Tobias stepped off the train and found himself standing in a rural meadow overrun with late summer wildflowers. He took in a deep lungful of pure, unpolluted country air. He clawed at his throat and collapsed, writhing, onto a cluster of tiny yellow flowers.

"Help! I'm asphyxiating! I'm trapped in a coffin and there's no way out! Gasp! Sputter!"

The middle-aged woman manning the train station's ticket booth looked at him with a face stonier than a moai, pulled down the shade over the ticket window, and left her post to go home.

He was stranded. There was no sign of the bus that was supposed to be there to pick him up. He had no idea where he needed to go.

Why am I even here? he thought.

...Oh right. The drugs.

He sat up, still nestled in the patch of flowers, and dug around in the secret pocket inside his luggage for the cigarette he had hidden away. He found its accompanying match, struck it against the platform's cement foundation, lit up, and took several hard drags. Within minutes he was tossing the spent butt onto the gravel shoulder that divided the train tracks from the field. He preferred the smoke in his lungs over the fresh air. He was no stranger to fresh country air—he came from a small outskirt community himself, after all—but he preferred his fresh air, not this place's fresh air. Who knew what sort of new allergies he might discover he had out here?

He picked one of the yellow flowers, holding its fuzzy green stem between his index and middle fingers like another cigarette. The one he had just finished had been his last one, and he already regretted smoking it. He had meant to hide it away for an emergency, but then his bus hadn't come to pick him up, he was in the middle of Bumblefuck, New England, and not another soul was around for miles. That constituted an emergency as far as he was concerned. Now he was still stuck all alone in Bumblefuck, New England, and didn't even have any smokes left to help him pass the time.

He looked down at the flower in his hand, realizing that he had crushed it into a pulp that left his fingers wet with a bitter, herbal smell that made him slightly sick. He wiped the sticky green juice off onto his denim jacket and craned his neck to look down the road, which rose and fell like a camel's back an infinite number of times into the horizon. He shielded his eyes from the glare of the late afternoon sun and waited.

Still nothing.

Why didn't I ask the ticket attendant to give me a ride before she left?

I might be stuck here for the rest of my life.

How long will it take for me to run into another human being if I just start walking?

Will my parents find out if I ditch St. Francis and hitchhike to California?

Just as he was reaching for the handle of his luggage, he heard the low rumble of an engine progressively getting louder as it lumbered over the hillside. He watched as a huge, ancient clunker of a Buick appeared and disappeared throughout the rises and dips of the road and eventually pulled into the gravel parking lot beside the station. A grey haired, bushy-eyebrowed man wearing a steel blue windbreaker with a silver dove emblem stitched onto its lapel got out of the car and trudged toward Tobias. Up close, Tobias noticed the man's face seemed subtly scrunched up, like he'd just walked through someone else's fart cloud.

"You Tobias Kinsella?" the man asked.

"Yeah! How'd you guess?" Tobias looked around in amazement at the deserted platform.

The man ignored the sarcasm and turned to head back to the car, waving for Tobias to follow him. "I'm Coach Kelly. I'll be taking you to St. Francis."

"I thought I was supposed to be picked up by a bus. At least that's what my mom told me." Tobias followed the alleged Coach Kelly to the car but hesitated to put his bags in the trunk once it was popped open. This guy might have just been pretending to be from St. Francis and could just as easily have been a farmer slash cannibalistic pedophile. He had read a lot of books on forensics over the summer. Rural country people always tended to be a bit…off.

"We stopped sending buses here back in oh-three to cut costs, since we never had enough students arriving at the station to fill the seats. In fact, you're the only student we've had come by train in a coupla years."

"Yeah, well, I keep telling my mom that the locomotive's heyday is behind us, but does she listen?"

Tobias squinted at the Buick one more time and spotted a St. Christopher medallion hanging from the rearview mirror, with a tacky little rubber football dangling beside it for company. That seemed about as much evidence as to Coach Kelly's identity as he could ask for, so he figured he had nothing left to lose and tossed his bags into the trunk before he slid into the back seat. Coach Kelly had to rev the engine a few times to get the thing started again. The car lurched forward once or twice, and then they began the journey down the long, undulating road.

Tobias leaned forward and rested his arms on the back of the front passenger seat, feeling restless after the long train ride and his brief moment of thinking he had been left for dead. He kept his eyes on the rubber football swinging with the motion of the car.

"So, what sport do you coach?"

Coach Kelly glanced at him through the mirror. "Guess."

"Football? I mean, I see your decoration, but I didn't want to assume. My dad and older brothers all played football in high school and college." He drummed his fingers against the top of the seat, eliciting a glare from the coach, but otherwise he received no further response. "Any big games coming up?"

"Nope. Too early."

Tobias waited a good fifteen seconds before he accepted that Coach Kelly had no further comments.

"You're not a very talkative man, are you Coach Kelly?"

"Nope."

Tobias finally admitted defeat and rolled down the back window (once he figured out it used a manual crank, not a button) to help air out the smoky remnants of the cigarette from his clothes. He tried to pay attention so he could memorize the route from the train station to St. Francis. If things went to hell, he could always make a break for it and find his way back there. It wouldn't be hard – it was basically a straight shot to the station as far as he could tell. If nothing else, he could flag someone down on the road and hitch a ride somewhere. There had to be an actual town around here somewhere. Life couldn't thrive without a convenience store within a few miles.

At last they turned a corner and headed towards a towering wrought iron gate set in the center of a high, red brick wall. Someone had hung a banner across the top of the gate, its message written in gilded letters against a royal purple background: 'Welcome to Shit Francis!'

Tobias did a double take, but on his second viewing he saw that the banner really read 'Welcome to Saint Francis'. A small, almost hysterical squeal escaped his throat from the absurdity. Maybe it was a premonition.

Welcome to Shit Francis, Toby. Home for troubled boys—your new home from now on!—filled to the brim with even worse delinquents and psychos than you.

For all he had heard about St. Francis over the past summer, this was his first time seeing the school in person. The campus was massive, sprawling across several hundred acres of neatly manicured lawn, but otherwise totally surrounded by wilderness. The first red brick building became visible through the twisted branches of molting trees. It looked sinister and imposing in the way it loomed so high in the sky it blocked the sun. It might as well have dropped out of a Boris Karloff movie.

The place seemed eerily dormant when they finally parked in front of the administrative building, where Tobias would have to announce his arrival. There wasn't a sign of life anywhere, not even a breeze to stir the trees. He was starting to wonder if everything there was dead when a crow cawed somewhere in the distance. He pulled his jacket collar up around his neck as he stepped out of the car. He had gotten almost too hot after sitting in the sun while he was waiting at the station, but now the sun had gone behind the clouds and the air suddenly had a damp chill to it.

"Kinda early in the year for a sudden cold front, isn't it?" he said while Coach Kelly opened the trunk to let him take out his bags. He wasn't surprised when the coach had nothing to say in return.

The uneasy knot that was forming in his stomach released a little bit when another car came up the drive and parked a few spots away. A sign of life! He watched as a pitiful-looking, red-faced boy, perhaps a year or two younger than Tobias, emerged from the back seat of the car. A middle-aged man appeared from the driver's side next, followed by a similarly aged woman whose girth and inappropriately formal dress suit forced her to wrestle her way out of the front passenger seat. She immediately began snapping at the kid and didn't let up even as they headed for the administrative offices; her son (Tobias presumed) hung back by about a yard, head down, feet dragging. Tobias couldn't hear them from where he stood, but he didn't have to in order to know that the kid was in deep shit.

Well, aren't we all?

Things got even worse when a couple of other students came out of the administrative building's main door and tried to stifle their laughter behind their hands as they ran past the new boy and his parents.

Poor kid, Tobias thought. He'll probably get killed his first night here. I should introduce myself to him. Whoever he is, I feel like we've already bonded.

2

That poor boy's name was Alfie, and he was currently choking down the urge to puke.

The wave of nausea had washed over him as soon as he saw a massive cross hovering in the sky, sticking out over the treetops like some Great Divine Judgment looming before him. A fine sheen of cold sweat had gathered on his forehead by the time he planted his feet on the asphalt of the parking lot.

"Well," his father said to him from over the roof of the car, "what do you think?"

"Where's the moat?" Alfie replied in a sullen deadpan.

His mother, already agitated from the long car ride (though, realistically speaking, she had been constantly agitated since the previous May) struggled to heave her bulk out of the car and raised her voice when she spoke to make sure everyone far and wide could heard her: "You have no right to have that gloomy attitude, Alfred."

His sense of dread and queasiness increased threefold. It would almost be worth it to have his parents dump him here if it meant not having to hear his mother's shrill voice waver with self-pitying crocodile tears one more time.

"You shouldn't have caused trouble in the first place if you didn't want to face the consequences for your actions. And what about us? Do you think we're happy to be sending you to this—this—" She struggled for a moment to find the right words before she gave up and made her point just as effectively by huffing a deep sigh.

He tried to keep up with his parents' quick, forceful strides to the door of the administrative building, but it was difficult to keep a steady pace when he had invisible shackles strapped to his ankles. A couple of students came out of the building and laughed at him when they overheard him getting lectured.

He was going to get killed his first night here.

"Ah, Mr. and Mrs. Cotton!"

The sound of a man's voice made his mother's rebukes cease instantly. A tall man dressed in a navy suit appeared in the doorway to greet them. He had dark hair that was graying at the temples, and a closely trimmed salt and pepper beard. He introduced himself as Headmaster Leclair. Alfie was slightly surprised—subconsciously he had been expecting the faculty to be wearing brown friar's robes, even though he knew that wouldn't have been right for what was essentially just a Catholic boarding school.

"It's so nice to see you both again," the headmaster said to his parents. "I hope your journey went smoothly. And this young man here must be Alfred?" He turned to regard Alfie with a wide, warm smile.

Alfie said nothing. There was an acidic ball in the back of his throat, and he was afraid if he opened his mouth all of his guts would come pouring out.

"Al-fred." His mother prodded his back. "You're being impolite. What's happened to you these past few months?"

"Never mind, Mrs. Cotton," the headmaster said with a light chuckle that eased the tension. "It's not unusual for new students to feel nervous and clam up when they first get here. But I'm sure you'll feel right at home in no time, Alfred." He put his hand on Alfie's shoulder and gave it a firm squeeze, almost firm enough to bruise, before guiding him to the door. "Now, let's all go to my office and have a little chat before you get settled in."

3

Golden brown breasts and thighs.

Vincent hovered over the back of the wingback chair Lucas was sitting in and stared down at the pictures printed in the magazine that was spread open on his friend's lap. Golden brown breasts and thighs, glossy and in full color.

"Bon Appetit, Lucas?" he said with disdain. "This is the reading material you chose to bring back with you to keep you company through the long winter nights?"

"Why not? You'll thank me after you get reacquainted with St. Francis cuisine."

"I don't need to get reacquainted with it. I think I'm still digesting the last meal they served us at the end of May."

Lucas scrunched up his nose. "Filet of sole and bread pudding." Both had been the same whitish-grey color, and roughly the same gelatinous consistency. He turned the page of his magazine to reveal a closeup of a shiny glazed devil's food cake.

Vincent moaned like someone who had just lost the love of his life. "Put that thing away, Lucas. Reminding me of what I can't have anymore isn't going to make me feel any better, it's just rubbing salt in the wound."

A third boy poked his head into the doorway of the common room where they were nestled, panting so hard he could barely get his words out. "Fresh—meat's—here! You'd better—hurry up if—you wanna— grab one. Leclair's already downstairs and—has claimed about five—of them for himself."

Suddenly Madison Dorm was filled with the sound of a dozen feet thundering over polished wood floors and down the long, winding staircase. When they reached the ground floor, Lucas and Vincent were pleased to see that Leclair was still inside, watching the new arrivals through the large bay window next to the dormitory's front door. If he was still here, that meant his claims were still just verbal and hadn't been set in stone yet. They went to join him, three vultures gathered to observe their prey, trying to determine who out of all the fresh meat was to be the Golden Goose that year.

"Oh God," Lucas moaned. "Check out the one trying to heft his suitcase up the steps. That's a candyass if I've ever seen one."

"No way, Sigmund," said Leclair. "I called him when he first arrived twenty minutes ago. You snooze, you lose."

"I wasn't snoozing. It's called unpacking. Not everyone has personal assistants to do their physical labor for them. And technically it's against the rules for you to start making claims before the rest of us even arrive to get a look at them."

"Bullshit! It's first come, first serve. The reservations begin the moment the cars pull into the parking lot. If you're not here for it, then tough."

"Can you believe this selfish-ass manwhore?" Lucas turned to look at Vincent, who didn't seem too impressed with what he was seeing so far.

"No skin off my ass if he takes them all."

"What's the matter? Nothing strike your fancy?"

He stuck out his lower lip and gave a shrug, a strangely childish gesture that Lucas always found funny coming from Vincent, considering what the guy was actually like.

"All of the new students always look alike for the first few days," he explained. "How am I supposed to know what to look for?"

"It's their body language," Leclair said as if he were an expert on the subject. But Lucas thought that what Vincent said was true—they all had the same closed-off skittishness to them at the beginning. It was difficult to tell the difference between typical New-to-Saint-Francis anxiety and the qualities that made up a Golden Goose. Leclair began to divulge the tricks of the trade to Vincent despite his obnoxiously self-centered position when it came to actually claiming them. He wasn't trying to be helpful, he was just bragging about how much better he was at it than everyone else.

Lucas took a step back and looked at the two of them huddled side-by-side with their noses pressed against the glass. The words 'window shopping' came to his mind. That's exactly what this was—or rather, a horrifically perverse version of it.

"Look at that one!" Vincent shouted, suddenly perking up. "Looks like his mommy's still lecturing him about whatever he did to get sent here." He pointed at a short, slender boy with honey brown hair and a shell-shocked expression. He had just arrived in front of Madison with his parents. "Is that a tear I see glistening in the corner of his eye?"

"He's so cute. Almost…feminine," Leclair breathed the words in pure awe.

Lucas shoved between them to get a better look at the prize in question. The boy's parents were already retreating back to their car, apparently deserting their terrified son in an unfamiliar place without even helping him to bring his luggage up to his room. Maybe they would have at least given him one final glance over their shoulders if they had realized they were leaving him to the mercy of the predators waiting in the wings. Lucas knew with just a glimpse that this boy was, without a doubt, the Golden Goose that year.

He couldn't allow Leclair to get to him first. It was out of the question.

Leclair glanced at Lucas beside him, their eyes meeting in a silent declaration of war.

"I'll race you for him!" Lucas nearly spat in Leclair's face and bolted out of the door so fast it left his adversary momentarily stunned.

He made a beeline for the new boy without risking looking behind him to see if Leclair was on his heels or not. He skidded to a halt in front of his target, so determined to be the first one to introduce himself that he barely registered the horrified look on the boy's face.

"Hhhhi!" he wheezed out, out of breath from running, but it still counted as a win. With that secured, he allowed himself the luxury of catching his breath before speaking again. "My name's Lucas Sigmund, but please just call me Lucas! D'you just get here?"

"Uh. Yeah. I'm Alfred Cotton. You can call me…Alfie." His voice was quiet, and his hands were busy twisting the untucked hem of his new dress shirt, which hung too loosely on his small frame.

Wow. From far away he had seemed girly, but up close?

Jackpot.

He was at least half a head shorter than most of the other guys at St. Francis, and so thin as to seem delicate. The kid's disheveled bangs fell into his Bambi-ish eyes, which were framed with long, dark lashes. But best of all were his small, plump lips that lent just the right amount of femininity that would make him such a hot commodity at Madison.

Shit, Leclair was going to hate Lucas's guts for the rest of the year for getting to him first, ha-ha-ha.

"Hey!" Leclair shouted once he caught up with them, looking and sounding, to Lucas's ears, deliciously indignant. "What the hell, Sigmund?"

Lucas elbowed Leclair in the ribs. "Don't be rude, Danny Boy. You should say hello to our new friend. This is Alfie, from…uh?"

"N-new Jersey," Alfie supplied.

Leclair glared at Lucas for a long beat before he found the dignity to compose himself and start fresh. "Hey," he said, addressing Alfie. "I'm Daniel Leclair, and you can call me either Daniel or Leclair, but not Danny Boy." He extended his hand, which Alfie cautiously accepted.

"Don't you have other new arrivals to welcome?" Lucas gritted his teeth and gestured with his chin towards a couple of other new guys that Vincent was working his charms on already. "Leave Alfie to me. He's in good hands."

Lucas was certain he could hear Leclair's back molars about to shatter from how hard he was grinding them. Ol' Danny Boy gave him a look that could have frozen the flames of hell.

"Yeah. Sure." He turned to Alfie. "Don't hesitate to find me if you get tired of this guy's company. I know this place better than he does, anyway." After that he obediently retreated without another word to reclaim the remainder of what he thought was his property.

Once Leclair had disappeared into the crowd, Lucas melted his grimace into a sweet smile and turned back to Alfie.

"Are you going to haze me?" Alfie asked.

"Haze you?" Lucas tilted his head and tried to act innocent. "What do you mean?"

"The students here are mostly like troublemakers and stuff, right? There's going to be some sort of initiation, isn't there?"

Lucas realized that Alfie was trembling at the mere thought. He supposed the kid was seeing visions of hot pokers coming at his face, ice picks under his fingernails, being forced to drink unholy concoctions mostly comprised of bodily fluids—the boy obviously expected the works.

He had no idea what was really in store for him, and that it was even worse than he could imagine.

Lucas cracked a big smile and slapped Alfie's back. "How refreshing! Most new students are naïve, but you're pretty cynical from the start, aren't you? Don't worry, nobody here is planning to haze you."

Of course he was telling nothing but the truth – what the guys of Madison Dorm had planned wasn't technically a hazing but a new way of life.

"I'm a nice guy, I promise. Let me help you carry your stuff to your room and then I'll give you a tour around campus. Don't want to get lost on your first day of class, do you?" He ushered his new buddy towards the dormitory, not without twisting his head around on his neck to stick his tongue out at Leclair first.

Senior year tally so far – Lucas: 1, Leclair: 0.

4

Tobias stood alone once again, feeling rejected before he had even had the chance to say hello. As soon as the boy from the parking lot's parents had left, some squirrely and disheveled-looking guy had swept in and made friends with the boy before Tobias had even been able to come within ten feet of him. Surely there would be other chances for them to get acquainted, but this would have been such perfect timing, considering the imaginary bond Tobias had felt.

"Hey."

Tobias turned around and came face-to-face with a blond guy who didn't look like he belonged at a place like St. Francis at all. He was too….clean. He was handsome, neatly groomed, and Tobias already sensed that he had a demeanor that could convince you to give him your lunch money for the good of the planet. Definitely a white-collar crime type of guy. Here was the school's Golden Boy – Tobias knew this on sight.

"My name is Daniel Leclair. Allow me to be the first to welcome you to St. Francis."

"Leclair?" Tobias repeated. The headmaster's name was Leclair. Great, this guy was probably here under his family's power and got special treatment. Forget white-collar crimes, nepotism was more likely.

Tobias couldn't tell if the guy was smiling or smirking at him. He felt compelled to give him a fake name in return, but he quickly realized that not only were they going to be classmates, they were also going to be living in the same dormitory together for the better part of a year, so that would likely not go over well in the long run.

He reluctantly gave his real name, working through the distinct feeling of stranger danger. He looked at Daniel Leclair, gorgeous and well-groomed, and thought of a car salesman. Or the Devil. He pushed the feeling back, telling himself it was probably just his subconscious mind overreacting in response to everything that had happened to him over the last few months. Once one psychopath fucks you over, you tend to become suspicious of almost everyone.

"So, you've been assigned to Madison too, huh?" Daniel Leclair said to him. "Which room are you staying in? I'll help you bring your things up and then show you around campus."

"No, that's okay!" Tobias quickly said and grabbed his luggage handle without thinking. "I can manage by myself. Thanks, though."

Something less-than-gentlemanly flashed in Daniel Leclair's eyes, too fast for Tobias to be certain that he hadn't just imagined it. "Are you sure? The campus is huge, and you have less than forty-eight hours to memorize where your classes will be. You'll regret not letting someone already acquainted with the layout guide you. I insist."

"No, really. I spent all summer memorizing a map of the campus, so I'll be just fine." He turned away from Daniel Leclair and started towards the dormitory's entrance.

"Suit yourself," Daniel Leclair called after him. "Don't say I didn't warn you, though. I'm sure you'll be able to find me when you change your mind."

Tobias kept walking without acknowledging that he had heard him. As soon as he heard Leclair's footsteps fade away, he glanced back at him. He watched him for a few minutes as Leclair approached another new Madison resident and begin going through the same spiel. From this distance his smile looked friendly and genuine as he effortlessly hoisted the other boy's heavy bag over his shoulder, the two of them chatting amiably on the way to the main door. Shit. Had he let his paranoia get to him again and cause him to completely misjudge a harmless guy?

And what the fuck was with Madison Dorm, anyway? From the second he stepped foot inside it, he wondered how he was expected to live in a place like this. His assigned room on the third floor was the size of a prison cell, for one thing, with all the charm and comfort that came with it. It was just big enough to hold two twin beds and two basic desks for him and his still-unknown roommate. There was absolutely no privacy to be had here, even in bed, considering how they were positioned parallel to each other with only just enough room between them to squeeze by.

The communal bathrooms were no better. The doors on the shower stalls reached neither the ground nor the ceiling, and they all had an inch-wide gap on the hinged side, which practically invited everyone else to peek in at the bather as they were passing by. And the acoustics were a nightmare. Every little cough, sniffle, or squeak of a shoe echoed throughout the whole room for all to hear.

Jacking off was going to be impossible here.

Just the realization of that alone made him feel the claws of anxiety dig into his chest. How did all these guys survive this place?

5

In one of the academic buildings across the quadrangle from Madison Dorm, Lucas Sigmund was giving Alfie Cotton a personal tour.

"Science…History…Theology…and French is down there, the last room at the end of this hall," Lucas explained, pointing at different doors as they passed them. "What do you have after French?" He grabbed Alfie's schedule from his hands. "English? That's also in this building, but it's on the first floor. There's a staircase hidden in the back of the music room; if you use that you can save about three minutes between classes."

Alfie quietly nodded along to every word Lucas said, but he had barely heard a word of it. Lucas seemed pretty well-liked around the campus, which was quickly made apparent by the way other students would greet him with a smile and a wave when they passed by, and he probably had better things to do than show a newbie like Alfie around. Why was he being so helpful to him? And why was he a student here in the first place? He didn't seem like the type of person Alfie had been expecting to find at St. Francis.

"Um," he finally dared to say during a lull in Lucas's monologue. "I'm sorry if this comes across as rude, and I don't want you to take this the wrong way, but…how exactly did you end up at this place?"

"I knifed a guy back in my old school," Lucas replied without missing a beat. "Just rammed it right into his gut. The kid lived, but just barely. His lawyer said I missed perforating his small intestine by half an inch. But the guy had been cracking jokes about my mother for weeks, so he was basically asking for it."

Lucas kept walking for a few moments before he stopped and turned around, aware that Alfie wasn't keeping in step right behind him anymore. Alfie knew that it probably wasn't a smart move to let someone like Lucas sense his fear, but his mouth gaped in horror against his will. He glanced at the windows lining the outer wall of the hallway and wondered if he would survive a jump that far down.

Lucas burst into laughter.

"Alfie, I was only kidding! If any of that were true, I'd be in juvie right now, not at freaking St. Francis. So if any of the other guys try to make themselves look tough and intimidating, just remember that fact, okay?" He retraced his steps back to Alfie and gave him an encouraging pat on his shoulder.

"Y-yeah." Alfie looked down at his feet. "God, why don't I just paint a bull's-eye on my forehead and make it easier for everyone?"

"Nah, don't be so hard on yourself. Look, I know St. Francis has a bit of a reputation out there, and I figured I'd have a little fun with you since you look so terrified to be here, but I didn't think you'd take it so seriously. I apologize, alright? I was being a dick. To tell the truth, I go here simply because my stepdad convinced my mom it would be a great educational opportunity for me. I don't have a single felony or even a misdemeanor under my belt yet. Feel better?"

Alfie nodded, indeed feeling slightly more at ease, but still not wholly convinced. Yet?

"Great! And just so you know, not every single guy here is a delinquent. I mean, look at you, for example. You don't seem like the tough guy type, either. So, spit it out. What did you do to get sent here?"

"I didn't—" Alfie started, but his voice got caught in his throat and he had to swallow hard before he could try again. "I didn't do anything. Someone else did something and pinned the blame on me."

"What, like you mean you were framed?" Lucas's eyes lit up and he moved to sit on a windowsill, as if he were settling in for a story. "So, what happened?"

"Well, to make a long story short, the principal at my old school thinks I vandalized his brand-new Mercedes. I didn't even know it had happened until I was in his office being told I was going to be expelled."

"Um." Lucas furrowed his brow. "I feel like I'm missing a huge, important chunk of this story."

"Tell me about it," Alfie sighed.

"What made him think it was you?"

"Well…the person who did it slashed his tires, broke all of his windows, and spray painted some…very creative insults all over the outside of the car. The principal had our security guards check everyone's lockers, and guess whose locker was the only one that had cans of spray paint inside it?"

Lucas was still frowning. "Someone stashed them in your locker? But why? Who would want to do that to you? I mean, was it just by chance that they chose yours, or do you think someone was deliberately trying to get you in trouble?"

"I don't know," he said, his voice barely rising over a whisper. Months and months of defending himself, only to have his pleas fall on deaf ears, had built up inside him and now threatened to come out in a huge sob. "I've never been in trouble in my life and I'm not enemies with anyone at school…or at least I never thought I was. Now I don't know anything. I've always thought it was easier to live life quietly and stay out of everybody's way, but for some reason I was chosen to take the blame for this, and whoever really did it did such a good job of pinning it on me there was no way I could defend myself. The evidence was too much for me to even argue against."

Lucas seemed to consider this before he responded. "No offense, but you've just explained why someone would pick you to be the fall guy. Of course whoever did it is going to pick a quiet, wimpy kid to blame it on. You're actually pretty lucky to be sent here as your punishment. Something that bad could have just as easily gotten you sent to a real reform school, or worse."

"I don't feel very lucky," Alfie said.

"Well…I promise you that I'll do everything I can to make sure you don't have a bad time here," Lucas said with such sincerity Alfie couldn't help but trust him.

6

Students and faculty members alike assembled in the dining hall for the introductory banquet at six o'clock. When he approached the table assigned to Madison residents, Tobias noticed Daniel Leclair taking a seat at the end of the long bench and made a point to find himself a seat as far away from him as possible.

In a stroke of good fortune, he found the boy he had seen in the parking lot earlier that day situated at the middle of the table, several spaces from Leclair, sitting beside the same squirrely guy that had swooped in before Tobias had gotten a chance to say hello.

"Hello," Tobias said, taking a seat on the bench across the table from them. "I saw you in the parking lot earlier. We both arrived at St. Francis at the same time this afternoon."

"Oh?" The kid looked more mortified than anything. He probably knew Tobias had witnessed his mom chewing him out.

"I was glad to see you show up," he said, hoping it would put him at ease. "I was starting to feel a little lonely and creeped out before I saw your car come up the drive. I was afraid I was going to be the only new guy here this year or something."

He saw the boy relax a little. "I can relate. My name's Alfred Cotton, but I usually go by Alfie."

"I'm Tobias Kinsella."

"Lucas Sigmund," said the guy who had made friends with Alfie Cotton first, addressing himself to Tobias.

"You're a St. Francis veteran, I take it?" Tobias asked Lucas.

"I've been a student here since my freshman year. How do you like our fine school so far?" he asked with an unmistakable hint of irony in his tone. Maybe Lucas wasn't going to be so bad.

"The rooms are prison cells, the bathrooms are ridiculous, and I don't like having a roommate."

"Me neither," Alfie spoke up. "I've never had to live with a roommate before. I'm not really too thrilled with the idea of sleeping next to a stranger."

"None of us are, Alfie," Lucas said with a laugh. "At least, we weren't when we first got here. But you learn to make friends with your roommate really fast. Who are you guys rooming with?"

Tobias gestured to Alfie for him to answer first.

"I haven't met my roommate yet, but I think his name was…Vincent something."

"You're joking! Vincent's my best friend—not just at St. Francis, either. We've known each other since we were kids. We both grew up in the same neighborhood in Los Angeles."

"You're from Los Angeles?" Alfie said. "And I thought I felt far from home just coming from New Jersey. Do you ever get homesick being on the other side of the country from your family?"

"I miss my little brother," Lucas said. "But I've been at St. Francis for so long, this has become like another home to me. I try not to think about Los Angeles too often." He turned to Tobias. "And who are you paired up with?"

"Michelangelo Reyes. Do you know him?"

Lucas didn't bother to hold back a snort. "Only like the back of my hand. This is our third year in Madison together. Angel's a pretty cool dude. I don't think you're going to have any trouble with him as your roommate."

Tobias noticed a strange intonation to Lucas's words, like he was implying something between the lines, and was about to ask him what exactly he meant by that, but the ting ting ting of a fork being tapped against a water glass interrupted all conversation. Headmaster Leclair stood at the front of the large hall to commence a long speech to welcome the new arrivals and the returning students.

While the headmaster spoke, the food was wheeled out of the kitchen on carts and placed on the tables. Tobias obediently kept his head bowed during the concluding prayer, but after a couple of minutes he began to get antsy from the smells wafting by him. He hadn't eaten since the untoasted Pop Tart his mother had forced on him before he boarded his train that morning. He peeked through a slit in his eyelid to spy a serving dish full of pallid-looking steamed carrots sitting to the left of him. Oh, damn.

When the prayer finally ended and he was able to get a proper look at the food, he felt a wave of horrible disappointment. Still, it's not like he had any alternatives. He began filling his plate with wilted salad, overcooked chicken, and lumpy, bland mashed potatoes.

Tobias looked over at Alfie, whose plate was still empty. "Carrots?" he asked, nudging the serving bowl towards him despite knowing that it wasn't likely to suddenly inspire his appetite. Alfie spooned some onto his plate, though he didn't seem to be in a hurry to eat any.

"Hey guys, this is as good as it gets," a student sitting a few places away from them said, leaning forward to address them over the chatter of the other Madison residents between them. "I'm not kidding, the food is always the freshest the first day back. Eat now, because you'll never know what sort of surprises they might serve us tomorrow."

"Vincent!" Lucas said. "This is your new roommate, Alfie! I hear you two haven't had the chance to get acquainted yet."

Vincent's demeanor perked up and he picked up his plate as he stood up from the bench. He nudged the guy who was currently sitting beside Tobias to get him to move over and plopped down among the small circle of budding friends. He pointed at Alfie's plate. "Those carrots are one of the easiest things here to choke down if you put a little non-dairy butter substitute on them."

"I don't really have much of an appetite," Alfie replied. His hands remained in his lap.

"I don't know what all you guys are talking about," another student spoke up from further down the row. Tobias recognized his roommate, Michelangelo Reyes, apparently better known as Angel. Angel dipped a piece of his dinner roll in his water glass to soften it. "My mom normally just heats up cheap microwavable dinners, so this is like home to me."

"My mom," Tobias said, "used to be a sous chef at the Hilton in Manhattan." He tried poking at his dry chicken. His fork couldn't even pierce the meat, it just bounced back like the bird was resisting its fate from beyond the grave. He put his fork down in defeat and looked around the table. If nothing else, at least dinner time gave him a chance to get better acquainted with the other poor bastards he was destined to suffer with for the next nine months.

One lone student sitting at the far end of the table caught his eye. While the rest of the students from Madison sat close to each other and talked merrily, this one guy looked like he was trying to sit as far away from everyone else as the circumstances would allow. He was all bones, and his pale complexion, contrasted with dark hair and eyes, helped add to the Tim Burton character look he had going for him. His plate was filled with salad and nothing else, but like Alfie and Tobias, he ate nothing. He just sat there tearing up the lettuce leaves, perhaps trying to look busy until he was allowed to leave. Was he another new student, too? Was he nervous? Or just non-sociable?

"Hey…who's that guy?" Tobias asked, addressing anyone who would listen.

"Oh, that's Gimsing, Daniel Leclair's roommate" Lucas answered, sounding unconcerned. "He's harmless. He's just a little shy, that's all. Don't worry about him." He returned to his conversation with Alfie and Vincent, preventing Tobias from asking any more questions about it.

Why would he be worried about him? And what did he mean by 'harmless'? Why would he even feel the need to bring that up?

Tobias leaned forward to glance at Leclair at the opposite end of the table. He was having an animated conversation with a group of guys he was obviously good friends with.

Tobias had to admit that the Gimsing guy looked like an antisocial type he'd want to avoid, but it was Leclair that still gave him the heebie-jeebies. He was gorgeous and polite, yes, but there was an air of unwholesomeness about him. Maybe it was the slant of his eye, the way his lids were always lowered like he was too good to look at anything head-on, or the way he carried himself slowly and confidently, less Boy Scout and more Future Conqueror of the Earth. Tobias wasn't exactly known to be the best judge of character (Christ, was that the fucking understatement of the century?) but he thought he must have at least become an expert at spotting that kind of personality by now: A wolf in sheep's clothing.

7

After an extremely unfulfilling dinner, Tobias wanted nothing more than to retire to his new bedroom and stretch out on his very own two-inch thick mattress that had a delightful metal spring sticking out of the top right corner. Unfortunately, his dreams were put on hold while every incoming student was subjected to a surprise room search.

A lanky, red-haired guy with a big nose and an air of unearned superiority barged into the room and began ransacking Tobias's belongings for contraband. He kept glancing back at Tobias every few seconds, as if silently warning him that he knew he was hiding something and, by God, was he going to find it.

Tobias didn't mind being treated like a criminal, but he couldn't stand being treated like an idiot. How stupid did the school think he was? Hiding 'personal items' under the mattress was something a seventh grader would do. He was suddenly glad he had already smoked his last cigarette earlier that day, though.

"What's with the pat down, anyway?" he finally spoke up when he noticed Red Hair squeezing the pillow he had brought from home. Did he think it was going to be filled with smuggled cocaine? "I thought this wasn't reform school."

"Doesn't have to be," Red Hair said. "This is a privately-owned Catholic institution, and we reserve the right to remove any content that we deem inappropriate from the premises," he explained, like he was the owner of the place instead of just a student on a power trip. 'We', ha! It took all of Tobias's power not to laugh in his face. The guy was probably seventeen years old, just like the rest of them.

He finally concluded the search with a bit of visible disappointment at having come up emptyhanded. He left the room to see what the next poor soul might have hidden in his underoos without so much as a good-bye.

"What? No body cavity search?" Tobias called after him, left to clean up the mess the douche had made of his wardrobe, which he had already spent half an hour carefully organizing upon his arrival.

"You'll get used to it," Angel told him, picking up a sweater that had been dropped on the floor. "Besides, Marcus's bark is bigger than his bite. He just likes giving the new kids a hard time. He almost made me cry my first day here. You'll barely notice him the next time."

"The next time? How often do they do this?"

"Oh, occasionally. It's usually once every couple of weeks or so."

"And I don't suppose they warn you beforehand?"

"Of course not. If they told us when they're going to do them, we'd have time to find hiding places for all the stuff we don't want them to know about."

"You sound so well-adjusted. How do you manage?"

Angel gave a sly smile. "There are ways. You'll eventually be in the loop, too. Just be patient."

Tobias frowned. He hated vague and cryptic answers. Besides, patience had never been one of his strong points.

8

Meanwhile, down the hall, Alfie was a raw nerve with arms and legs. He had never had a roommate before, and he had never been subjected to a room search before, and he had never had to share a bathroom with ten other guys before.

The way Marcus handled his belongings and kept looking up at him incriminatingly made him want to crawl under his bed and die.

I have nothing to worry about, he kept telling himself. I just have clothes and underwear and a toothbrush in there. There's nothing that will get me in trouble.

Yeah, sure. He thought the same thing when the police were searching the lockers at his old school last spring. He was positive he had been safe as a kitten, had never even given it a thought because there was no reason for him to, and guess whose locker was packed with spray paint cans, still dripping red all over his English assignment?

My luggage was sitting in here unattended all afternoon, wasn't it? What if someone came in and stuck something in there just to mess with me?

"Dude, just relax," his roommate, Vincent, told him. He was reclining on his bed, reading a book as if he didn't even notice that there was someone in the room going through his things.

"You're clear anyway," the guy interrupted with an annoyed sigh and went on his way, pushing past the riff-raff loitering in the hallway like he had a bomb to deactivate.

Alfie whimpered a small prayer of gratitude and fell backwards onto his bed.

"You seem awfully relieved. You got something hidden?" Vincent sat up on his elbow and raised his eyebrows inquisitively.

"Of course I don't!"

"Then why are you so nervous? If you act suspicious, Marcus is going to pick on you twice as much."

Alfie pressed his hand to his stomach. "I think I'm getting an ulcer."

Vincent snorted a half laugh at him. "It'll be okay. You're not going to get into trouble if you have nothing to hide. And having a roommate isn't so bad either, you know. I'm not going to get mad at you if you get a sock on my side of the room." He stood and patted Alfie on his head. "Just calm down and learn to go with the flow, or else you're gonna get killed by the guys who are bigger than you. And that's like everyone here."

"Thanks for the advice. I feel much better now." Alfie lay on his bed and curled up against his pillow. It was Saturday night; if things were normal, he might have been at his best friend's house helping him to work his way through the Water Temple in Ocarina of Time. Why did things have to go so wrong?

9

Tobias spun around in his new desk chair while he waited for his laptop to connect to the school's Internet service. 'High speed Internet' the brochure had said. It wasn't a lie, but they didn't mention that the signal was coming from ninety miles away.

His heart gave a little jump when he saw the white bars on his taskbar light up, signaling that he had been successfully connected to the World Wide Web. Time to see what he could still get up to.

Videotube: blocked.

Facespace: blocked.

Filthy German Sluts: Mega blocked.

FUCK. How the hell was he supposed to spend his free time now? And what about his friends back home? They would probably forget about him within a week if he couldn't contact them.

"I'm going to go get ready for bed," Angel announced, gathering up his toothpaste and pajamas.

Tobias did a doubletake at the clock. "It's 8:30. Lights out isn't for another two hours."

"I know, but I want to beat the bedtime rush later this evening."

Wow. What a party this place was.

"You'd be wise to follow my example unless you like brushing your teeth with a bunch of other guys standing shoulder-to-shoulder with you."

"I'll just wait until everyone's done. I've always preferred my showers after midnight anyway."

"Oh no, you don't want to do that."

"Why not?"

Something flashed in Angel's eyes. "There's head check, for one thing. You don't want Marcus finding you out of bed after lights out, trust me. You're better off getting your business done early and avoiding the bathroom until the morning."

"So we can't even go to the bathroom in the middle of the night? That's stupid."

Angel shrugged. "It is what it is. Just don't say I didn't warn you."

"You make it sound like there's a ghost in there at night or something."

"Maybe there is."

Once Angel was gone, Tobias couldn't help but think that something about this place was terribly…off. Every passing minute left him feeling more and more like he had fallen into the Twilight Zone.

He was going to figure out why.