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'Improvisus'

Part 1

If Charlie Dalton ever believed that he would hear the squeaking of the gates of Hell, he knew that it would be the sound of his curtains opening in the morning, followed my his mother's voice.

"Charlie, time to get up..." Soft and nurturing, any but the untrained ear would not have been able to hear the resounding threat within Mrs. Dalton's tone.

The sun beat mercilessly upon Charlie's eyelids, instinctively causing them to open and then close just as fast in the blinding light.

"Nooo," Charlie groaned, grabbing his thick quilt and pulling it over his head to protect himself from both the rays and his mother's bemused face. Beneath the quilt, which was made well and thick by his grandmother, Charlie felt somewhat safe for the few seconds it took for Mrs. Dalton to move to the end of the bed. She grasped the bottom of the quilt and yanked it upwards, exposing not only Charlie's eyes but the whole of Charlie to the chilly and mocking sunlight of the late August morning.

"Time for school, darling..." Mrs. Dalton said sweetly, folding up the blanket in her arms and walking out the door.

Eyes still squeezed shut, Charlie straightened out on his bed and heard the click of his door as his mother walked down the hall in her slippers. Slowly, he opened his eyes and adjusted them to the room. In all honesty, he barely remembered going to bed the night before, which would have explained last night's clothes scattered through the room along with his underwear, which somehow had stayed on. He rubbed his eyes, which were swollen and red, and sat up slowly. Then, the headache attacked.

As if he had been punched in the forehead, Charlie fell back onto his pillows and bumped his head on the wooden back of his four-poster bed. He grit his teeth and groaned again, glaring at the canopy above him, which did little to console him as the normally burgundy fabric was alight with the sun. The red did little to lessen the pain, and he felt the back of his head as he swung his legs over the side. There was going to be a bump, he was sure of it. Charlie glared at the clock on his bedside table, gritting his teeth at the time. Boston would just be waking up, and as for himself, this was just an hour and a half after getting into bed.

Going-away parties on Union Street were usually saved for the University students, but Charlie's friends considered Welton to be in the same league. While the rest of them booked it off the Deerfield, Groton, both the Philips' and Lawrence Academies the next week, Charlie was on his way to Delaware first thing in the morning. This was a good excuse as any to go out, find some girls, and get absolutely plastered in the Public Gardens. Charlie just wished that he remembered what the face had looked like that had been attached to the lips whose scarlet imprints were still smudged all over his face. Either his mother hadn't noticed, which was unlikely, or she just had not felt like asking at that precise moment about the happenings of last night. When she did ask, and she would, Charlie made noted that he would not mention the pieces of grass he then found in his boxers next to the nail marks on his thighs.

Six o' clock- the plane would be leaving from Boston, no- Logan Airport in three hours, and since it was only a short drive away from their Beacon Street apartment,

Charlie took his time showering and getting dressed. The maid had already packed his bags the night before.

-

Welton had always been a fabulous place to receive a well-rounded education for all young men who aspired to be great in their lives. Their impressive legacy of graduates who continued on to attend Ivy League schools steeped the school in legend and intimidation. Nearly every boy who attended this school worked hard every day to improve their lives through knowledge, and those who survived thrived on their academic accomplishments. With never any room for distractions in this single-sex and Spartan environment, the students of Welton were fine to study in peace, excluding the adult world of relationships until college.

Though this was not the case for Charlie Dalton.

Unlike many of the boys' families who attended this prestigious school, Charlie's family was nowhere near to scraping by to afford his education. The young man had money coming out of his ears, and this was the precise reason he was never allowed, no matter what the offense, to be expelled. He was simply too valuable a student.

The Daltons owned the banking firm at which Mr. Dalton worked in all but name. Back during the depression, this bank had been very near to closing down. But, thanks to a generous loan from one of Boston's oldest families, the Daltons, Charlie's grandfather had secured a living for him along with the next twenty generations of the Dalton family. It was from him, not his father that Charlie had inherited his smug expression and penetrating eyes. Everything else was from his mother's side of the family.

"Charlie, will you take off that ridiculous beret?" Mrs. Dalton said, reaching over and swiping the hat off his head and placing it on his lap in a way that could hardly be perceived as anything but gentle, "I swear, if I had known that you were going to wear it after our vacation in Paris, I never would have bought it!"

Despite the even quality in her voice, Charlie looked at her with all of the malice in the world. His head was still in awful pain, and his mother knew how to torture him with it without actually addressing the matter. She had started with asking the taxi driver to turn up the old Benny Goodman track that came onto the radio, and then had smoked two cigarettes with only opening the window a crack. Charlie had tried to roll down his own window all the way, but Mrs. Dalton had shut it, complaining that it may mess up her hair.

"It's as hard as a rock," Charlie had mumbled, "With all of the hairspray you put into it..."

"What was that?" Mrs. Dalton had snapped, her voice turning hard for the first time in the morning, revealing her true mood underneath.

"Nothing!" Charlie said in mock sing-song, gazing out the window and trying not to inhale the mixture of the sickening smell of Chanel no. 5 and cigarettes which emanated from his mother. She had been planning this all night. Charlie could usually handle the smell of cigarettes, but only when he was the one smoking them. He slouched in his seat and squeezed his eyes open and shut, quite aware that he was pouting.

Charlie hated going to Welton every single year for school, but since the Dalton family had also kept that establishment going during the thirties, Charlie and his father were made to break the Dalton tradition of attending in-state Massachusetts schools. It would not do to invest money in a preparatory school and have your sons not attend. Though he quite admired his grandfather, Charlie would often tell him that he wished he had let Welton go bankrupt. To this, his grandfather would laugh and say, "Oh, Charles. I'm sure you'll do much better than I did in school, without all of those wild parties to go to!" And then he would let out a booming laugh when Charlie would tell him that this was all he wanted to do.

"Oh, buck up," Mrs. Dalton said cheerily, handing a cigarette to Charlie. She was usually firm on her son, but she knew that this was a particularly terrible day for him.

"I thought Dad said that I couldn't smoke," Charlie took the cigarette and stuck it in his mouth, keeping his eyes on his mother as though she would just as quickly snatch it out.

"Well," Mrs. Dalton took a small, gold lighter from her purse, "Your father's in Boston, isn't he?"

"Yeah," Charlie said, taking a drag and opening the window, dodging the incredulous look from the taxi driver, "I wish that I was still in Boston..."

"Oh, Charlie," Mrs. Dalton softly touched his head, "We have the same conversation every year, and nothing ever comes of it. You know you're to go to school at Welton, and nothing is going to change that until you get your grades up for college."

"What if I don't want to go to college?" Charlie spoke out the window, fastening the beret back onto his auburn hair after smoothing it down.

"Out of the question." Mrs. Dalton sharply replied, removing his beret in the identical fashion previous.

-

There was one thing about Welton that Charlie found comforting; the people there never changed. As soon as he got out of the taxi, he had barely a moment to survey the new faces before being greeted by the friendly and familiar faces of Steven Meeks and Gerald Pitts.

"Charlie!" Meeks' small stature was not in any way a barrier for his voice, which Charlie could hear across the field of first-years and their twittering mothers, all of which were regarding Mrs. Dalton in a mix of fear and awe in her new dress suit as she descended from the taxi.

"Charlie, you old cad!" Meeks said again, bouncing over and nearly tripping over a young boy, leaving Pitts to accidentally knock the kid's hat off on his way over. Where Meeks was loud and boisterous, Pitts was quiet and serene, a look of worry across his serious face when he looked over his shoulder, hoping the annoyed little boy would not tell his mother on them.

"How have you been, Meeks?" Charlie said in his most impressive voice, trying to mask the fact that he was hung over and generally perturbed to be back at school.

"Fine, fine," Meeks beamed, placing his hands in his pockets as Charlie kissed his mother goodbye. The Daltons were never really big on tearful partings, or anything which involved tears.

Charlie picked up his suitcases from where the taxi driver had placed them, "Have they put up the new roommate pairings yet?" he asked Meeks, who took one of Charlie's bags.

"Yes, they have- Jesus, did you put bricks in here or something?- And I don't think you're gonna like it." He hoisted the bag up in a more comfortable position.

"Why's that?" Charlie asked, looking at Meeks as they walked with Pitts following.

"You're rooming with Cameron," Pitts said blatantly, regarding the leaves as though he hadn't just revealed such depressing information.

"Ughh," Charlie voiced his disdain and collapsed to the ground, the weight of the night before and the early commute that day finally cracking down on his legs, "I hate life right now..."

"Rough night?" Meeks asked, crouching down next to his friend, but not entirely sitting down so as to not dirty his pressed pants, "Please tell me that it isn't as bad as last year, when I visited."

Meeks, never having been even slightly inebriated, had stayed with Charlie for the last part of the summer before. And for the last night of their holiday, Charlie had taken Meeks out for a night on the town with his Boston friends. Never could any of them, including Meeks, have guessed that Meeks would be able to drink them all under the table.

"My entire family is Irish," he had said the morning after, " I was born in Ireland. How could you not think that I would be pre-disposed to alcohol?"

Mrs. Dalton had found the entire situation incredibly amusing, as she had also then been waiting home, expecting to see Charlie carried in by Meeks at some odd hour in the morning. As always, she had been entirely correct.

"No," Charlie moaned, feeling the pain in his head now traveling down to his calves, "Thank God it isn't that bad..."

"Please tell me that I don't have to carry you into the Chapel," Meeks spoke down jokingly to Charlie, who opened one eye to look at the looming figure of Pitts.

"You don't," he said, making his suitcase into a pillow in the middle of the busy grass field, "But Pitts might have to."

"No way," Pitts replied, lauging and offering his hand to Charlie, "Come on, get into your room and take a nap before the initiation. It always works for me."

Upon meeting Pitts, one would never take him for a drinker, but it was true that he had swiped more bottles from his old man's liquor cabinet than any other of his friends. It was just something odd about his character that was not readily seen.

"Fine, fine..." Charlie took Pitts' hand and stood, steadying himself and grabbing his suitcase from the grassy ground. Behind them, a shaky-looking boy with light brown hair walked quickly between his parents. His father was quiet, but his mother was making a terrible fuss.

"Come now, Todd!" she snapped at him in a most unladylike way, "We want to get a good seat. Did you brush your hair this morning? It looks like such a mess!"

The boy named Todd just stood there with his mouth hanging open in slight terror as his mother retrieved a small hairbrush from her bag and started attacking his hair with it, all the while saying, "Jeffrey would always keep his hair combed, I don't know why you can't be more like him!"

Before the family disappeared into the meeting hall, Todd met eyes with Charlie, who could read nothing but pleading in the young man's eyes as if he were saying, Save me!

"Horrifying..." Meeks mumbled.

"Who is that?" Charlie asked as soon as the family was out of sight, "That guy looks about our age."

"I think he's new..." Pitts replied, obviously not paying attention.

"Well, no shit, Sherlock," Charlie said, "But who is he?"

"I think he's Jeffrey Anderson's younger brother," Meeks adjusted his glasses, "You know, the National Merit Scholar, and all that."

Actually, Charlie had no clue. He knew of Jeffrey Anderson; he had graduated when Charlie was in his fifth year at Welton. But this kid, Todd, looked nothing like him. Where Jeffrey had been athletic and confident, Todd seemed slight and mousy. Charlie mulled over this for a moment, and then turned to Meeks and Pitts.

"Hey, have any of you seen Perry?" he asked, "We need to get a study group together if I'm going to pass any classes this year."

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So, what do you all think; should I continue?