Coach Moyle rubbed the gray oysters below his eyes and scratched his stubble before finally yelling out, “Lacy, go back to the fuckin’ truck.”

The boys stared. “Lacy” was something. Daisy Dukes, an ample bikini décolletage decamping from her cut-off T-shirt. A Heather Locklear bird’s nest of blond, now cattywampus from being slept on in the back of a Dodge Ram. She was barefoot and had bangles on both arms, with hoop earrings and long pink nails. She stepped away from the glass and saluted with two middle fingers.

Dan and Rick looked at each other.

“. . .”

“. . .”

Lacy smacked the window again. “You left me in the truck, dickhead!”

“I called a taxi. Go back to the truck and wait!”

With glassy-eyed oblivion, the hungover swim coach turned back to the starting blocks.

“Rangers, I want your heads in the goddamn water! First group, ready go.”

To his credit, the half-drunk Coach Moyle continued to run a hard-ass practice while ignoring the Harry Hines hooker he had left stranded in front of the Hockaday School for Girls.

“Eyes up here. Follow me. Is Mr. Blaylock alive? Someone check his pulse.” Oglesby slammed Diviner, a pale yellow teaching stick that branched into a Y at its top, against the radiator. Jay Blaylock, who had been moved to the front of the class in the hopes of finding a cure for his narcolepsy, smacked the drool off his cheek. Oglesby rolled his eyes. “So what’s this book about?”

“Holden Caulfield.”

“Minus five for stating the obvious, Mr. Blaylock. Rule number three: think before you speak. Gentlemen, I’m getting impatient. We can just take vocabulary quizzes if we don’t get this discussion on track. What is this book really about? What’s the essential theme?”

“Being a teenager and how much it sucks,” Sticky offered.

“That’s a better answer. And why does it suck, Mr. Deangelis?”

“Because life is unfair, sir.” Deangelis smiled as he parroted a favorite Oglesby rule.

“Okay, let me ask it this way . . . is Holden crazy?”

“The world drives him crazy,” Rick shot back.

“How so?”

“According to him it’s full of phonies.”

“Good. Gentlemen, I have a handout today.” Oglesby pulled a folder from his army bag. “Take one, pass it down.

“Okay, trivia question to steal the five points I’m taking off Mr. Blaylock’s next paper. When Holden leaves to visit his teacher, Old Spencer, where is his house?”

At this point, half of the honors English class shrugged and the other half turned to Dan to see if he knew. Dan studied the handout in front of him and without looking up said, “He lived on Anthony Wayne Avenue.”

“Correct, five points to Malone. And who is Anthony Wayne? Did anyone bother to look it up?”

Silence. No one had.