Dan plunked down across the aisle from Rick, three rows from the steering wheel. Rob slid behind them and pulled a bag of Funyuns from his backpack. “I’m going to sleep the whole way there.” Which was something you said at the start of a pain-in-the-ass five-hour bus trip, but Rob’s default setting was skittish and wired. He was nervous about State—Rob had joined the swim team as a diver. This was largely on a dare from Sticky, who, unlike Rob, actually had some ability. But to be honest, the Jesuit diving team was basically an excuse to keep the crew (Rick and Dan were the only real swimmers) hanging out together.

Rob popped the foil bag, and the front of the bus bloomed with the perfume of onion powder.

“Did you guys hear about Devin Osweiler?”

“Qué pasó?” Rick already had his nose in Henry IV, Part 1, pretending to be doing the English reading, while already heading into a nap. The sight of the Oglesby assignment made Dan glad he was ahead on his work: he had spent the previous weekend in a cubicle at Park Forest library listening to Caedmon recordings of the Henriad, living in each weary lilt of Gielgud’s voice for hours.

“Eighth period with Quickly, and she’s doing the whole female reproductive talk.” Jan Quickly was the sophomore biology teacher—how in an all-boys school run by priests she got assigned this lesson in anatomy was a question worth asking. “Osweiler stands up and asks a question with a hard-on.”

“Tented or . . . ?”

“Yup, Warner told me it was popping his khakis.”

Rick snorted. “What was the question?”

“He pointed at it and started yelling, ‘What do I do? What do I do?’”

“Did she jerk him off?” Rick asked in his best Rather/Brokaw fake newsman voice.

“Of course, and then straight to penance hall,” Rob shot back.

Coach Moyle hopped up on the bus.

“Who we got here? Malone, Dowlearn, McGhee. Christ, where is everybody? It’s going to be past midnight with the traffic. This is two sacks of uncut bullshit, I tell you what.”

Over the next fifteen minutes, the dribs and drabs of the swim team poured onto the bus. Then the upperclassmen came loafing back from a Taco Bueno run. Coach Moyle screamed and made faces while stealing a few chips from Preston Sarder’s nacho tray. Last to arrive: Drew Radcliffe, the team’s superstar, for whom Coach Moyle practically broke out a pillow and bonbons.

“Drew, sit anywhere. McGhee, move out of his way. I’m coming back there.”

Tortured by the smell of queso, Rick put down his Arden edition. “So who’s driving this bus?”