That evening there was a notice on the bulletin board stating that Dean Mort wanted to see me and Waltham in his office at 10 o’clock. The Dean sat at his desk with Funderburk standing firmly over his shoulder. Mort pointed at Irving and then me and said, “Dumb. Dumber.” Through a shower of tonsils and spit, he said he was aware we had taken an illegal weekend at the end of the Winter Term. Because I was already on probation, I’d have to face the Disciplinary Committee the following evening. Since it was Waltham’s first major offense, he wouldn’t face the D.C. but he was being put on probation.

“The baby ducks got me again,” I said to Jane the next morning.

“Yeah,” she said, “me too.”

I felt bad for her. Though her first offense, it was a fucking doozy by Girls School standards, and she was going to have to face the Girls School Disciplinary Committee alone. Those old bags were brutal. They’d call her a whore for taking a weekend with three guys. And they demanded even more explicit details than the Boys School D.C. Are you a virgin? Were you a virgin prior to the weekend? Jane took the news admirably. She told me to worry about myself. She knew that if I didn’t say all the right things I’d probably get bounced.

After a two-hour hearing, the D.C. decided to keep me on an in-limbo basis. In other words, if I was caught doing anything else, I’d be expelled without even the formality of another D.C. hearing. I was also tagged with a twenty-four-hour work project. Which meant my baseball career was over.

Jane’s hearing lasted three and a half hours and, after finally getting her to crumble, the Girls School D.C. decided to let her remain in school under the same terms as me. Except she was hit with a thirty-six-hour work project. Furthermore, Jane and I were put on “socials,” which meant we were barred from speaking to each other for the remainder of the year. If we were so much as overheard mumbling a “good morning” in passing, we’d get hit with additional hours.