Was it an honor violation or not? Staines was not using some drug, after all. There was nothing in the rulebook about deodorant. It probably didn’t make you that high, anyway. It just rotted your brain cells so quickly that you thought you were high. So if Staines was not doing anything illegal, then they really hadn’t deceived Mr. Carella, and then the councilmen and everybody would keep Staines in school, and a whole big production would be made out of nothing because Thomas had panicked.
He needed to think this over some more.
He heard the water go off in the shower and the squeak of the hooks as the shower curtain got drawn back. Thomas let himself out the door quietly and walked quickly back to his room. Two boys emerged from a room three doors down, but they had not seen him come out of Carella’s apartment. Staines would kill him if he found out about the visit.
Within just those few minutes, Greg had returned from his meeting with the yearbook staff after dinner. Oh, hell, it was club night. That’s why so few people were on dorm. Thomas had missed his meeting of the Spanish club. Big deal. What could they do—kick him out of school for it?
“Hey,” said Greg. He sat down at his desk. “Why didn’t you come to rehearsal?”
“Something came up here.” Should he tell Greg or not?
Greg pulled a handwritten note out of a cream-colored envelope on his desktop. “I’ve been invited to tea at the Somervilles’,” he said.
“Good deal,” said Thomas, but he felt a tiny lurch of envy. It was almost getting to be funny; just when he thought he was as miserable as he could possibly be, something else went wrong.
Tea at the Homestead was a Wednesday night ritual with the Somervilles. Each week they invited ten or so different boys over to drink coffee or tea and eat finger sandwiches before dinner. Every boy at the school got invited sometime during his stay, but you never knew when the invitation would come. It was a huge honor to be invited, and you never turned them down. And the boys who got invited more than once usually turned out to be councilmen or editors of the newspaper or other big wheels on the campus. It was almost like a screening process. Thomas had never been invited.
“Good deal for both of us,” said Greg. “You got one, too.” He pulled out a sealed envelope and handed it to Thomas. In black ink his name appeared in a thin wiggly script.
“Where’d you get this?” Thomas asked.
“On your desk,” said Greg. “Haven’t you done any studying today?”
Thomas opened the envelope. “Mr. and Mrs. Horace Somerville,” he read, “request the honor of your presence for tea, Wednesday, December 1, at 5:30 P.M.”
Greg put the note aside and unrolled the blueprints he’d been looking at last night.
“Mr. Delaney says that nobody has found any secret tunnel in the twenty years he’s been making the assignment,” said Greg.
“Then why does he assign it?” He wanted to scream Greg listen to me can’t you see I’m going nuts what the hell am I going to do?! But he sat there like it was any old ordinary day and they were having an ordinary old conversation.
“He says it should be there,” said Greg. “There’s a story of old Mrs. Stringfellow escaping some marauders by leaving through a secret tunnel.”
Maybe he was worrying over nothing. Maybe Staines had really done nothing wrong. He could feel it out with his roommate.
“Look,” said Thomas. “Suppose you found somebody huffing Right Guard deodorant on the dorm. Would you consider that a violation of the drug rule?”
“Yes,” said Greg. “Who did it?”
He should not have asked Greg. Of course the answer would be yes; now the guy was waiting to find out what was up. Should he tell Greg or not? Telling him would bring another person into the incident and triple the complications. But Greg was reliable. He could keep a secret. But of an honor violation? Thomas needed to talk to his faculty advisor before he spoke to any other student. This was becoming too confusing. “I was just wondering what you’d say,” said Thomas. “Hypothetical case.”
Greg looked at him funny, turned back to the blueprints, and rested his hands like blinders on the sides of his head. Thomas left the room without speaking again. A newboy was using one of the pay phones in the hall. The other one was free. He tried to call Hesta. She was at consultation with her math tutor. He tried to call Mr. Warden. There was no answer. He couldn’t leave the dormitory because he wasn’t supposed to go outside alone. He couldn’t go back to his room because he didn’t want to talk to his roommate. He couldn’t go to Mr. Carella’s because he wasn’t sure of what he wanted to say.
He could see why Russell Phillips might want to throw himself off the gym roof.
SCENE 7
At 10:15 on Wednesday morning Benjamin Warden sat in the English office with Daniel Farnham and tried to prepare a lesson for his 10:45 class. He had spent all of yesterday afternoon and evening with Cynthia at the hospital, and now he was scrambling to catch up with his work. So far the medical tests had produced no clear diagnosis, but more would be run today. There was nothing Warden could do for her this morning; it was time to concentrate on Othello.
“You could just cancel the class,” said Farnham. He sat in a ladder-backed wooden chair next to Warden’s cluttered desk. “None of the students are going to want to discuss English anyway.” Monday night’s death of Russell Phillips was still generating much conversation on campus.
But Dr. Lane had made it clear that he wanted life to go on as normally as possible.
“I don’t like to cancel a
