Ben’s Chapel seat had been changed to the section just inside the main doorway so that he wouldn’t have to crutch in as far, but it meant that he couldn’t see Alice, who sat farther down. His cast had gotten wet in the shower—even though he had pulled a garbage bag over it and taped the bag to his skin—and now, as he sat there, wearing his North Face for the second day and looking up at the ceiling, the cast was starting to smell. Everyone else was coming in, chattering and settling themselves, and then Ben heard two separate whispers of “Ennis.” He turned to the girls in the row behind him.

“What happened?”

“They busted Ennis for the Ahmed thing.”

“How?”

“Apparently Dennett overheard him talking about it in the Dish hallway after Seated. Cooked.”

A kind of caul came over Ben’s vision. He imagined himself back in Phelps’s office, knowing that it would all come out anyway, being able to use what he knew to his advantage.

He sat completely still in the building’s splendor. Several kids were sleeping, their necks bent at unnatural angles, and he couldn’t understand how anyone could get used to it in here.

Ennis’s Disciplinary Committee meeting was that night, and the next morning in Chapel Aston announced his expulsion. By two p.m. that day his things were packed and he was gone.

“It’s fucking bullshit, is what it is,” said Hutch, sitting on his little stuffed chair, rocking forward and back minutely. “It’s like, they should be thanking Ennis for setting Ahmed straight, for like keeping this place the way it’s supposed to be. It’s like the little blue book, like ‘does your action benefit other kids?’ How could they not see that?”

Evan was nodding emphatically. Ben just looked up to where the far wall met the ceiling. “I can’t believe it,” he said, happy that the other two couldn’t know how much he meant it.

“You know what?” Hutch went on. “Fuck this place. Fuck their bullshit PR, their fucking pussy coddling. No one ever became great because things were easy for them.” He crossed his legs and started picking at the place on the side of his Saucony running shoe where the fabric had started to fray.

“We should transfer,” Evan said. “You know? This place sucks. My buddy Owen from home is at Milton and says it’s breezy as fuck there. They’re like half day students, so all of them have cars and you can do whatever you want.”

Hutch could now fit his finger through the hole in the side of his shoe.

“You know, Teddy would never have let this stand,” Hutch said to Ben.

“Yeah,” Ben said noncommittally.

“He never would have let this go unanswered.”

“It’s totally true,” said Evan.

“We should do something,” said Hutch, “something, like…big.”