So it was agreed. Spencer and Alek would go to a new school. Their prayers had been answered.
It was almost too good to be true.
AT FIRST, SPENCER TRIED to get along. He ran for school president. Alek served as his de facto campaign manager. They put their heads together and came up with a progressive platform of free burritos.
They designed a campaign poster that consisted of Spencer holding an M16 replica paintball gun in front of an American flag, wearing full camouflage and an Uncle Sam–style “I want you” frown.
Then, to make sure they remained true to their message, the two boys went to school in full camouflage. It was important to take the campaign seriously, because Spencer had big plans to change the world. “I will switch the Coke machines to Pepsi machines,” he said, “because Pepsi is more American!” But on the day the candidates were to address all the voters, his opponent read flawlessly from a beautifully written speech, and Spencer, rattled and nervous, mumbled through his campaign promises so quietly nobody heard a single thing he said. His big plans for more patriotic vending machines went unheard, whispered into his own chest, and the vote was not close. Spencer did not win.
His political ambitions crushed, Spencer’s hatred for the school grew. The place rubbed him the wrong way. They were too involved. The way they enveloped every part of his life was too much; he had gone from a fatherless home to a place with a dozen new fathers and mothers. It didn’t feel right, even though he didn’t quite know how to explain why it felt wrong. Spencer was small and unconfident, and the teachers felt off to him; they were unlike the teachers at his old school. He didn’t like going to church and school with the same people, under the same authority; it was the mixing of two worlds for which some separation felt natural. People were always watching. They were too interested in him, but seemed to be looking past him, through him, like he had some rotten thing inside he hadn’t known about but they were certain was there. When he bristled and pushed back they punished him, pulled him into the principal’s office and kept him there for hours, which felt like days, insulting his character, invoking God to reduce him to tears and assure him he was shaming the Lord, that he needed to conform because he was walking down a path toward sure damnation.
“They’re crazy, Mom. I’m telling you, they’re crazy, and you don’t care!” Spencer screamed, but Joyce didn’t believe it, or at least at first she didn’t want to believe it. She knew Spencer needed structure, and she didn’t exactly have a wealth of options. She was pinching pennies to make ends meet and keep the kids in private school; there was only one she could afford, and she couldn’t stomach sending Spencer back to be eaten up and spat out by the bigger kids in public school, while teachers pumped him full of prescription pills. She chalked it up to character building and hoped his attitude would change. Surely he’d soon see the value in it, finally begin to apply himself.
But all that happened was that he hated it more, and the bond between him and Alek, his one coconspirator, grew stronger. They both bucked under the authority of this strange place to whose faults both their mothers were blind. That was the only saving grace for Spencer: that Alek saw it too.
Alek was stalwart and dedicated in his apathy toward schoolwork. Alek made Spencer certain it wasn’t just him. It was those people at the school; they didn’t deserve to judge him, and it definitely didn’t have any right to tell him whether God was on his side or not. It felt like the two of them, Spencer and Alek, were together in the trenches of some strange kind of psychological warfare. And since it was just the two them who didn’t buy into it, the two latecomers, interlopers in this world that all the other students had attended since kindergarten, it was Spencer and Alek more than anyone who earned the ire of the school administration.
Alek responded in the way that was becoming his style. He checked out. He ignored them. He did what he wanted and didn’t let what they said affect him, which seemed to arouse their anger even more; but Spencer saw the way they treated Alek and seethed.
Battle lines were drawn.
IF THE NEW SCHOOL WAS BECOMING a nightmare for Spencer, there was at least one silver lining. A black kid who came on a minority scholarship, brought in to pump up an anemic athletic program, because you could barely mount a team with only fifteen kids per class, unless you brought in a ringer.
Anthony Sadler would be the starting point guard on the basketball team as a freshman and the starting wide receiver on the (flag) football team, but he was the kind of kid who didn’t hide his frustration on the field. He cussed, he yelled at teammates, he found himself frequenting the principal’s office, which by then was a daily way station for Spencer and Alek. If the two boys from Woodknoll Way didn’t have much in common with the new kid from Rancho Cordova, they were at least familiar with frequent delinquency. That, they had in common. They went home at night to different parts of the city, but during the day they spent most of their time in the same office.
And there was something else about Anthony that made it seem like destiny that he would be brought into their friendship: his last name. Sadler, which came just before Skarlatos, which came just before Stone, all of which meant that every time the students had to line up in alphabetical order, Spencer was next to both of them. Their friendship was fortified by alphabetical happenstance.
It could not have been a worse coincidence for the school administration: the three most mischievous kids always assembled together.
For Spencer, it was exciting to have another outsider around. It was like a vestige of a bygone era, the glory days of public school. Spencer and Alek had been forced to hang out with a bunch of kids who’d fully bought into this system and knew nothing else. In Anthony, there was finally another normal person. And he knew cool stuff. He knew how to dress, what kind of sneakers to wear. How to sag your pants, how to wear your T-shirt two sizes too big. The boys from Woodknoll Way were still going to school in camouflage because they thought that was cool. From Anthony they learned that it (emphatically) was not. And Anthony cussed all the time. That’s what you did in public school, he told Spencer, did you forget? He did it in sports; he did it for no reason. He said he was trying to scale back, but it was like unlearning a language, and that was refreshing as well; Spencer and Alek cussed too, and whenever an f-bomb slipped out their classmates looked like they’d been slapped in the face. With Anthony, Spencer could talk about normal stuff, in his normal way. It was a bond forged in four-letter words.
Soon, the three of them feeding off one another, they started getting called to the principal’s office together. “You said what?! This is a Christian school!”
Spencer watched Anthony work on it though. Spencer was amazed; Anthony had an uncanny ability to adapt to his surroundings. He seemed keenly aware of his environment and always knew exactly how to fit in, while Spencer didn’t care and Alek didn’t seem to either.
So Anthony, once he understood that cussing didn’t fly here—and that people snitched—got his temper in check. He prided himself on always, always knowing how to act; it just took him some extra time at the school to find out what wouldn’t go over. He started reining it in. Spencer watched Anthony become the prodigal son. The adults there, like adults everywhere, started to adore him. Adults always adored him. Or they found him quiet and polite, which Spencer was wise to. That was an act. That’s what Anthony wanted them to think, but Spencer knew that in reality, Anthony was like him.
When Spencer brought him home to meet his mom, Joyce found Anthony sweet but quiet; she couldn’t get a read on him. When she woke up to an angry call from a neighbor whose house had been covered in toilet paper by two boys who, in the halo from the street