GO BATTLE BEASTS!

You didn’t grow up in Saint B. without the Festival of the Fallen Leaves figuring into your memories in one way or another. Maybe you dressed up like a princess or a robot and marched in the Kids’ Jubilee. Or maybe you volunteered alongside your parents to help wipe down syrupy tables during the Kiwanis Pancake Blowout. The whole thing originated from a pretty cool story about some sort of legendary banishing, but I always forgot who was banishing whom and for what.

It didn’t really matter, because the festival had evolved over time as a way for the town to sell itself to itself. For seven days, there were art walks with overpriced masterworks slopped together by local artisans; there were racks filled with unsellable clothing at bargain prices; there were free band concerts under public park gazebos; there were special deals at car dealerships, restaurants, and insurance offices. And it all ended right here at Saint B. High with a big football game followed by Shakespeare on the Fifty-Yard Line, an abridged production done right on the field. You got your sports and your culture in one place, without even having to set down your chili-cheese dog.

That year promised to bring them out in droves, and not just because the team was undefeated. Off the western end of the school was Harry G. Bleeker Memorial Field, your typical goalposts-and-floodlights deal with plenty of nooks for kids to smuggle in beer and make out. The next Friday, however, was to be the debut of our jumbotron, a freakishly large video screen that had been under wraps for weeks as workers completed the installation. Already that morning they were atop the high scaffold, adjusting their hard hats.

The whole moronic festival, which I could not have cared less about, began on Saturday—the next day—which meant that these were the final precious hours before everyone went nuts decking the town in Saint B. red and white. It was the worst time of year for kids like me, who weren’t good at sports, or drama, or anything, really.

I exited the bus last, and got no farther than the sidewalk before a kid I knew from the unpopular table at lunch came barreling out of the main entrance. He grabbed hold of me to stop his momentum. We both swung around like we were ballroom dancing. He jabbed a finger at the school.

“Tub…” he panted. “Trophy Cave…”

That was all he needed to say. If there was one spot in school reserved for the darkest acts of bullying, it was the Trophy Cave, a third-floor hallway that housed the school’s trophy collection. It had once been the location of the French and German classes, but those electives had been cut. The fluorescents had long before either burned out or been tampered with, and the hall existed as a dim channel of evil to be avoided at all costs, even if it meant being late for class or clenching your bladder for another period. On a regular basis you could hear the blubbers of underclassmen receiving their first (or fourteenth) wedgies.