“I think I deserve to know,” I said, my voice full of meaning. “Of all people.”

Arthur held up his hands, the universal “stop” sign. He couldn’t take it anymore! “Okay,” he acquiesced. He speared his spoon in the ice cream and flattened his hands on the table, considering how to tell me what he was about to tell me. “There was this kid. Ben Hunter.”

I remembered the name from the night of the Fall Friday Dance, when I’d snuck away with the HOs and the Hairy Legs to watch them all drink at the Spot. Olivia’s gleeful disgust over seeing Arthur giving Ben a blow job, Peyton’s addendum that Ben had tried to kill himself, his mean conclusion that he hadn’t succeeded. I never really believed the first part of the story, it reeked of an Olivia lie, told to assemble a curious crowd with her in the center. Even so, something stopped me from telling Arthur what I knew. There was a small part of me that believed it could be true, and didn’t want to know if it was. I couldn’t stand the idea that Arthur had been on his knees in the Spot, weirdo number one sucking weirdo number two’s dick. Arthur was my intellectual compass, not another raging, lusty animal in heat. Not like me.

I pretended I’d never heard the name Ben Hunter before. “Who is he?”

“Dean made him kill himself. Well”—Arthur pushed his glasses further up his nose, adding another fingerprint to the left lens—“try to kill himself, at least.”

I abandoned my spoon in the ice cream, so warm and gooey now the handle sunk, slowly, as the green quicksand absorbed the tip. “How? How do you make someone try and kill themselves?”

Arthur’s eyes went dull. “You torture them for years and then you degrade them by—” He grimaced. “It’s disgusting. Are you sure you want to know?”

Ice cream gurgled in my throat as I groaned. “Will you just tell me?”

Arthur sighed, and his linebacker shoulders dropped further down his back. “You know Kelsey Kingsley?” I nodded. We had history together. “She had this graduation party in eighth grade. She lives on, like, three acres—pool, tennis courts, all that, but just a lot of land too. Anyway. Dean and Peyton and some other soccer douche bags showed up. They were already in upper school at this point so that was creepy, but Peyton had some boner for Kelsey. He likes ’em young.” Arthur tipped his chin at me, as though I were a prime example. “They convinced Ben to go with them in the woods, they said they had pot.” Arthur spooned up a golf-ball-size lump of ice cream. His mouth was strung green when he opened it again. “I don’t know why Ben believed them. I never would have. Peyton and those guys? They held Ben down and pulled his shirt up, and Dean—” Arthur swallowed and shivered away a brain freeze.

“Dean, what?”

Arthur pressed his fingers to his temples. Exhaled. He raised his eyebrows at me. “Dean took a shit on his chest.”

I leaned back in my chair and steepled my hands over my mouth. “That’s disgusting.”

Arthur piled more ice cream onto his spoon. “Told ya. Anyway”—he shrugged—“when they let him go he ran. He was missing for almost twenty-four hours before someone discovered him in the bathroom of some Rite Aid by Suburban Square. He’d bought a razor and—” Arthur flipped his right hand over and mimed slicing the skin open, gritting his teeth as though the pain was real.

“But he didn’t die?” I realized I was holding my own wrist in my hand, applying pressure to an imaginary wound.

Arthur shook his head. “People generally don’t cut deep enough to nick the major artery.” He seemed proud of knowing this.

“So where is he now?”

“Some institution.” Arthur shrugged. “It was only six months ago, if you think about it.”

“Do you talk to him?” I asked, watching closely for his reaction.

Arthur scrunched up his whole face and gave a little shake of his head. “I like the kid, but he has problems.” With that he slid the yearbook to the center of the table, nudging the ice cream carton out of the way. My spoon toppled over and disappeared from view.

“Let’s play with Dean in honor of Ben,” he suggested, flipping to our favorite page. We’d drawn monkey ears on Dean, written, “Monkey see, monkey die,” above his smiling face. I’d written that, originally, as “Monkey see, monkey do,” but Arthur had crossed out “do” and written “die.”

We had other regular pages too. Olivia’s received plenty of attention. I’d decorated her nose with black polka dots. Written, “I need Bioré strips.” “And a boob job,” Arthur had added.

Arthur preferred Peyton over Olivia though. The yearbook was three years old, and we had been in the sixth grade and Peyton in eighth. It was a real accomplishment, but Peyton had been even prettier when he was in middle school. We’d drawn pigtails on either side of his temples, and, even though I’d been the one to do it, I had to blink every time we opened the yearbook to his picture, remind myself that he wasn’t really a girl. “Fuck me in my pretty ass,” Arthur had written. “Choke me while you do it,” he’d added, recently, explaining that one time on a bus ride Peyton had wrapped his scarf around Arthur’s neck and held it there until a purple ring formed. “I had to wear a turtleneck for a fucking month,” Arthur had harrumphed. “And you know how easily I overheat.”

Arthur drew a thought bubble out of Dean’s mouth: “What is Gentleman Dean Barton thinking today?” Before he could decide, the door opened and we heard Mrs. Finnerman calling out a hello. Arthur snatched the bowl off the table and tucked it into his pocket.

“In the kitchen, Mom!” he called. “TifAni’s here.”

I twisted in my seat to see Mrs. Finnerman enter the kitchen, unwrapping a stringy scarf from around her neck. “Hi, honey,” she said to me.

“Hi, Mrs. Finnerman.” I smiled, hoping it didn’t look lazy and drugged.

Mrs. Finnerman removed her glasses, fogged over in the transition from the cold to the warm house, and wiped them on the hem of her shirt. “Are you staying for dinner?”

“Oh, no, I can’t,” I said. “But thank you.”

“You know you’re welcome anytime, dear.” She put her glasses on, and her eyes were bright behind the Windexed pane. “Anytime.”

Mr. Larson had warned us it would happen. Two weeks of grammar, immediately following our discussion of Into Thin Air. This announcement had elicited a dramatic groan from the class and a playful grin from Mr. Larson, one I imagined he gave all his dates, right before slipping his hand underneath the blond weight of their hair and leaning in for a soft kiss.

Given the grueling grammar course I’d suffered through at Mt. St. Theresa’s, this news was disappointing but also, to my surprise, fueled me with a sort of territorial adrenaline. Try me, I’d thought back in September. Gerund phrases, the present participle, noun modifiers—I’d wipe the floor with these amateurs. Now, with Mr. Larson gone and my competitive spirit blunted, I was just grateful for the opportunity to coast.

The substitute they’d brought in to replace Mr. Larson, Mrs. Hurst, had the body of a ten year-old boy and bought her clothes—khakis and pastel-colored button-downs—at GapKids. From behind, she easily could have been an upper schooler’s annoying little brother. Her daughter was a senior at Bradley, and because she had gotten into Dartmouth early decision and had a large, sharp nose and eyes ringed with purple commas, I’d assumed she was a harmless book nerd. But years of dismissal from pretty girls and boys who weren’t that horny had turned her into a bitter gossip. Her mother, seated at the head of the classroom, one bony ankle draped over the other, had my number from the get-go.

She started on me the day somebody brought in doughnuts—left over from the yearbook meeting earlier that morning. Mrs. Hurst cut the remaining Krispy Kremes in half, even though there were eleven doughnuts and only nine students, more than enough for everyone to have a whole. I assumed she did it so that we could sample other flavors, and took half of a Boston cream and half of a powdered sugar.