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He’d been riding that high for a week These kids ht he had five-hundred-pound balls after what he’d done on the quad Itable to free everybody when they’d first shown up at McKinley Every day since he’d kidnapped Sa the constant tension of not knowing But when they caved, and they delivered everything he asked for, it just … kinda sucked the fun right out of it
His eye stung It felt like there was a grain of sand under the lid, but nopersisted He opened an individually packaged Rice Krispies square, and tried to see how big a bite he could take His bite was so big, it started to hurt his jaw to try and chew through it The chewy reat Like Styrofoalue Glue wasn’t sweet at all, he’d tried it He’d always thought wood glue would taste sweet, because the color of it looked dessertish, but it turned out to taste awful
With a burst of a attention That had always been his problem in school He couldn’t pay attention to what the teacher was saying to hiht in his face, it was just too boring Hisin theof how many dance club foam machines it would take to fill the whole school with bubbles He’d fantasize about the girls he was chasing He’d try to think of ways to eht he was dumb anyway, just because he couldn’t bear to listen to their boring bullshit He found it really hard to focus during tests and he always tested terribly He failed course after course, but his parents paid buckets to keep hiht he didn’t deserve to be there, but they had to tolerate hi hi school in the first place
He did learn one thing at St Patrick’s though--breaking the rules is fun It started with little stuff He poured gin down the horn of his truainst the wall as his secret liquor stash He grew his hair past the acceptable length He stopped wearing ties, and he’d untuck his shirt, both clear violations of the dress code The school alhtened around his neck when they caught hiht He started pulling pranks on other students, and on the teachers, but eventually, all that stuff got boring too
So, he decided to throw a party in the old abandoned boathouse, downriver from the dock where the crew tea practice It was a bit of a hike, but it was far enough away from the main campus that they’d be able to make some noise and no one would know Pruitt and Fowler had helped hiood It was a brain-ht It was that fun Unfortunately, a groundskeeper heard the party, and they got shut down before the grand finale He had been planning to clear everyone out of the boathouse at the end of the night and then set the rickety old thing on fire It would have blown ot him in a truckload of trouble But the school had no proof it was hianized the party A hundred-odd kids had been brave enough to sneak out of their dorms, unnoticed, and leave campus to come to the party They couldn’t all be expelled The St Patrick’s judicial council tried hard to get Gates to confess, they were looking for so, but he played du He took their accusation as a co hiantically kick-ass? It had to be you, Gates"
He didn’t get into as much trouble as he would have if they could have proved it But his parents back ho to send him to military school but his little brother, Colton, talked them out of it Somehow, Colton was able to convince their parents to enroll Colton at St Patrick’s so that he could look after Gates
Once his little brother showed up at school, everything changed Colton was the only one who could lift hiot sometimes Colton looked out for him, talked him out of his crazier ideas, and took the blame for more of Gates’s fuckups than Gates liked to admit He’d loved Colton, but he couldn’t think about hiht of how o, and he knew that hy he was so down He hadn’t been able to fully process it yet
Gates fished around inside his beat-up ca backpack until he found his old phone, wrapped in a sock They’d spent so , away froe it It had lived at the bottoer wrapped in another sock He plugged his phone into one of the extension cords and laid it on the floor After asymbol appeared on the screen, but it needed more juice before it could turn all the way on
"Gates?" a voice said fro his head into the bus Will climbed up the short staircase with exciteo the hell away
He liked Will in general He’d saved Gates’s life on the first day he’d roup so far Plus, he hadn’t dyed his hair sooofy color like the rest of the McKinley kids, so that had to stand for so But Gates didn’t want to talk to anyone at thehorrible to the kid He kne easily aggravated he could get when he was down in the dumps like this He had to keep a lid on his mood and hope whatever Will had to say was brief
Will walked as he talked "Weat us It was like when you see the stock exchange in et their requests moved up the list Can you believe that? We’re like, heroes I mean, it’s all ’cause of you It should’ve been you out there taking requests, really"
"Oh, yeah?" Gates said with no enthusiasirls you kissed"