Every few days we’d stroll into town for crescent rolls and Italian coffee and discuss fashion trends with a handful of S.D.’s small-nosed friends. The girls were constantly trying to outdo each other with tales of twenty-thousand-dollar expense accounts at Bloomie’s, Saks, and so on.

Our dates would conclude with the two of us violently sucking each other’s tongue moments before she boarded the bus back to the Girls School. It was as if the bus spewed some kind of magic exhaust. Every time that big, yellow monster came rumbling into sight S.D. would lean into me with a passionate, grinding embrace, I’d have just enough time to pop a woody and slide my hand over her bullet-proof bra, and then the bus would carry her and the other laughing girls away, roaring over my pathetic pup tent.

The two or three school dances we went to were exercises in humility. I stood in a corner with my knuckles up my ass while she took turns dancing with different guys. S.D. was “gunning” for one of the Top Ten positions appointed to juniors before their senior year. The school picked these leaders purely on the basis of how much of a kiss-ass, or “gunner,” you were. Gunners were historically a prideless bunch, and S.D. Stuart proved that history repeats itself. She’d rat on her roommate to clinch an appointment to the Top Ten. So if her roommate wanted a smoke she had to hide from S.D. One day over the crescents and Italian Joe, she outlined her policy to me.

“You fink,” I said. “How could you turn in your own roommate?”

“Oh, shut up. You make it sound like I’d be stabbing her in the back.”

“You would be.”

“Rubbish,” S.D. said. “She knows perfectly well that her smoking puts me in a precarious position with the administration—and I’ve asked her several times to simply smoke elsewhere … or not at all.”

“Excuse the expression, but I still think that’s fucked up.”

“Well that’s too bad but I’m not going to compromise my beliefs just for her filthy habits. And by the way, nice language.” She served me one of her lemony squints.

“Come off it, S.D. Half the people in the world smoke butts, and nobody except the surgeon general says tiddly-poo about it. Besides, those aren’t your beliefs. They’re Cornwall Academy’s beliefs, and you’re just one of the tools they use to grind their fu—riggin’s rules into everyone else’s head.”

S.D. didn’t speak to me for a week. It was kind of nice having a seven-day hiatus from the runs (coffee opens me up like you wouldn’t believe), but I regretted pissing her off. I think I missed having plans made for me. Every day Wheeler would ask me, “Any word from S.D.?” and “Hey, are you two still seeing each other, or what?” These questions were always accompanied by an ear-to-ear grin, but I guess I had that coming.