Gentlemen by Michael Northrop

He was coming out of the teachers’ lounge with Grayson. Now, Mr. G I can deal with, but I’d heard plenty from Haberman for one day. Lucky for me, I was going fast and was past him before he could say anything that’d piss me off. I’m not even sure he saw me. He was already talking and coughing at the same time, and how many things can a man be expected to do at once? Anyway, that’s the exact kind of thing you don’t have to worry about after school. Most of the time, you turn the corner and there’s no one there, just an empty hallway, like in The Shining.
    The catch is that it’s not like you can just leave whenever you want. You’ve got to wait for the late buses and ride home with the jocks and geeks. Sometimes the late buses are at five, sometimes they’re at five forty-five, and sometimes they’re even later. It depends on if anyone has an away game or if afield trip’s getting back. There’s a schedule printed up and you want to check it so you don’t get stuck waiting forever. This was Wednesday and the buses left at five, which was fine, because we were staying after to talk things out face-to-face, and it seemed like it’d probably take a while.
    I’d just been over at the little roadside place on Route 7, which had the nearest pay phone and was a ten-minute walk from the Tits. They didn’t have a pay phone at the school, because if it was official business, they’d let you use the phone in the office, and if it wasn’t, they didn’t want you calling. A lot of the kids had cell phones. You weren’t supposed to bring them to school, but that was like the most ignored rule in the history of rule-making. I would have brought mine in, if I had one. My mom said she wasn’t paying for me to have a cell. I’m pretty sure she thought that getting one would magically turn me into a drug dealer. She was half right, though, because it probably would’ve turned me into a more hooked-up drug taker.
    She’s clever, too, because if I got a cell myself, I wouldn’t have any money for anything like drugs. Those things are seriously expensive when you’re not on someone else’s plan. It’s like fifty bucks a month, minimum. Last winter, Tommy said we should all go in together on a plan. At first we were like, “Jesus, Tommy, how gay are you?” Then it didn’t seem like such a bad idea and we looked into it, but it turned out none of us was old enough. Then Tommy talked his way onto his mom’s plan anyway. So good for him. As for me, it justwasn’t important enough to spend that kind of money on. And what did I really need one for? It’s not like I’m a chick.
    Except in this case, it would’ve saved me twenty minutes of walking, round-trip. I’d been deputized, lucky me, to give Tommy’s place a call and see if he’d turned up. It sucks when the only one of us with a cell phone is the one who goes missing. I figured his mom would be home, and she was. Just the way she answered the phone—first ring and totally desperate—saying hello twice in like one second, I knew he hadn’t turned up. So I hung up. Because what the hell, I was calling from a pay phone.
    So I was in the front hallway, main building, like I said, making time. And that’s the other thing I wanted to say about the hallways, they have that smell, like, patented. It was sort of like that hospital smell, but without the piss mixed in. I guess it was whatever they used to clean the floors. You really didn’t notice it when the halls were crowded, but you couldn’t miss it after school. So I got to the courtyard and pushed open the door, and Bones and Mixer were at the table all the way at the far end. There was no one else out there, but I guess they figured this was top secret and the far corner worked best for that.
    It was still a few months till summer vacation but it was a nice enough