The Tragedy Paper (20 page)

I was amazed, and interested.

“I’m honored,” I told him, reaching across his desk and taking the key. “Thank you.”

“The only thing I ask is that you pass it along to another student when you’re finished with it, someone else who might benefit from it. Is that a deal?”

“Yes, absolutely,” I said. I was beyond eager to get to the book, but I had a feeling I should wait until things quieted down.

“Now go forth,” he said, “and spread beauty and light.”

For some reason I felt empowered by that. When I saw Vanessa’s friend Julia at dinner, I walked right up to her. Normally I would have pretended I didn’t see her. When she saw me coming, she actually smiled.

“Hi,” I said. I had seen her so many times. It would have been ridiculous for me to introduce myself at that point. So I didn’t. Of course she knew who I was.

“How’s Vanessa?” I asked. I wanted to get right to it. I wasn’t sure how long I would have her attention.

“Much better,” Julia said. “We made her go see the nurse this morning. It was pretty funny, actually. She was all dressed and ready to go to English. You should have seen her—she was so weak she could barely brush her hair. But she kept insisting that she didn’t feel sick anymore so she could go to class.”

I smiled and nodded. I couldn’t believe she was talking to me like I was just a regular person. I didn’t want her to stop. She told me how they tricked Vanessa into thinking they were walking her to class but instead took her to see the nurse.

“Is she still there?” I asked.

“No,” Julia said. “She spent most of the day there, though. Now she’s resting in her room.”

“That was nice of you guys,” I said, shifting my tray to my other hand. It was getting heavy. “To take care of her like that.”

“You know how it is at school—we’re her family,” Julia
said. She was quiet for a few seconds. “I hear you were pretty nice to her too,” she added.

I looked down. Had Vanessa really told her friends about that? The pull to go talk to her was so strong, but at the same time things had never been better—all the way around. I didn’t want to ruin anything.

“Did the nurse say what made her sick?” I asked.

“No, a virus probably,” she said. “I mean, we all eat the same things, and nobody else got sick. It sounded awful.”

I nodded again. It looked and smelled awful too, but I didn’t say that.

“I’m gonna sit down and eat,” she said. “Do you want to join us?”

I was still eating at the back table alone.

“No thanks,” I said. “I already put my books over there.”

“Well, if you change your mind, the offer stands,” she said.

“Thanks.”

I made my way over to my usual table, and had just taken a big bite of a chicken leg, when Patrick came over. I swallowed fast and hard, almost choking, having no idea what he wanted from me now. Before he started talking, he looked behind him almost like he wanted to see if anyone was following him.

“We didn’t finish last night,” he said quietly.

“We didn’t?”

“No. I mean, all the senior invitations are out, but we still have to pick the junior officer and the extras.”

I was as shocked as I had been the day before that he was still going out of his way to enlist my help—again. I’d forgotten all about the junior officer and the extras. To be honest, I hoped he’d move on to another newbie. I was fairly sure I was the only one who dared like his girlfriend. It was becoming clear to me that he enjoyed watching me squirm.

“Sure, I guess so,” I said, wondering if I was ever going to get to eat.

“Can you come by my room after dinner?” Patrick asked. “Around seven-thirty?”

Did I have a choice? “Sure,” I said.

“Great,” he said. “See you later.”

By then I had pretty much lost my appetite, though I realized it would be the second meal I would skip that day. I was going to be starving.

When I was finished, I left my tray on the table and went up to my room to lie down. My eyes had been killing me for days. It was getting harder and harder to focus. One night I woke up with such a bad headache that I wasn’t sure how I was going to make it through until morning.

I didn’t want to admit it, but I was having moments of complete blackness. So far they had happened only in my room, which was so lucky because I worried about what
would happen if I was walking around. I guess I would just stop until my eyes readjusted. It usually took only a few seconds, thirty at the most, and then light would come back in and I could pretend everything was okay for a while longer.

Back at my room, I got right into bed. I wished Vanessa could be there and take care of me like I’d taken care of her. It seemed to me that her smile and the soft touch of her hand were so powerful they could make it all go away. Maybe I should tell her about it. Maybe she could help. I was so tired, I had to fight sleep. I must have lost the battle, because the next thing I knew, there was a knock at the door.

I jumped up, feeling a stab of pain in my right eye along with some dizziness. The clock said eight-fifteen.

It was Patrick.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“I think so,” I said, trying to shake it off. “I guess last night’s lack of sleep caught up with me. I’m sorry. I’ll come right over.”

“Your eye is red,” he said, pointing.

I glanced in the mirror. It was. It looked like someone had painted the white of my right eye with red paint.

“A blood vessel must have popped,” I said casually. “No big deal.”

“Maybe you’re getting sick,” Patrick offered. “Maybe you’re getting that nasty bug that Vanessa had.”

“No, I’m okay,” I said. “This has nothing to do with Vanessa.”

“I hope you’re right,” he said. Then, “But just to play it safe, try not to touch anything in my room. Getting sick is the last thing I need right now.”

When I shut the door, I took a better look at myself. I knew things always looked worse on me than they would on other people because of my intense whiteness. Cuts and bruises looked especially terrible when on someone else they might barely be noticeable. When my eyes got bloodshot, they got really, really bloodshot, but this was something I hadn’t seen before. I shook it off. With all that exhaustion and the headaches, it was probably nothing, just tiredness. Plus, with all my rushing around the night before cleaning Vanessa’s trash can and ducking off her floor this morning, maybe I really did pop a blood vessel or something. If it didn’t get better by the time I went home that summer, I told myself, I would talk to a doctor about it.

I ran my hand through my hair, smoothed my shirt, and headed out. It seemed like days had passed since I sat on Patrick’s floor making invitations.

I knocked.

He pulled open the door, and I was shocked to see a roomful of guys. Last night I had been so surprised that I was the only one he chose to work with him, and now I was equally surprised to see other people there.

“Hi,” I said, hoping, as usual, that it wasn’t some sort of trick.

“Hey,” they all said, echoing each other.

“What’s up with your eye?” asked Peter, the one who had been in the bathroom the first time I met Patrick.

“I’m not sure,” I said, raising my hand to my eye. The sharp pain had gone away, so it couldn’t be that bad, I told myself. “I burst a blood vessel or something.”

“Come in,” Patrick yelled from the back of the room. I counted—there were eight guys plus Patrick. The pictures of Vanessa were still there, and a few had been added. I could see Patrick looking at me. I was sure he wanted me to notice the pictures, and I was starting to wonder how much of it was for him and how much was for me. Unlike last time, though, I was able to look away. Patrick hesitated for a minute.

“Everyone take a seat,” he finally said. “Let me explain how this works, even though most of you already know. Basically, it’s a lottery. We choose one name from the bunch—which I will put in my most favorite hat—to be the junior officer. Then we will also choose nine extras. All ten will get an invitation to the outing but will not be told who the officer is—until that night. A bulldog handkerchief is quietly slipped into his or her pocket at the beginning of the event. Then it is up to him or her to begin the outing. That person starts everything. It’s symbolic.”

For the first time that night, I noticed Kyle, the guy who
had brought me the note from Vanessa asking me to meet her to run. He had always been friendly enough. I was glad to see him. He cleared his throat.

“I checked and there are forty-seven members of the junior class and not a single one of them has the same name, so I just wrote down the first names,” Kyle said. I had been right about him. From what I had observed, he was definitely on the outskirts of popularity—a bit closer to that golden ring than I was, for sure, but still not quite there. It made me wonder again how the decision was made about who would be in on this.

Kyle held up a plastic bag full of scraps of paper. It was a little ripped on one end, and I wondered if any of the names fell out. I considered saying something, but since I had no idea what was going on and I didn’t really care that much, I decided to let it go.

Patrick smiled.

“Any questions?”

I raised my hand.

“I don’t mean to ask the obvious, but I have missed a lot of the buildup,” I said. Patrick nodded. “How was
this
group picked?”

“Oh—that’s easy. Last year I was the officer, clearly. Everyone else here was an extra. Sydney was an extra too, but she didn’t come back this year. The rules say we have to invite the new people to fill the openings.… It’s a way to make them feel welcome, I guess, so—welcome!” Patrick said in a
surprisingly patient tone. What he said made sense, but there seemed to be something off about it. Could it really have been a coincidence that the most popular athlete in the school just happened to be picked out of a hat to lead the senior class in this way? I doubted it. I wondered about the insertion of the handkerchief into his pocket during last year’s Game. Had he been excited? Did he expect it? And it also seemed suspicious to me that everyone in the room was male, considering they chose from the entire class. Shouldn’t the ratio have been more like five to five, three to seven at the outside? But nine to one? I strongly doubted it.

Patrick moved to his desk, where he picked up what looked like a black magician’s hat. I had expected something along the lines of a Yankees cap, so I was surprised to see it. He tapped the top, then turned it over and walked across to Kyle with the bowl of the hat ready to receive the names. Kyle slowly counted each scrap of paper he put in, making sure they were all there. They were.

“Tim, would you like to do the honors?” Patrick asked.

This was getting weirder and weirder. I thought I might tell Vanessa about this whole thing—I could imagine how her face would look when I told her. I hoped I would have a chance to. Just then one of the recently added pictures caught my eye. She was twirling on the quad, her bright skirt dancing around her, lilacs in the background. I swallowed.

“Sure,” I said, reaching up and fishing in the hat for a name.

“Wait!” Peter called, putting up his hand. “We didn’t take the oath.”

“You’re right,” Patrick said. “Okay, Tim, hold on a minute. We have to take the oath.”

I had already settled on a piece of paper, but I let it go and pulled my hand out, wondering how this would change the fate of the draw and ultimately of next year’s senior Game. The word
magnitude
ran through my mind again, and I realized I was becoming brainwashed. All that talk of tragedy—maybe it wasn’t so good for people our age.

Patrick opened his closet door, got down on his hands and knees, and dug to the way back, through a huge pile of what must have been dirty laundry. He pulled out a bottle of liquor and a stack of tiny plastic cups. He handed each of us a cup and filled it with a bit of liquor. When he got to me, I could see the label said bourbon. I had never tasted anything as strong as that—a beer here and there, a sip of wine with my mother and Sid, but nothing that resembled hard alcohol. My head was starting to throb, not just near my right eye but everywhere now. I knew the bourbon would only make that worse.

Once everyone had a cup, Patrick put down the bottle and the rest of the cups and held his out.

“Repeat after me,” he said.

“I hereby promise that everything that transpires in this room will remain secret,” he said.

We repeated it.

“And that any decisions made, choices agreed upon, and names uttered will never be discussed again—with anyone.”

We repeated that too.

“And never forget—what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.”

I started to laugh, but the rest of the group repeated it, so I stifled my laughter and said the rest of the words.

“Now drink,” Patrick commanded. And we all did, quickly. The burn was overwhelming. I was still trying to recover when I noticed everyone looking at me, waiting for me to pick up where I had left off. I quickly reached into the hat, not even bothering to sift through the choices, and grabbed a name. I held it up, wanting more than anything to lie down.

“Read it to us,” Patrick said.

I unfolded the name and could see thick black writing, but it was so blurry. I held it close to my face, then pulled it back to see if that would be better. Everyone laughed, I guess thinking that the alcohol had already had an effect on me.

“Can
you
read it?” I said to Kyle, sounding a bit pathetic.

“Sorry, man, house rules: he who pulls reads,” Kyle said.

I kept looking, and slowly the letters came into focus. I made out a
D
and I was sure the last letter was an
N
. Finally I was able to see it.

“Duncan,” I said, sitting back.

“No way, that guy’s such a loser,” a mean-looking kid named Justin said.

“I’ve never even heard of him,” Peter said.

“Now, now, gentlemen,” Patrick said. “I’ve thought this through, and this is exactly why we took the oath. We’ll pick all ten and then decide who will best fit the job.”

I don’t know why, but to me it seemed like breaking the rules. Also, I want to apologize here for being so frank, but you’ll see I have to be to tell the true story. At this point, I’ve got to tell the whole, honest story or this would all be a waste.