Olga forced an incredibly smug smile and said, “Jack, it’s not always quiet people who are insecure. Usually it’s the loud ones like you who are trying to hide something. It’s a fact that class clowns are generally insecure, did you know that?”

“For your four-one-one, Ogre, yes, I did. And I’m secure enough not to worry about generalizations. Now eat your fish, it’s brain-food.”

“How’s S.D. now?” Jane asked.

“Terrible,” Olga said. “She keeps skipping classes and she’s getting stung all over the place. She just sits in the lounge all day watching television.”

Dean Mort rang the dinner bell and stunned everyone by announcing that if the football team emerged victorious in the Big Game against Groate-Eldridge the next day, all of Monday’s classes would be cancelled. The dining hall erupted for a full two minutes and then, as was traditional before the Big Game, eight or nine kids huddled in the middle of the room and screamed out the school fight song.

Afterward, Mort said that in his thirty years at Cornwall he couldn’t recall himself or any of his predecessors ever announcing a holiday with a victory stipulation. “I don’t know,” he announced giddily, “perhaps I’ve gone crazy in my old age.” In the awkward silence that followed, Jack Rafferty yelled out, “Oh, you thilly gooth!”

The entire dining hall laughed at Mort. I had to give Rafferty credit, it was a great crack. Some of the teachers even broke into smiles. Mort didn’t, though. He got ruffled and embarrassed, but he never smiled. Neither did Rafferty.

Cornwall lost to Groate-Eldridge, 18–12, in a mud bowl fought in forty-degree temperature during a vicious downpour. I stood there through the whole thing and awoke the following morning with a vise on my tonsils. It quickly loosened up, and the next couple nights I kept Waltham awake with my constant hacking and gurgling. On Tuesday I checked into the infirmary, the only building on campus that received heat twenty-four hours a day.

“That was some snooze, D-man,” were the cheerful first words that I heard the next morning. Someone was resting on one elbow in the next bed. Layers of film slipped off my eyeballs.

“Rafferty,” I said, “s’up?”

“Not much. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, D-man, if you’re gonna be crashing here again tonight, you’re gonna have to do something about that lumberjacking. Good God, you’ve been sawing wood all morning.”

Didn’t have the energy to respond.

“I’ve been listening to you since 6:15,” Rafferty said.

“Regular milkman.”

“Yeah, I couldn’t sleep because I was choking on snot so I dragged myself down here to drain.”

“I can dig it,” I said, and rolled over on my side, facing away from Rafferty.

For the next hour Rafferty went on about how much he hated the school and how he wished he were back home with the South Portland Red Riots.