to the door.

“Come on in, Frank,” Matt called from his bed. We both liked to lie down in the afternoons for a while so we could rest up before going over to the inn, but so far only Matt had managed to make himself horizontal.

Once Frank was in our room he closed our door, and then sat down in one of our chairs before he began to tell us his reason for dropping by. “Say, my cousin is comin’ back up here this weekend. I thought if youz guys weren’t doin’ nothin’ ya might wanna come along wit’ us. We thought maybe we’d go check out Sturbridge.”

Matt and I shot quick glances at each other. The idea sounded like a lot of fun, but we had already been told by the leader to plan on working at the inn all weekend. “Gee, Frank,” Matt began. “That sounds like a lot of fun. But Clint and I already planned to get ourselves caught up this weekend on our homework. You know finals are coming up pretty soon.”

Frank’s expression suddenly changed to a frown. “Are you tryin’ to tell me that you’re gonna spend this whole beautiful weekend all cooped up here in this room?”

“Well, we might go into town on Saturday,” Matt continued. “But otherwise… yeah, probably.”

Frank then looked at me. “Is this really what you’re gonna be doin’ this weekend, Clint?”

I now could tell that Frank didn’t believe Matt’s story and he was once again trying to probe for an answer to what it was we were really up to all the time. “Yeah, Frank. That’s pretty much what we’re gonna be doing this weekend. We appreciate your offer though.” I now felt as if Frank could see right through me.

Our friend stared at us both for a moment as he studied our faces. And then he let us know what he really thought about our reason for not being able to accept his invitation. “Bullshit!”

“What?” I attempted to act as if I didn’t understand. “I said bullshit, Adams. You guys haven’t done a minute of studying all semester. What I think is, you’re really gonna go off to wherever it is you two go to all the time. Aren’t ya? With that strange-lookin’ guy who’s always comin’ ‘round here to pick youz two up in his Cadillac.”

For the first time I felt as if Frank really did know something finally about our goings-on. And as I struggled to think of a convincing way to respond to my friend, Matt spoke up first.

“We don’t know what you’re talking about, Frank.” The boy now looked as if he believed that Matt had just insulted his intelligence and his lineage because immediately then Frank shot to his feet. “I’m not stupid, ya know. I know youz guys are always going off somewhere and doin’ somethin’. And I don’t buy this business about foreign language classes or swimming workouts.”

“Frank, you can smell the chlorine on our clothes. We’re in the pool every afternoon.” As I tried to make myself sound reasonable, I felt compelled to make an attempt at least to do what I could to salvage our cover at this point. “I don’t buy it!” Frank now was sounding angry. “Youz two used to be really great guys when you first got here. I used to like hangin’ out with youz because ya both had a kind of zest for living that was different from everybody else around here. But you’ve both changed. You’re not the guys you used to be, and I think it stinks.” Frank then got up out of his chair and opened our door so he could prepare himself to leave our room. He had apparently endured as much of our company as he could stand for one afternoon. “I don’t know what the hell is goin’ on around here, but you can bet your asses I’ m gonna find out.” Frank then stepped out of our room and into the hall. “And you can take that to the bank!” And with that our friend slammed our door shut and left the dorm. Afterward, Matt and I were silent for a moment. Neither of us had realized that our outward appearances had become so different.

“Shit!” Matt uttered finally.

“Really,” I concurred.

Looking back on it, we were just dumb kids, I guess. We had no idea that the things which took place later that day and the next two were even possible. But the day after Frank’s visit to our room, Matt and J came to understand that something serious was going on when after classes had ended, the day student who owned the in-board out-board with the wooden hull returned to the upper campus from the dock yelling that someone had stolen his boat. We were on hand to witness this boy’s anguish because by this time, we had been restricted to staying on the campus since the events of late Thursday afternoon had rendered our futures at the Friendly Inn doubtful at best.

Ever since the big push had begun to sell more of Fatso’s cocaine, the four of us were escorted each day by only one upperclassman instead of the usual two and many of these guys had been allowed to bring their own cars from home to facilitate their duties off campus. Thursday afternoon—a half hour or so after Frank had stormed out of our room—it was Artist’s turn to drive us to the inn. And perhaps ten minutes or so after we had all been placed in our motel rooms, and while Matt and I were just hanging around and waiting for our first customers of the day to show up, Artist returned in a panic and told us that we had to get out of our rooms that instant and race back to his car. As we ran past the lobby, we could see the old woman come out from behind the front desk and move rapidly from one section of the large room to another so she could urge the men and the women who had come to the inn to experience us, to get the hell out of there while they still could. After that it wasn’t until we were halfway back to the Academy before we fully understood what it was that had caused this emergency.

“What happened to you guys?” Matt asked. He and I were sitting in the front seat next to Artist while Juan and Carols had already been waiting for us in the back seat when the rest of us had arrived back at the car. Because of our haste, neither of us had really looked at the other boys until now.

I then turned around also to inspect our friends and saw right away that they had been beaten up. “Gee, yeah! What did happen to you guys?” I was surprised as well by their condition.

Juan wouldn’t acknowledge that anyone was speaking to him. He kept staring out through his window refusing to say a word to either of us. So Carlos took it upon himself to respond to our questions. “Artist hit us,” he answered angrily.

Matt and I then looked at Artist as he guided us south along Highway 193.

“Why did you hit them?” I asked.

Artist thought for a moment, and then he took in a deep breath and let it out. “I couldn’t think of anything else to do,” he answered sharply. “Anyway, they brought it on themselves.”

“What are you talking about?” Matt asked. His frustration was beginning to show.