"Look at his ass!" Blair said, his voice shaking with rage as he pulled the robe off me. "He isn't going to be able to sit down for a week! This is such bullshit!"

"Look, Blair, I agree with you." I recognized Marc's voice through the fog. "I can't believe people actually swung so hard-"

"They should be drummed out of the Brotherhood," Blair went on. "We should probably take him to the emergency room!"

"And then what? Lose our charter when the dean finds out?" Marc said.

Whatever pill they'd given me was starting to take effect. The throbbing was fading away, and my head felt like it was free from my body and I was floating above it all. I opened my eyes and saw Blair, Marc, and Rory. The three brothers I've had sex with, I thought and started giggling. Marc and Blair were still arguing somewhat, but when they heard me giggling, they stopped and stared at me.

"It's the Vicodin," Rory explained. "Must be hitting him now"

"I don't care what anyone says," Blair went on, reaching down and stroking my head. "He's not sleeping in the chapter room tonight, and he's not answering the whistle tomorrow morning."

"I'll have to talk to the Executive Council-"

"Tell them it's an important lesson to the pledge class," Rory interrupted Marc, kneeling down and patting my forehead with a wet cold cloth. "Don't tell the pledges anything about him. Let them wonder all night and all tomorrow morning. Not a word about him to any of them."

"That's good, Rory." A smile spread over Marc's face. "They'll be terrified, and maybe Ted will learn something from this whole thing."

"And if they don't go for it," Blair replied, "you can tell them I'm calling an ambulance, and my next call will be to the fucking police."

And I fell asleep.

I stayed in Blair's room until the middle of the next afternoon, and unlike my pledge brothers, I was treated royally by the Brotherhood. Several brothers came in with food and sodas, looked at my ass, and apologized for hitting me so hard. (I later found out that the brothers who had taken real swings were placed on a two-semester probation by the Executive Council-another infraction and they would be tossed out without trial by the Brotherhood. Also, this incident almost split the house in half, the Brotherhood had met and argued for hours while I slept.) My ass was sore, and Marc came in to tell me that the Executive Council had decided to excuse me from holding the wall until Hell Week was officially over. "No," I said, "I won't be held apart from my pledge brothers. I will do whatever they do."

I returned to the chapter room around three o'clock that afternoon. I could walk-a little slowly, and sitting down was difficult, but Rory had given me the rest of his Vicadin prescription, all the little pills broken in half. "Just take a half," he'd whispered when slipping me the bottle, "if you need to. Half will dull the pain but won't fuck you up so bad that it's noticeable."

When I walked in, only one of my pledge brothers was there, of all people, it was Ted Norris. He looked up when I opened the door, and just as quickly looked away. "Hey, Ted," I said, wincing as I slid down by my stuff. "How you doing?"

When he didn't answer, I looked over at him and saw that his lower lip was trembling. "Ted, are you okay?"

"No, I'm not," he replied in a shaky voice. He still wouldn't look at me. "I don't even know why I'm still here. Everyone hates me!" He spat the words out, and then he did actually start to cry.

"No, they don't," I lied, and hated myself for lying to him.

He wiped at his eyes. "Yeah, they do, but thanks for lying. I know I don't deserve it." He looked at me, his eyes filling again. "I'm sorry about last night, Jeff, really I am. I didn't know they were going to do-that to you."

"Ted-"

"Oh, I know you all hate me. Everyone does. Everyone always does. I try so hard, you know, to make friends but nothing ever works. You all hated me almost from the start." He kept sobbing. "I wanted to belong somewhere. I wanted to have friends. I didn't want it to be the same as it's always been. But I should know better. No one ever likes me. My own big brother can't stand to be around me." He laughed bitterly. "But why am I telling you? You don't care. It's always easy for people like you and Chris and Eric, everyone always likes you. And if you didn't hate me be fore, you do after last night. I'm a loser. A total loser." He buried his face in his arm.

I didn't know what to say. I felt like a complete asshole. I couldn't imagine what it would be like to be Ted. He was right, it has always been relatively easy for me to make friends. And my big brother? My big brother was in love with me.

As my pledge brothers began showing up after class, they all gathered around me and asked me how I was doing, how I felt, and I couldn't help but notice the dark looks they gave Ted. Ted had pulled himself together, and his face was an expressionless mask, reading his Biology textbook.

But when all twelve of us were in the chapter room, waiting for the six o'clock whistle, I announced, "Can I have everyone's attention please?"

Ten faces turned to me-everyone's except Ted's.

I cleared my throat. "I have something I want to say." I swallowed. "The first thing the Brotherhood said to us on Sunday night was that we are one unit. They have told us that all semester, over and over again. The reason they have said that to us so many times is because the Brotherhood itself is a unit; a greater whole than its parts. One of the tests they have set for us this semester was to see if we could pull together as a unit-to see if we would be able to become a part of the bigger unit that is the Brotherhood. And much as I hate to say this, we have failed that test, over and over again."

"What?" Tommy Amundsen burst out. "How can you say that?"

"Because it's true," I went on. "We have excluded Ted almost from the very beginning. Rather than helping him, pulling him along with us, we've gotten mad at him, we've treated him badly, we have not made him a part of our unit. Last night was a perfect example ... every single one of us should have volunteered to take the punishment. Because that's what a brother does; he steps in and takes care of his brother. And I believe that if the rest of us had volunteered-none of us would have been punished. Ted didn't answer the questions properly-but the rest of us failed afterwards, and we have failed Ted all semester."

And that's when the whistle blew, and everyone grabbed their bricks and went scrambling out of the chapter room. I tried to move as quickly as I could, but I still couldn't walk as fast, and I felt terrible-knowing they were all going to have to hold the wall till I got there.

The last person out of the room before me was Ted. "Fuck you," he hissed at me as he elbowed me out of the way. "Thanks a fucking lot."

I was stunned. That was the thanks I got? For having my ass beaten to a pulp so I could barely walk? For standing up for him with the rest of the class and pointing out how wrong we'd been treating him? Well, fuck you too, Ted. You're on your own from now on.

Despite my protests, I was excused from the wall for the rest of the night, and I also wasn't allowed to participate in anything, and was even allowed to go to sleep at eleven o'clock. But when I woke up on Wednesday morning, the soreness was pretty much gone, and I reported to the wall at the seven A.M. whistle.