The Domino Effect Read Online Free PDF Page B

black-rimmed glasses. He cleared his throat a couple times until the blabber died down.
    “Welcome gentlemen,” he said. “This is Montgomery Hall, for fourth year men at Hamden Academy. If you’re in the wrong dorm, or the wrong school for that matter, now is the time to confess.”
    He spoke like he was on stage, but we stared back at him as if the blank TV screen behind his head was more interesting. It might have been.
    “Well, kudos then,” he offered, clearing a hunk of rustcolored hair that had fallen over his glasses. “For those who might have forgotten since check-in, I am Mr. Wright, a literature teacher here at Hamden Academy, the director of the Drama Club and, of course, the dorm master of Montgomery Hall.”
    The kid next to me called another horse, “Jccht,” but no one seemed to notice.
    After a rundown of the many dos and many more don’ts, we were asked by Mr. Wright for some information about ourselves, including where we were from. Most of the 30 or so kids were from somewhere New (England, Jersey, York), with others spread out around the East Coast, Pennsylvania, and even into Ohio. There were some spots of color in the room from Asia, the Middle East, and the guy next to me (from some hostile land, wherever that was), but it was, for the most part, a white-bread crowd, though we didn’t look quite like the perfect kids in the pamphlets handed out by the admissions office.
    I guess a mixed student body is what you get at a pretty new private school that’s been named after its town, rather than after some loaded dead guy who started the school back before electricity. The second-class status was alright by me, because it was still a good school, but it also had room for refugees.
    “I’m Danny Rorro from Queens,” I said to the room when it was my turn to speak. “One thing I like to do is play baseball, and something that makes me unique is that I think this whole grunge-rock thing is a fad.”
    I’d said that last thing strictly for Meeks and Grohl, who were into those bands out of Seattle and other soggy places. I heard Meeks groan as I turned to the stranger on my right.
    “Terence King from Houston,” is all he said. He didn’t even bother standing up. I guess he didn’t have anything that made him unique, except for the fact that he was the only black dude in the room (the school, actually, but he might not have known that, yet); or that he somehow managed to effectively conceal the eight-foot pole up his ass; or even the fact that he came all the way to the northwestern corner of New Jersey from Texas. Man. Texas. That seemed farther than China.
    At Hamden, you didn’t see a lot of kids from the South. I don’t know why but, if I had to guess, it’d be the food. Straight Yankee grub. Beef and potatoes in six rotating forms: stewed, boiled, loafed / mashed, baked, twice-baked. Occasionally, they threw a roasted chicken out there or some WASP version of lasagna homemade by the Stouffer’s Corporation.
    “Not exactly an inspiring performance,” Mr. Wright said, rubbing his trimmed brown beard after everyone was finished. I don’t think he was eyeballing anybody in the room for the lead in this year’s drama production. “But it will have to do and, unless there are any questions, we can all be on our merry…”
    Everyone started to get up.
    “I got something to say,” Trent McCoy blurted.
    Everyone sat back down.
    “Well, by all means.” Mr. Wright granted him the floor with a theatrical hand gesture. “We have an open floor policy here at Montgomery Hall.”
    A yellow-haired slab of meat lumbered up front and he didn’t have to clear his throat to get our attention. They brought this McCoy gorilla in last year to make sure we kept winning National Wrestling Championships. The school had this huge reputation for wrestling, which was good, I guess, if you’re into that kind of thing, but bad because it was the only thing we were good at, so knuckleheads like McCoy