Ennis went on. “You think we would just have you fucksticks maul each other? We’re better than that! We have a twist.” He held up a red bandanna that had been folded into a strip. Ben saw that it had been folded the wrong way, with the diagonal edges showing, instead of with the triangular tip folding in. Ennis walked up behind Jed Beck, the tallest and most solid newb, eventually the football team’s starting tight end, and tied the bandanna over his eyes. The movements were rough and jerky, and Jed’s head moved with them.

Several of the sixth-formers had bandannas and each approached a different newb, and quickly almost half the group was blindfolded. Hideo Nakamura moved his blindfold down a little so that it better covered his eyes.

But when one of the sixth-formers got to Ahmed, Ahmed pulled his head away.

“I do not want it,” said Ahmed.

“I don’t care.” The sixth-former went to lift the bandanna to Ahmed’s face again.

“No,” replied Ahmed.

Everyone without a blindfold was watching them.

“I would prefer to leave,” Ahmed said.

Ennis walked right up to Ahmed and again brought his face very close. “If you leave, Ahmed, life gets much, much harder for everyone else.”

Ahmed shrugged and let his shoulders fall. “That is your choice.”

Ahmed stepped around Ennis and padded out of the cellar in his flip-flops. Everyone looked after him and then turned back to the sixth-formers. Ben felt sorry for them.

Ennis looked around at everyone, his eyes moving quickly from face to face.

“Your friend Ahmed just made your lives a lot, lot harder.” His head swung around like an unlatched gate in hard wind. Ben could see him searching for a punishment. Second after second went by, and the blindfolded newbs began to pull their bandannas down.

“Get those fucking blindfolds back on!” Ennis shouted. Ben worried the faculty would hear them. With their clumsy gloved fingers the newbs pushed the bandannas back into place.

Ben looked toward the emergency exit door and saw several gallon jugs of Deer Park springwater along the wall. He lifted his chin and caught Ennis’s attention. Then he jutted his chin toward the water jugs, and Ennis turned and saw them, then turned back to Ben and smiled. Later Ben wondered what the jugs had been doing there. Was the school pathetically preparing for a power outage?

And so each of the newbs was forced to drink a gallon of water, and the blindfolds went back on. The upper-formers pushed them all into the middle of the floor and they stood loosely together as though at a middle school dance. The skin of Ben’s upper arms and back came against the moving skin of the other boys, and he heard the flat sound of a glove against flesh, and the fight had started.