Ben sat across from the open door of the Bursar, looking in at a front desk covered with paper and jars of pens and an electric typewriter. There was no one inside. Quietly from a little boombox on top of a file cabinet came the saxophone of a song that Ben thoroughly recognized but couldn’t have named, “Careless Whisper” by George Michael.

He wondered whether the Dean, Mr. Phelps, was keeping him waiting out here on purpose. He looked again into the Bursar’s office with some tip-of-the-tongue feeling, as though the solution to his wait could be found on that desk.

He heard footsteps coming up the stairs and saw the head and body of an older woman, and as she came toward him, Ben had the feeling that she would recognize him, that she was coming to sit at this empty desk in this office and that she knew all about him.

But then the door to the Dean’s office opened, and Mr. Markson beckoned him inside.

Ben sat in a spoke-back chair in front of Bud Phelps, the Dean of Students, whose desk was clean. Mr. Dennett with his cushiony face sat in the chair next to Ben, and Markson perched uncomfortably on the radiator cover next to the windows. Ben both wished Manley Price were here and was glad that he wasn’t.

“So, you were there for the initiation fight?”

Phelps was a New Hampshire native with a slight, persistent Up Above accent and silvering hair still in a high-and-tight. He was rumored to have earned a Silver Star in Korea. He smiled to Ben with the lines on his face folding together. The office was simple: tan carpet and built-in bookshelves, wire document baskets with neat stacks inside, the same swing-open windows as in the Schoolhouse classrooms. Ben wondered why Phelps had agreed to work at St. James with all these soft-handed WASPs. He drove an immaculate, all-business Ford F-150 that dozens of boys winced with desire for. Ben wasn’t sure whether the politenesses and small jokes that worked on other adults would work on him.

“You were there? In the basement?”

“Initiation fight?” asked Ben.

Phelps smiled again and didn’t say anything, seeming to prepare himself for a long wait. This smile was less warm.

Ben wondered who had told. He considered Ahmed for a moment but that didn’t feel right. In fact, Leon Carey had been comparing notes with Reid Pillsbury from Gordon House, where the newbs had just had an egg-and-spoon race while upper-formers sprayed them with Super Soakers. Reid had in turn told Fraser Grossman in his stairwell, saying out loud that two Hawley kids had thrown up, and the junior faculty member in Gordon had overheard it and gone to Phelps. The administration didn’t like throwing up.