The school never had a student slop out the trash enclosure behind the dining hall, or dig up a collapsed drainage pipe, or take down a broken bough still hanging in a tree. No dishwashing, no dorm cleaning, no laundry pickup. Nothing in the power plant, nothing with machines (in the mid-eighties a branch being pulled into the teeth of a wood chipper had kertwanged out, smacking the shoulder of a student who had been caught making fake IDs), nothing on ladders. No electrical work, no plumbing, no hammers or nails, no prolonged heavy lifting, nothing around the ponds and streams, nothing that involved going off campus or outside the theoretical view of a faculty member.

Despite all his exploits, Teddy had never gotten busted, and he had talked about his blemishless record with a mixture of pride and regret. One late night out cruising to see his girlfriend, Teddy had spotted Snake Eyes, the overnight security guard and Vietnam veteran, commando-crawling through the underbrush by the gym to keep his skills sharp. When Teddy was a third-former, a sixth-former in his dorm, Liam, had gotten busted ordering a margarita at Escobar’s, his third offense. On the day a student’s punishment is read, that student is excused from Chapel, not only to avoid direct shaming, but also in certain cases to enact the temporary forfeiture of the student’s place at the school until he or she has served work duty. But Teddy said that Liam was the only student ever to see his own funeral: on the morning his deed was read aloud, he had managed to get a key to the chapel tower, and he climbed out along the gangplank over the wooden panels in the chapel ceiling and looked down through an open panel to witness it. When the Rector announced that he was getting kicked out, Liam gave a rebel yell that echoed all throughout the chapel.

Getting in trouble for something glamorous, working with your hands, having a justified grudge—all of it seemed to Ben like the best way to be. At the same time he couldn’t imagine doing anything against the rules. How wonderful it would be to get kicked out for actually doing something, not to have to wait.

6. The Queen’s Guard

6. The Queen’s Guard

WHEN MAIL CAME IN TO THE ST. JAMES POST OFFICE AT TEN thirty, the fence across from the PO was the place to sit to see the school come to check mailboxes. It had been this way since the little cylindrical pump house had been decommissioned and reopened for this purpose in 1931. Third-period classes were over and the Dish hadn’t yet opened for lunch.