March 14, 1941

The boys spend the week cooling down from the fight and meet a new group of hostile rivals.

Hersch "

Friday, March 16, 1941

            This week has gone unusually smooth since the unfortunate incident that was Monday, though I haven’t had any time alone with my thoughts since then. Apparently the thing the four of us have in common is the ability to suppress bad things that happen.

Erich never apologized to me or Gabe (not that we thought he would), but he’s managing to live in close proximity to us without starting any more clashes. He had a black eye for a few days, and I was actually impressed with myself that I’ve managed to hold off on hating him for him for a while. I guess I probably shouldn’t have punched him, but the guy was seriously asking for it. England was supposed to be better. I didn’t expect to be stuck with more goddamn Germans.

In general, though, everything seems to be going better. Classes are easy enough, even though of course I haven’t been in school in a while, so it’s been a little hard to get back into it. The four of us hardly say anything, but that’s better than fighting. No one else has exactly reached out to us, so at this point, weather we want to admit it or not, we’re all each other have.

 

Gabe "

            By Friday, we had already fallen into routine. Erich was, using no method we could see, always up first. I was shaken awake when he crawled out of the bunk, and Hersch would stumble out of bed a few minutes later. We would awkwardly get dressed " everyone had staked out a corner of the room for privacy " and grab our books before heading out. If we forgot to throw something at Jim, he would come dashing down the hall after us a few minutes later.

            We sat on opposite ends of the dining hall, sharing tables with people who we had never spoken to. I wondered if we would ever bite the bullet and try to sit together, but it hadn’t happened yet. Obviously none of us were clicking with anyone one else much better than we had hit it off with each other.

            Classes were dull. I had second period with Erich and first and fourth with all four. Of the four of us, bored as I was, I managed to stay awake the most.

            Third period was the best two hours of the day. After lunch I would race back to the dorm and grab my violin with more enthusiasm than I would be able to show for anything for the rest of the day. I hadn’t let on to any of the other guys that I played. The last thing I wanted was for people around here to think I was queer.

            I tried not to worry about it, but the anxiety was always looming in the back of my mind. People had been presuming I was that way (as it was so often phrased) for as long as I could remember. But school, being surrounded constantly by dozens of guys, was the last place in the world I wanted anyone to think that.

            It clearly wasn’t working. Obviously there was something about me that made Erich say what he said to me on that first day of class, and it made me even more intent on hiding my music from them. I had barely been able to open my mouth in front of him since.

            The music studio was behind the main building and it was likely that hardly anyone else knew it existed. Barely anyone else was taking Instrumental Theory, so we didn’t play together. I would take whatever music the instructor had for me and close myself off in one of the closet-like practice rooms. Time would fly by then. Playing had always made life easier, even back in Italy, when things could not have been worse. For those few hours, nothing else that had ever happened mattered.

            I hated putting my violin down, but I always left practice early. Our instructor, colorfully referred to as Professor Crackers since no one ever learned his name, was nearly always locked in his office listening to Bach on an ancient gramophone (emerging only to inform the six other students and myself that we had no talent), so he was hardly one to notice. I dreaded being seen coming out of the music building, so I would race across the grounds to the dorm and toss my carrying case under my bunk before the bell could ring.

            On that first Friday, though, I almost didn’t get away with it. I was shoving my case under the bed when I heard the door open. I looked up as fast I could and whacked my head against the top bunk. I swore and turned around to see Erich standing in the doorway.

            “Smooth,” he said amusedly, “No fourth period today. Showers.”

            I froze, “Showers?” I asked tensely.

            “Yeah,” he motioned for me to follow.“Come on. We missed our chance on Wednesday, and I’m not smelling like this for another day.”

            I cursed about a thousand times in my head, but I wasn’t about to defy him. Somehow the yellowing bruise on his eye made him even more intimidating, and anyway, there was no way out. So I swallowed nervously and followed him out the door.

 

 

Erich "

            I hadn’t expected to find Gabe back in the room, but it saved me the trouble of tracking him down to tell him about the change of plans. He rushed after me with a hand pressed to his injured head.

I had cut out of class a few minutes early only to find that, thanks to the shower schedule, I wasn’t even breaking any rules. The thought of avoiding a whole class period made me happier than I had managed to be in my whole first week at Wellington’s, and it outweighed the realization that none of us had taken a shower in more than a week. I had intended to grab a clean set of clothes from the dorm, but I had forgotten what I had gone back for by the time I ran into Gabe.

We were both quiet as we walked down the path. Gabe followed a few steps behind, a sure sign that he was still plenty afraid of me. Being feared was usually reassuring to me, but with him I felt almost guilty. I had a long way to go if I wanted to amend for my actions on the first day of class.

“Hey!” The voice came from behind us and I cringed at the sound of the American twang. Jim and Hersch jogged up from behind us. Of the four of us, they seemed to get along the best. “You got the word, too, huh?” Jim asked. “S**t, am I ever ready for a shower.”

“You got that right,” mumbled Hersch. “Does anyone know where this building actually is?”

We looked around at each other for some kind of indication that we knew where we were going. “I do,” said Gabe softly. The fight had made him shy, and it was the first time he opened his mouth in front of all four of us. “It’s the building behind the far dorm, on the west side.”

No one bothered to ask how he knew that, mainly because he seemed so embarrassed to have known it at all. But we followed him to a tiny, square brick building on the far end of the lot.

The room was less repulsive the some of the ones back home, but it came close. There were six shower heads bolted to the brick walls and what appeared to be a control valve in the middle. The ceiling was dripping with what we could only hope was water and the floor was so grimy that it became an immediate and unanimous decision that we would all shower with our socks on.

We glanced around awkwardly before peeling off our uniforms. Jim, who was clearly the least inhibited, was out of his clothes first and went over to twist the valve, at which point all six showers began to sprinkle.

“Damn it!” he cursed. “That’s f*****g cold!”

I stepped in and found that he was right. The water was freezing and I had to grit my teeth to keep them from chattering.

I tried to put the cold and the all-around awkwardness of the situation from my mind and reached for the soap. “Hey, where’d Gabe go?” I looked up at Hersch’s question to see that Gabe had, indeed, disappeared.

“Beats me,” Jim said casually, “the guy’s so damn shy. I’m out of here too. This water isn’t worth it.” He reached for a towel and headed for the bench where he had left his clothes. Hersch, who " like me " was probably used to worse conditions, lingered a little longer and was out the door a few minutes later.

The privacy was worth the cold. I stood there and let the freezing water rain down on me for a few long, serene minutes. It was numbingly icy, and I liked it. I was calm for the first time in ages, almost unnaturally peaceful.

That was when I realized that my feet were turning blue and it would be a good idea to get out.

Outside, it was almost as cold as it had been in the showers. There were still slushy patches of snow lining the path, though there probably hadn’t been a storm since February. I shivered as I walked along, blowing on my numbed hands.

As I made my way along the side of the west dorm, I spotted Hersch and Jim talking to another group of guys. This seemed strange to me since I hadn’t realized they knew anyone else. The second group walked away laughing before I could reach them and by the time I got the guys they were just staring at each other. Scared stiff.

“Hey,” I said, looking at them curiously. “What was that about?”

Jim turned to me. “Friend,” the word surprised me so much that I barely processed what he said next. “You’re never going to guess what we’ve gotten ourselves into.”

…

Jim "

            I had been looking forward to a shower all week, but the experience ended up not being worth much time. I was out of that room as fast as possible, though not as fast as Gabe, who had pulled off a pretty amazing disappearing act.

            The shower had put me in a bad mood and I sulked as I trudged along the wall of the far dorm. England sure wasn’t what I had thought it would be. Back home, we all saw Europe as a death trap, and, when I left Wisconsin, nothing could have sounded more exciting. But past the pile of rubble that was left of London, the country was turning out to be every bit as dull as the States.

            I was so wrapped up in my frustration that I didn’t notice the group of guys that had stalked out of the building and were now standing directly in my path. I recognized one of them as the a*****e prefect that had shown us to our dorm. He smacked another guy on the chest to get his attention and they all looked at me.

I bristled. My gut instinct was to turn around and avoid them, but it was too late.

“Oi!” one of them called to me. I stopped stupidly and they had me surrounded in a second. “You’re the American, aren’t you?”

I swallowed nervously, “Yeah.”

“So you’re one of the ones rooming down in the basement then?”

“With the German”

“And the Jew”

“And the queer”

I whipped my head around to try and figure who was actually talking. They were picking up each other’s sentences so fast I couldn’t keep up. “Well, yeah, the… wait " the queer?” I was confused. Did they mean Gabe? He was an odd guy but I hadn’t picked up on anything in particular that would lead to that conclusion.

“Never mind that, here comes the Jew.” I turned and saw Hersch coming down the walk towards us. He kept his head down and I could tell he was hoping that whatever was going on didn’t involve him.

“Hey,” a big guy caught him by the shoulders before he could get away. “Hold up, mocky, you’re not going anywhere.” Hersch thrashed towards the boy who had said it, but he was still held back. “We’ve been at Wellington’s for a long time, and we don’t need people like you around turning it into a shithole.”

“But we’re going to give you a chance anyway,” another one finished. “Every year we test the newcomers’ character with a little challenge.”

“It’s nothing, really; just a little danger to see if you’ve got the balls for Wellington’s.”

I narrowed my eyes. “What are you getting at?”

“You’re going to break into Knight’s personal stash,” said the prefect, the obvious leader, “there’s a damn lot of whisky hidden in the back of his trunk and you’re going to take it.”

“What?”

“You heard me,” he nodded and the guy let go of Hersch. I wondered why until I turned and saw Erich coming out of the shower building behind us. Apparently there wasn’t a single person in the world he couldn’t intimidate. “This won’t ever happen again if you bring us the juice.”

“And if we don’t?” Hersch asked through gritted teeth. I could tell he was inches from lashing out and I seized his arm to prevent things from getting worse. But the prefect didn’t reply, just raised his eyebrows and motioned for his group to follow him back into the building.

Erich rushed up behind us, looking confused and disappointed that he hadn’t been able to catch what they had said to us. He asked what was going on. “Friend,” I said, for lack of a better word, “you’re never going to guess what we’ve gotten ourselves into.”

Erich jammed his hands into his pockets and looked down with his eyebrows knit together. “S**t.”

Reviews

[Arianna]

afain i really liked it
they all feel so real, like you couldn't have possibly fabricated them beacuse they leap off my computer screen.
i loved the name Professor Crackers XD
i cant imagine being on a schedule to shower?
thats seriously got to suck....
even though their fictional...
which i keep forgetting...
and im interested to find out why everyone at this school seems to be a jerk...just putting it out there...they do. :)

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[Coyote Poetry]

You have create a powerful story. I like the human feel of the story. Putting four different people with different attitude could create some interesting problems. I like the ending. A open ending make the reader want to know what will happen next? A excellent chapter.
Coyote

[Jake Donald Stephens]

Oh! So that's the thing about Gabe that Erich "didn't like" but couldn't put his finger on when they met.
And now the other guys at the school are ganging up on our heroes, hmmm, this might force them to bond whether they like it or not.
Oh, and just in passing, I like Professor Crackers. He sounds like the best teacher there.
This book gets more interesting with each chapter, just a few typos here and there that I noticed, but really brilliant characterization and story development.
Back soon for the rest.

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[hannah]

i have to say, jim and gabe are my favorites. hersch just doesn't really interest me. i was also under the impression that this school was full of diversity, but i guess i was wrong since these other boys are dead set against them.. good writing twin!

[poetic-raven2012]

:) i'm really enjoying the ending of chapters on cuss words:)

[LostinKristina]

seriously, poor poor gabe.
l:

anyways, i have nothing bad to say about your writing, you do it
very very well.
keep it up.

[trish420]

Yay! Do I smell their first bonding adventure?

Poor Gabe... I sense things will be tough for him :-(

Loving the story so far though!!