Tradition: Chapter 29–Epilogue

“You’re in,” she said, her voice quiet and warbling.

I felt a little too old to feel this emotional, so broken up, I had no words to describe the fissure I felt widening inside me—but I also felt like, why?

Javi came around the corner of the stands and leaned on one of the scaffolding pipes holding them up.

The overnight lights cast a jaundiced glow over the room, and the whole place still smelled like sweaty socks and bile.

The overnight lights cast a jaundiced glow over the room, and the whole place still smelled like sweaty socks and bile.

I held the skate edge and scraped it against the locker, over the words, and in a few seconds it was a barren waste of squiggles.

“I know you don’t like seeing your girlfriend or whatever disparaged like that, but these guys have been doing this for years. That graffiti was probably from last year or before.”

It was demented and archaic.

They were sick of my demands for racial affinity support groups and more body image counseling for girls.

I was having the hardest time keeping a smile off my face, so I remained as silent as possible during the deliberations.

His hands had pushed and kneaded my body as if it was clay, as if there was nothing else inside me, no person, no me at all.

Lianne flashed them a scathing look, so I knew something was up.

A squat man in a black suit, head hunched forward like an old dog’s, sat in the passenger seat, and even though he was partially obscured by the netting, I could still see who was in the back, his knees hiked up onto the bench because there wasn't enough legroom.

“It isn’t. But here’s what gets me. So I have most of the team pissed at me right now, like I’m some kind of aberration, like I’ve disturbed their sense of calm.”

To know right from wrong, and to know it so profoundly, was a gift.

That day was no different, and while Hodges’s team filed off to the locker room, and their fans slowly exited the arena, the Fullbrook crowd unlocked the doors in the boards and, in a flurry of wool hats and scarves, all Fullbrook maroon, spilled out into the rink, slipping and sliding and tumbling around, a nonsensical pandemonium of discombobulated bodies undulating on the ice.

Together, with Jules on one side and me on the other and Aileen standing tall in the center, we stared down at the rest of Fullbrook. Defiant. Proud. Indefatigable.

Nobody at Fullbrook might have wanted to talk about it, but they couldn’t deny seeing it, especially when she got up and walked to the concession stand between second and third period, and again, after the game, when the stands emptied onto the ice and she rose, glowing above us all, her blue sequins sparkling like stars under the halogen light.

Large, light, cotton ball flakes gently sifted through the air, blanketing the campus in a kind of idyllic innocence.

When Aileen and I walked by the dining hall and saw Gillian and her team stringing lights up under the portico, Aileen dropped the coat off her shoulders again and stared ahead.

He was immaculate, everything fit him perfectly, he had the cleanest shave at Fullbrook; he looked as strong and fresh as a tree—he even smelled something like cedar.

When I was sufficiently encased, Javi pinned the boutonniere to my lapel, straightened my collar, and then stood back.

When I was sufficiently encased, Javi pinned the boutonniere to my lapel, straightened my collar, and then stood back.

The names of the freshmen were read aloud—like the induction to some kind of society. Like a debutante ball.

Tonight, coolly, almost solemnly, they marched to the girls’ dorms, deadly serious.

I slipped away and walked briskly toward the bathrooms, and almost slammed into Aileen.

I loped like a long-limbed beast across the lawn of the academic quad, swishing my feet through the snow, almost skating, so I would leave footprints behind.

We walked up and down through the trough I’d made.

The music stopped, and for a moment there was a peace and calm and quiet that stalled me, that made me wonder if I shouldn’t go through with it, but under the moonlight, I could see the shadowy fingers of leafless trees poking up out of one darkness and into another, and if he didn’t listen to me that night against the tree at Horn Rock, he would at least have to see it now.

For a moment, as I heard the ebb and flow of commotion echoing down the stairs, I held my breath again.

Two days later I was sitting in the admin building lobby with the threat of being expelled under charges of assault and battery and arson.

He started each day reminding himself he could be proud to be the man he was, and that pride could get him through the day no matter what. It wasn't bravado. He wasn't tough. All he had was integrity, and that was enough.

He started each day reminding himself he could be proud to be the man he was, and that pride could get him through the day no matter what. It wasn't bravado. He wasn't tough. All he had was integrity, and that was enough.

...what Patterson didn’t say and what I didn’t have the heart to say either is that that didn’t matter, what she had done, it was nothing compared with the crusty old bald man shuttling into Fullbrook in his helicopter and demanding that Ethan, a man with a future, be protected.

There is an old Italian proverb that goes something like “To find a friend is to find a treasure,” and I think that’s true.