The Wisherman (14 page)

“Can we sit?” Malachi looked at Oliver, with a look that said he was going to s
it regardless of what Oliver said. Oliver waved his hand ceremoniously and they sat. He stabbed at his eggs, eyes buried in his tray as he waited for someone to speak. It certainly wasn’t going to be him. He’d said his piece the day before, and had been treated to the door.

“We’ve been
talking.” Gabriel began, and he looked over at Owen, who nodded for him to keep going. Malachi swallowed. “We want to know what you had in mind. For the Disciples that is.” He smiled slowly.

~

Oliver spent the remainder of the day sharing knowing looks with the rest of the boys. In between classes, they would smile at each other over the secret that only they knew. Oliver looked at everyone else, those who dutifully took notes in History class, sucking up the Delafontaine propaganda, and he pitied them. He spotted Paul staying after History, animatedly asking the instructor if there were any extra resources available in the library. Paul’s eyes had lit up at Mr. Johnson’s impressed look, and Oliver fought the urge to roll his eyes once more. He did not know what he was missing out on, and how could he? Blinded by what he thought was right. Oliver supposed that everyone felt that way at least once in their lives. He shook his head in distaste and headed towards his next class, feeling rather light on his feet.

             
The end of the day couldn’t come quick enough for Oliver. As soon as he’d finished mumbling through his session with Dr. Heinz, he’d left that yellow couch as fast as his feet could carry him. He emerged in the basement, and was hit with the familiar smell of marijuana and cigarette smoke. Once, an irritant to his nose, it was now a welcoming scent. As welcoming as any doormat, it said “Welcome home, Oliver.”

“You want to do what?” The skepticism in Gabriel’s voice was so strong that Oliver began to doubt what had come out of his own mouth. He had to admit that it sounded a little out there in his head, but he couldn’t see any reason why they shouldn’t do it.

              Malachi shook his head. “So, we just recruit everybody, and then what, have a weekly support group?”

Alex laughed. “Hello, my name is Alex and I know everything. Please join my club.”

“Will we have to share the bud?” Gabriel looked concerned, and Alex burst into laughter again.

“
No, no, no! The point is to establish community.” Oliver shouted. He looked over to Malachi for help, but he merely shrugged.

“What do you want this to be?” Gabriel asked.

              “I want this to be….” Oliver stopped to think. He thought of Matron Charlie and how she barked orders at him on the first day. He thought of how the bell rang between classes, and everyone marched out like good little soldiers, into their classrooms where they sat like good little students. He thought of Ms. Latham’s recitation of “Good boys become good men.” And lastly, he thought of the ‘help’, scratched into the pine tree in the forest. That person had perhaps used the last of their strength to send that message, but to who? Who was going to spread that message? Oliver felt a swelling in his chest. He would.

“I want them to know that they don’t own us. They do not decide who we are, or who we will become. No one does, but us.”
He looked around the room, and to his surprise, everyone was smiling but Owen. Oliver felt his heart drop a little and his cheeks flush. His speech had been a bit theatrical, but he meant every word of it from the bottom of his heart. He looked over at Owen, half nervous and half angry at the lack of response.

After a few moments of tense silence, Owen’s face broke into a wide grin. “Well, it’s settled then. The Disciples it is.”
And with that, the room erupted with cheers, and the sound of Alex’s concerned questions. “But we will still drink beer right? We’re not going straight edge?”

             
“We need a manifesto.” Malachi said, and he pulled a notebook from his backpack. He ripped out a page and placed it in front of Oliver.

“We do?” Oliver looked over, confused.

“Yes.” Malachi said, firmly.

“We have to remember what we stand for.”
Oliver uncapped his pen and pressed it down to the paper, poised to write. He looked around the room at the rest of the boys, who waited with baited breath. Malachi nodded his head, urging Oliver on. He pressed his pen onto the paper and wrote the words “Who we are.”

~

“Where are you going?” Robert eyed him suspiciously over the top of his math book. Oliver stood in the mirror, admiring himself out of his uniform.

“Just going to hang out.”

“We have a test tomorrow, you know.” Robert said, sounding remarkably like Paul. Oliver shot him a wary look, and Robert pulled his math book up over his face.

“Yeah, we have a test every day. It’s called life. How do you prepare for that?”
Oliver curled his lips into a bitter smile.

“You’ll cover for me?” Robert’s response was slow, and for a moment, Oliver was afraid.

“Yeah, I will.” Robert said finally.

“But.”

Oliver groaned inwardly.

“I want to know where you’re going.” Robert had put his book down and was now staring deliberately at Oliver.

“Tell me.” Oliver stopped combing his hair for a moment and turned to Robert.

“Relax. I will tell you. I can’t yet. But we’re working on something. Something big, and everyone’s going to want to be a part of it. It’ll be good for…some of us.” Robert said nothing, though he looked thoroughly unsatisfied with the answer and he picked his math book back up again and stuck his nose in it.

             
Oliver slipped down the hallway and out the front door, just narrowly avoiding a patrolling guard. As he stepped outside Branson Hall, he saw the lights shut off all at once, and he crossed his fingers that Robert had kept his promise. He approached the window at the basement floor at Knott Hall and rapped twice. A knock returned, and Oliver knocked three more times before the window opened. Contorting himself in a way that he was sure would have been incredibly painful had his body not been presently drowning in adrenaline, he folded himself into the tiny, open space. Several minutes later, complete with hushed whispers and stealth tiptoeing down the hall, Oliver found himself in Owen’s room surrounded by the rest of the boys.

             
“What’s our first move?” Malachi asked.

They sat around the round table stolen from the common room. Alex reached into Owen’s mini fridge and grabbed
several beers, but Owen raised his hand and waved them away.

“This is serious.” He winked at Oliver.

Alex groaned. “I thought we weren’t going straight edge!”

“We’ll have plenty of time to celebrate in the future.”
Oliver cut in. “How many are there of us?” Owen scratched his chin. “Alex?”

In response, Alex looked up at the bud
-lier as if he were counting the number of joints. “A couple in each year, I expect. It’s not like we’ve ever stood up and announced ourselves. We all thought we were alone when we first got here. Sometimes, you can just tell, though.” Alex said. The rest of the boys nodded.

“We need a way to identify ourselves.” Owen offered, and a chorus
of “mhms” rounded the table. 

“Like, a business card?” Alex asked, grinning.

“Kind, of yeah.” Oliver said, ignoring the obvious joke in Alex’s comment. “We need a way to show people that we are here.”

“Without any of
the matrons finding out,” Gabriel pointed out. “So it has to be obvious, but not too obvious. What about an x?”

Oliver waved away the suggestion. “You think Charlie wouldn’t notice us walking around with giant X’s on our arms. She’d shut us down in a day.”

Malachi laughed and said in a high pitched voice, “Good boys don’t mark up their arms!” to uproarious laughter.

“What about a circle?” Owen looked around the room. “I mean, what if we drew black circles?”

“So we look like we have giant moles?” Gabriel made a disgusted face.

“
Not giant. Just big enough.” Oliver corrected him.

Owen leaned forward, his eyes more alive than Oliver had ever seen them before. “We could put it just here on our necks.
It would look like a freckle.”
Owen looked around the room, his eyes wide with anticipation.

“I like it.” Gabriel said first.

“Me too.” Malachi followed.

“Aye.” Alex raised his beer.

All eyes were on Oliver now. “Alright. I like it. See you boys tomorrow.”

              The development of the Disciples brought a spring to Oliver’s step that he had never known before. The next morning, he examined himself in the mirror, and the black circle that appeared inconspicuously on his neck. He wrinkled his nose in disgust, because it did look quite like a brand new mole. He admired it greatly, however, and when Robert diligently pointed out the smudge, Oliver smiled widely and said “I know.”

             
He spent the better part of his day craning his neck to the side to see if anyone would notice. Mr. Johnson asked him in history if he would like to be excused to the nurse’s office for the crick in his neck. Oliver had shrunk down into his seat, mildly embarrassed, but also secretly hoping that all of the attention had caught someone’s eye. By lunch, a frustrated Oliver slammed his tray down at the center table, and slid into the seat next to Owen.

             
“No one even knows what this means. They all think I have skin cancer!” Oliver said.

Alex waved his hand, evidently unperturbed. “It’ll take some time. I know one in the junior class. I told him to look out for a sign, on all of us. Word will spread.”

              Oliver stood in the serving line at dinner, looking miserably at the winding line before him. The cook had come out the kitchen in a flurry earlier, saying that the oven was broken. The tiny French man had thrown down his hat, screamed “I quit!” and fled the kitchen. It was due to this that Oliver had spent the last thirty minutes staring at the boy in front of him, presumably for a meal that was never going to come.  Dean Tenbrook emerged from the kitchen sometime later, her demeanor as calm as the chef’s had been frazzled, and said “Soup and sandwiches today, boys. Everything will be back under control by tomorrow.” She smiled cheerily and left amidst hundreds of groans.

The boy in front of him turned around. He was much taller and he titled his head down towards Oliver so they were at eye level.

“Great day for a sandwich, huh?” The boy then craned his neck to the side and Oliver found himself absentmindedly wondering if he’d had a particularly rough gym period. As he looked up at him, bewildered, a marking on the boy’s neck caught his eye. He froze. Oliver wanted to say something, but he found himself grinning stupidly instead and when he finally collected his soup and sandwich, he ate them as if it was the greatest meal he had ever had.

~

“I got one today. Tall blond junior?” Oliver said. Malachi made a tally mark on the giant piece of poster board that Owen erected over his bed.

“Next. Owen, how many?”

“Two, maybe three. Maybe that really was a mole.” Owen shuddered.

“Alex?”

“One. Man, I’m losing.”

“It’s not a race.” Gabriel said.

“Gabs, how many?”

“Three” he responded smugly,
prompting Alex to moan louder. Malachi tallied up the numbers.

“Six so far, eleven including us. Seems a little low.”

“They could be scared. We were.” Gabriel said, honestly.

“How do they know that we’re not going
to round them up or something?” Alex said.

“I mean, we are. But for a good reason.” Malachi protested.

“Let’s give it a few more days, and see what happens. Meeting adjourned.” Oliver slammed down his cup as if it were a gavel and the court was dismissed.

             
By Thursday of that week, Oliver had quite possibly developed permanent muscle damage from holding his neck to the side. After another impassioned plea by Mr. Johnson, Oliver consented to keeping his neck upright, but his eyes peeled. He returned to his room, to find Robert sitting on the edge of his bed, staring at the doorway.

“Hey.”

Oliver made a beeline for his bed. Check-in would be soon, and then the meeting. Robert cleared his throat loudly. Oliver continued rummaging through his bag, looking for his history book. He hadn’t seen his history book in weeks, and well, he supposed he should try and crack it before the test. Robert cleared his throat again, and Oliver turned around reflexively.  When he’d finally gotten Oliver’s attention, Robert stood suddenly and jerked his neck to the side. Oliver’s palms grew sweaty.

What exactly was he doing
?
Oliver curled up his fists.

Robert walked over slowly, his dark eyes apprehensive. He pointed to his neck, and there on his moonlight pale skin was a small black circle.
Oliver felt the unmistakable rush of pride, and he was hugging Robert, and Robert was hugging back and they both were reveling in the feeling of not being so alone anymore.