The Boys of McKinley House
Chapter Two—Problems with Socks

-

Something was wrong. The room had been quiet for only a moment, but it was a moment that lasted a fraction more than it should have. The silence would go one for hours, for days; it would never end, not in this lifetime. David had been in the Dean of Students' offices for exactly fourteen seconds, and already he had said something wrong.

"I'm sorry," Mr. Snyder said, an unreadable expression on his face. "My hearing must be going. I could have sworn you said you ate babies."

"A-ha," David laughed uneasily. Snyder didn't join in. "Well, you see, ah, my friend Dutchy—my friend Stef and I, we worked in the haunted house in this carnival out in Brooklyn for most of August, and I, um, was a zombie."

"I see." Snyder, who at the moment was very absorbed in making sure all the pens on his ink blotter were parallel to each other, did not look up. "So you ate babies."

"Yes. But I was only acting. Heh."

Smiling tightly, Snyder leaned back in his chair and began to flip through the file that had been sitting on his desk. "Well, from your application, Mr. Jacobs, it appears you've held several interesting jobs in the last few years. You've been a…hair sweeper in a barbershop, you've worked driving a Mr. Softee truck, you've been a fact checker at Teen Communist Magazine—" here, Snyder paused to raise an eyebrow.

"I, ah, got that job through my sister."

"You've been a dishwasher, a waiter, an aquarium salesman, a newspaper delivery boy…as well as a half-dozen other things—essentially, you haven't been out of a job since the seventh grade. Tell me," he said, "why is that?"

"I needed the money," said David.

Something about the expression on Snyder's face told him that the Dean of Students had never heard that answer before. Later on, David would learn that, among the wealthy, "money" was an ugly word, like "gonorrhea" or "hemorrhoids," and one that they tried to avoid in every day conversation. But today he was still a wet-behind-the-ears aquarium salesman, and could not have known any better.

"Well," Snyder said uneasily, "I'm sure you're…very eager to see the grounds, at any rate. Since you've transferred from another school, we've assigned you a fellow student to show you around this afternoon. A…" he peered through his bifocals at one of the papers on his desk. "…Ah yes. A Mr. Higgins, I presume—the son of one of our math instructors over at Rosemary Hall. Yes. He's, um…quite a character." Snyder coughed loudly. "At any rate, he'll get you acquainted with the campus, introduce you to some people, show you the ropes, if you will. And…" he paused, at a loss, but knowing he had to say one more thing before he could shake David's hand and push him out the door. Suddenly, it dawned on him; he smiled the strangely unsettling smile that David would become so familiar with over the next nine months. "…And I am sure that you will be a wonderful addition to the vibrant and diverse community that is Caldwell Academy."

-

Every year, only a handful of students were taken it at Caldwell on full scholarships. This year, there had been five, and Racetrack was lucky enough to know, before even the first day of classes, the identity of one of them.

The scholarship students' identities were kept completely confidential, and for those who had been going there since their freshman years, for those whose brothers had gone there, whose fathers and cousins and grandparents had gone there, to guess their identities. For the first few weeks of classes it was always at the backs of their minds, when they were in chemistry class, in morning chapel, when they were sitting on the john. Racetrack always started a pool, and usually, he more than broke even. He had been around Caldwell since he was five, when his father started teaching math at the girls' school; even though his family wasn't wealthy, he had been around the wealthy his whole life, and was better than anyone else at spotting a scholarship student a mile away.

Since he was a faculty brat, he always got roped into touring new students. It had happened this year the same way it had happened every year since the beginning of time, like clockwork, two weeks before school started: he and Izzy had been sitting at the table eating Fruit Brute cereal and reading the Sunday comics, when out of nowhere their father waltzed into the kitchen and announced, with no preamble:

"In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since."

They looked up from Brenda Starr and stared at him blankly, as they did every year.

"I said, in my younger and more vulnerable years, my father gave me some advice—"

"What advice would that be, Doc?" Racetrack said at last.

Dr. J. Higgins smiled. "'Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone,' he told me, 'just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had.' Be sure to phone the admissions office today to see if there are any new students this year you can tour on orientation day, son. Isobel, you'll be managing our mathletes team again." And with that, he wandered off, cheerfully humming what sounded like the theme song from Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

"Ah, summer," Izzy sighed.

"When a young man's fancy turns to plagiarization of The Great Gatsby. Say, Iz," Racetrack said thoughtfully, "you think you'll get to do a charity to one of those nice mathletes who's never seen a girl up close and take him to the spring formal, and then stand out on the porch until after curfew holding hands for a half an hour? Again?"

To which she had no better answer than to upend her bowl of Fruit Brute over his head.

So Izzy was stuck in the lobby of the new math, science, and technology building, polishing calculators and handing out trigonometry textbooks, and Racetrack was stuck with David S. Jacobs, who (if what he had read in a confidential file in the admissions office was correct) was born on April 22nd, had transferred from P.S. 118 on Cherry Street with an unweighted G.P.A. of 4.67, was allergic to peanuts, and was the recipient of a Marshall Taylor grant, Caldwell's most prestigious scholarship. He was, essentially, here on a free ride.

Racetrack would, essentially, have figured this out within minutes of meeting him, even if he hadn't known beforehand. There were certain telltale signs you could always look for in a scholarship student: used books, cheap shoes, uniform clothes that didn't fit quite right—blazers that were tight in the shoulders, pants that were just a fraction too short, exposing ankles and socks when they should have fallen easily over the tops of the wearer's shoes. Expressing any degree of awe at their surroundings was also bad—the only acceptable attitude for a rich boy was eternal indifference toward everything surrounding him. But the worst giveaway of all was talking about money, in almost any direct capacity. Racetrack knew just as well as anyone else at Caldwell: what you want, you think about, and what you have, you ignore.

Race could have told you things about David's socks. David S. Jacobs, allergic to peanuts, aged sixteen, was tall and earnest, eager to please, and seemed constantly astonished even to be at the school. Seeing David for the first time, Racetrack thought that he might just be Izzy's next date to the spring formal.

But at the same time, and despite himself, he liked him an awful lot.

-

David first met the math instructor's son on the lawn in front of the admissions building. He walked out the door and down the front steps, past the eglantine and rhododendron that shaded the walkway, and emerged into the sunlight to see a boy close to his own age standing astride an ancient Schwinn, white shirtsleeves rolled up with rumpled perfection, eyes hidden by a pair of wayfarer Ray-Bans. He wasn't handsome, exactly—he was short, and his sharp features had yet to reach a compromise with the oddly soulful brown eyes David would see as soon as the other boy took his sunglasses off—but he carried himself with such ease that it was hard to tell at first. David was suddenly conscious of his blazer's frayed cuffs, and wondered why, of every sock in the world of socks, he had chosen this morning to put on black wool ones, with dark blue clocks.

And so he was thinking very hard about a rainbow spectrum of other socks—dress socks, sweat socks, socks with spots, the knee-high gym socks with red stripes along the tops that Sarah wore constantly—when the boy caught sight of him, smiled an unreadable smile, and reached out a hand to shake.

"David S. Jacobs?"

"Uh, yeah. And you're…"

"Racetrack Higgins. I'm showing you around today," he said.

"Your first name is Racetrack?"

Racetrack took off his sunglasses, folded them, and put him in his pocket. "It's become preferable to my first name, yeah." He paused, looking David up and down. "So. You think you're gonna be a 'wonderful addition to the vibrant and diverse community that is Caldwell Academy,' David S. Jacobs?"

"Does everyone here say that?"

"Yes," Racetrack said seriously. "Of course, the secret is, we're about as diverse as lime soda. Wonderbread, you know? You're not supposed to have that figured out just yet, of course. But it's okay, though, we make up for it with our fabulous sense of social responsibility." He paused. "Would you happen to be vibrant and diverse, David S. Jacobs?"

"I'm Jewish," he said. "I'm not sure if that counts. Call me David."

The first time David had seen Racetrack smile, it was cool, utterly unapproachable; now he grinned. "Before you know it you'll be up onstage at our diversity assembly explaining Yom Kippur. David."

He didn't know quite how to respond to that. There was a lull in the action; Racetrack looked at him carefully, for just a moment too long. Then, he unfolded his sunglasses, put them carefully back on, and said, with a laugh that David wouldn't fully understand the meaning of for weeks: "come and meet my sister Isobel."

-

On the way to the math, science, and technology building at the far end of campus, where Isobel was spending the afternoon handing out math books and TI-1205's, Race and David had passed three girls who Racetrack introduced as "Benny Kittridge, Dayle Chase, and Endy Dalton—queens of Rampion house." They all wore cable knit socks, cashmere sweaters, and pearls fastened at their throats and ears, and were led, apparently, by the one named Benny, an immaculately pretty blonde who had paused for just a moment to appraise David with her cool blue eyes before she passed him by.

"You've got a minute left to fall in love," Racetrack whispered in his ear

But if Benny, Dayle, and Endy were the most beautiful girls at Caldwell, and the ones everyone wanted either to screw or screw over (as Racetrack so eloquently put it), then Isobel Higgins was God's gift to geeks, and that was almost as good. From a certain point of view, it was better—she never had to do math homework for the rest of her life and, if she played her cards right, could marry someone who would eventually be on the cover of Scientific American for solving an insolvable theorem, and all thanks, in part, to her.

(She pictured it just perfectly, lying in bed at night with her trig book clutched against her beating heart.

ASSOCIATED PRESS REPORTER: And how was it that that critical breakthrough in your work on this theorem—the same that has baffled and driven to madness so many other mathematicians—came about?

MR. ISOBEL HIGGINS: Well, I was in bed with my beautiful wife one morning, when suddenly, something about the adorable way her nose is slightly bigger on one side clicked with an article I had read the night before—and I thought "by God! That's it! It all connects to the Taniyama-Shimura conjecture! And I realized that all I had to do was count sets of Galois representations associated with the semi-stable elliptic curves, thereby showing that they and modular forms are the same!—So I did, and I worked it out that very morning, after putting on my pants, and then my wife and I shared an omelet to celebrate. I believe it was Denver, or perhaps Spanish. Which one has bell peppers in it?

ASSOCIATED PRESS REPORTER: And thus, mathematical history has been made.)

When Racetrack first led David into the lobby of the math, science, and technology building, at first he couldn't even find his sister; the room was too crowded with boy-mathematicians. Boy-mathematicians sitting on the stairway that led to the physics labs, showing off their calculators to each other; boy-mathematicians picking at their braces; boy-mathematicians greedily skimming through their new textbooks, seeing if they could already answer the hardest problems; boy-mathematicians putting on their mathletes sweaters, in the Caldwell colors, blue and green; boy-mathematicians arguing about who, in an ultimate mathematician wresting showdown, would beat who: Ken Ribet or Marshall Harvey Stone.

And, sitting next to Isobel, behind a folding table piled with textbooks, calculators, Q-tips, notepads, and a tiny black-and-white TV that was playing what looked like The Electric Company, was the most handsome, relatively normal boy-mathematician in the room, both the most incandescently brilliant math genius at Caldwell, and the only one who wasn't madly in love with Isobel. His name was Bengt Odin Gustafson, but he was known by almost everyone as Kid Blink, because of the eye patch he had worn ever since a tragic lawn dart accident when he was seven.

Blink was talking to Isobel, his feet up on the table, doing his reckless, desperate genius act—Bruce Springsteen, if Bruce Springsteen had ever gotten letters from Princeton begging him to leave high school early and resume his studies on their campus. "Did you know," he was saying, "that mathematicians make the best lovers?"

Isobel did a good job of blushing and acting like she hadn't heart this about fifty-eight times before. "They do?"

"Well, naturally. You see," he said, "with them, it isn't just chance—they can calculate everything, angles, friction, heat…" he reached out and took Isobel's hand in his, staring deeply into her eyes, and this time she really did blush: all the way to the tips of her comely ears. They looked at each other a moment, transfixed, the outside world disappearing, and then—

Racetrack cleared his throat. "WHY HELLO, BLINK, WOULD YOU MIND TAKING YOUR HANDS OFF MY LITTLE SISTER?"

They sprung apart, and Kid Blink, flustered—a rare enough emotion for him, David would learn—attempted to orchestrate his escape.

"Well," he said, "I hate to leave so suddenly—hi Race—but I promised Professor Salt that I'd help her with those frogs and everything, so, um—" Blink clattered out of his seat and edged up the staircase. "And, hey, I'll be seeing you, Iz. Remember to floss." And he fled.

Isobel Higgins stared at her brother with an expression so livid that it transcended the meaning of the word hate. She took a few very deep breaths.

"Hi, Iz," he said meekly.

"Hello, Racetrack," she said. "Who's your friend?"

"This is David. He's new this year." Racetrack clapped a hand on David's shoulder. "David, this is my sister Isobel. She's a sophomore. She's trying to date all the boys in BC Calc before she graduates."

"I'm doing it alphabetically," Isobel said, picking up a wet Q-tip and beginning to clean between the buttons of an Amelia Scientific.

"She's halfway through the G's. Say, David, do you like math?"

David had a feeling he would need to choose his words carefully. "I like it okay," he said at last. "I'm more into history, to be honest."

"Ah," said Racetrack, glancing over at his sister, who was making a point of ignoring him, and looking just a little too relieved. "Well, let me show you to Scott House then—that's where all your English and humanities classes will be. You're taking Professor Kloppman's class, right?"

"I have no idea."

"Well, anyway, let's go. Say 'Goodbye,' Izzy."

"Goodbye, Izzy."

"Ha. Isn't she a character?"

"You've got a whole family full of them."

"Y'know, David…I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship."

-

And so it happened that David S. Jacobs spent the afternoon touring the campus of Caldwell Academy, and at times was so amazed by its beauty and utter separation from every school he had ever seen, and so astonished that he really was here, that he even forgot to worry about his socks. For the first half of the afternoon, he tried to act as unimpressed as he could, worried that Race might not think much of him if he didn't; for the second half, he didn't even bother. He would find out later, of course, that Racetrack's dissolute charm that day was only an act put on for people who didn't know him well; Jack Kelly was the one who had perfected that role, and he wouldn't arrive on campus until everyone else had unpacked their bags and said a tearful goodbye to their parents.

So Racetrack was free, at least for an afternoon, to be TheCoolGuy, and David, once he allowed himself to finally stop caring about his socks and everything else that was wrong with him, was free to look, and look, and look.

Later that night, when he went over the afternoon in his head, he could come up with few real memories that fixed themselves in his mind. The afternoon had ended up an overwhelming series of images and sounds, some pictures frozen with perfect clarity: the view of the mountains in the distance, and the town of St. Helens all spread out below (Caldwell was a school on a hill), the bell tower rising from the center of commons, shafts of golden sunlight slanting down through the windows in the great hall, the wilting sunflowers in the vegetable garden hidden behind one of the houses at Rosemary, plum and apple trees heavy with fruit, daisies in a field, pretty girls with daisy chains in their hair…and everywhere, all across the school's campus, trees like he had never seen before, big, majestic. David asked Race TheCoolGuy what they were.

Racetrack looked at him, bemused. "Douglas firs."

"Douglas firs…"

Racetrack talked the entire time, pausing only for breath—not for any real reason, especially, but because that was just the way he talked: incessantly. After a while, David more or less stopped listening, but he drifted in and out enough to find out what he needed to know.

Caldwell was divided into two separate schools: Thaw and Rosemary Hall. It had started out as a boys' preparatory academy, and merged with Rosemary Hall, a girls' finishing school in Astoria, in 1959; Caldwell's boys' school adopted the name of Thaw, after a wealthy benefactor made rich by timber. Caldwell was co-ed in the sense that boys and girls were on the same campus, and shared everything—dances, dining halls, plays, and photocopiers—except for housing and classes, after the headmaster of Caldwell at the time of the merger decided that "as little distraction as possible from nubile young temptresses will be the only means by which we can keep our boys focused on their studies and their growth from mere youths to splendid, clear-thinking young men." The same headmaster was later found sitting behind his lovely cherrywood desk with a nubile young temptress's head in his lap; she was a sophomore at Rosemary, and had, he claimed, seduced him.

He was, of course, fired. The girl went home to her family in Minneapolis, made independently wealthy by the school's efforts to silence her, and Arthur McKinley, who had taught History to the boys of Caldwell Academy since its founding in 1910, was hired in the shamed man's place. The desk was replaced with a nice oak roll-top, but Caldwell would forever remain more troubled with sexual scandal than any other school that could be ranked alongside it; whether this was due to a curse brought upon it by the guilty headmaster or simply because the Kelly family sent all their five children there, no one would ever know

McKinley served until his death at the age of eighty-six, when, out to dinner one night, he laughed out loud at a joke his friend was telling and died of a heart attack. Even years later, when David was starting his first year at Caldwell and the last remaining Kelly boy had one year left before he graduated, McKinley was still thought of as the greatest headmaster the school had ever known. He served as beacon of wisdom, kindness, dignity, and forthrightness for all of the school to aspire to; the current headmaster, Joseph Pulitzer, who was neither dignified nor kind nor looked nearly as handsome with mustaches as Arthur McKinley had, was always a little touchy about this, but managed to hide it relatively well.

In Thaw, the boys' school of Caldwell Academy, there were eight residential houses: Northrup, Canfield, Medford, Maryhill, Colton, Hotchkiss, Irving, and McKinley. David Jacobs had a room in McKinley house.

-

David didn't know quite what he was expecting his room to look like, but whatever he was thinking of, it wasn't what he saw when Racetrack swung open the door. It was a fraction smaller than his bedroom at home, sparsely furnished: scarred oak floors, twin beds, sloping white walls, late-afternoon sunlight pouring through the skylights, and two little roll-top desks, full of drawers and slats and pigeonholes, the perfect place, he thought, to read and study and learn. He loved it on sight.

Seated at one of these desks was the boy he would live with for the next nine months. The tabletop, the floor beside him, every available surface was piled high with the books he would have to read in the next year for his classes: Beyond Good and Evil, Candide, Beowulf, Civilization & Its Discontents, The Iliad, Notes From the Underground, Illness as Metaphor, The Trial and Death of Socrates. And in the middle of all this, leaning back in his desk chair, legs crossed, was Mush Meyers, reading Highlights.

Mush looked up, completely unembarrassed, and grinned. "Don't you just hate it when you can't find the last difference?"

Racetrack cracked a grin. "David S. Jacobs, Mush Meyers, Mush Meyers, David S. Jacobs. Dave, Mush was new last year, too."

"Really?" David asked, surprised. Mush looked as comfortable in his surroundings as if he had grown up here.

"Yeah. Did you meet Odie?"

"Odie?"

"Oh, sorry—Kid Blink. Blond hair, smartest kid in the math department, wears a patch?"

"Um, yes. For a minute."

"Yeah, we grew up together, in Winnetka, Illinois. We were scouted for Caldwell when we were sophomores. He came for math, I came for lacrosse."

David was overwhelmed, for just a moment, with a feeling of utter joy. There were at least two other real people at this school, people who had felt as much like foreigners as he did now. People who had had problems with their socks.

He would find out, of course, over the next few months, that there were many more friends to be found in McKinley house, let alone in all of Caldwell Academy, and the town of St. Helens itself.

There was the senior boy across the hall, son of a Savannah defense lawyer, who had been Blanche DuBois in a past life, and was nicknamed Skittery due to his impressive history of mental breakdowns dating from age fifteen. There was Skittery's best friend, who everyone called Snitch, son of a junior senator from Iowa, owner of the largest front teeth David had ever seen, and one of the few genuinely kind and unassuming people at the school. There was Roger Simon, known as Specs, who, with all his worrying and nervous tendencies, had been roomed with Kid Blink, the laid back boy-genius of Caldwell Academy, who was on a lifelong quest to force him to loosen up and have some fun. There was Margaret Larsen, the ex Broadway chorus girl and star of such underground classics as Biker Babes from Zombietown and Lust-Demon from Outer Space!, who taught drama and voice and was in charge of the annual school musical. There was Sylvy Golino, the daughter of Professor Golino, the religioninstructor at Thaw, who had something important to tell Racetrack. There was Colleen DuPont, who would be a source of endless torment for David, but would dispense of the most luminous wisdom only when he needed it. There was Jack Kelly, who would affect him more deeply than anyone else he had ever known.

...And a hundred other people in between, who would shape his experience in this unfamiliar place, and if he did not grow from a mere youth into a splendid, clear-thinking young man in his time at Caldwell, then he grew more over the course of that year than any other time in his life: the year he was a boy of McKinley House.

-

Author's Note—

I only realized after I had uploaded the prologue that "The Boys of McKinley House" sounds very much like the title of a gay porn movie. But really, that's fitting, because in some capacities it kind of will be. I had forgotten, before I started this chapter, how hard it is for me to write anything longer than about a thousand words, mainly because I have an attention span the size of a sesame seed. But I had a lot of fun with it, and I had a huge amount of positive feedback, too, so that kept me going.

DALTON: That and, like, an entire jar of peanut butter. One of these days, Dakki, that fast metabolism of yours is going to slow down, and THEN where will you be? Because I'm certainly not letting you borrow my thighmaster.

((sigh)) So, at present count, Blink is a math genius, Medda is Elvira, mistress of the dark, and Racetrack wears his sunglasses at night. I've gotten all your profiles except for a couple and I've figured out where each character is going to be placed, and a few of you found your way into the first chapter; everyone else will be introduced in the near to fairly near future.

And now, Dalton and I are going to do some Jane Fonda.

DALTON: And REVIEW!

Make it burn.

-

Shout outs!

(So, about half of this chapter ended up being the fic, and half of it was shout-outs, because I've never gotten so many reviews in my life, and I wanted to thank you guys, so somehow keeping it short and sweet eluded me. Ah well.)

Rubix

DALTON: ((whimpers)) Negative four?

((high-fives Rubix))

Oxymoronic Alliteration

HE IS NOT AN ELEVEN HE IS NOT AN ELEVEN HE IS NOT AN ELEVEN! ((bursts into tears))

Sweet Sapphola Oil

You know, it's gotten to the point where whenever I hear the phrase "cherry picker" my mind goes "Sapphy!"—which may not be entirely healthy, but what are you gonna do?

DALTON: And if you need someone to play bongo drums for you, Sapph, I'll be MORE than glad to help.

…He heard Kennedy had a thing for musicians. Basically, since then, my life has been a living hell. But when is it never?

Klover

DALTON: FOR YOUR INFORMATION, ONLY EXTREMELY BUTCH GUYS CAN PULL OFF SWEATER VESTS. ((bursts into tears))

Platy

You have officially lost ALL your Little Foot privileges.

Unknown-Dreams

Dude, Sarah was SO a communist in that movie. All her political activism and feminist leanings…and David? Totally a violent criminal in the making. The way he said "I'll get the knife!" …((shudders))

Shaturday

I'm sorry I made you go out with mathletes.

DALTON: She really is. She's been crying.

And I'm sorry I made you polish calculators.

KNOX: She really is. We had to eat a whole pint of Cherry Garcia together to assuage her guilt.

But I figure that being Racetrack's incestual sister somehow makes up for it.

DALTON: It really does.

KNOX: Although the damage done to my thighs will be irreparable…

SHUT UP, DALTON, YOU NEVER WOULD HAVE MADE IT INTO THE BALLET, ANYWAY.

KNOX: …she's still a little moody…

Gamble7

You're in the fic, baby! It's time to celebrate, crack open a root beer, and watch some Harvey Birdman with me and Dalton.

DALTON: Man, our parties are lame…

Lil Irish QT

Due to the exactness of your hotness ratings, I can only guess that they were derived from some incredibly complex scientific equation. I only wish I had the same textbook.

MusiCath

Well, I can see preppie love, but an eleven for hotnessjust seems excessive.

DALTON: ((dances by in a toga)) I AM THE MONARCH OF THE SEA!

Ershey

Oh, man, Ersh, I've got it all figured out: you and Mush are going to be like Romeo and Juliet, except with SOCCER. And no one dies. Probably. ((cough))

allaboutelephants22

Thank you, my darling! Dalton keeps the spikes, and stripes; I keep the punk rock hotties.

FrenchyGoil

Allow me to share with you all of the French that I, the girl-genius of the universe, happen to know:

« J'ai faim. »

Honestly, that's all you need to know in any country. Also, "no, I would prefer not to have a good time with you and your brother."

Lutabelle

I HAVE RUN OUT OF A.S.S.-RELATED PUNS.

Ccatt

DALTON: They say that Shaft is one BAD mother—

Um, yes. Charlie and I are complete losers. But he IS a complete loser who got a 7 in masculinity, so how about that?

Silky Conlon

I must say, after receiving your casting call, it was quite a relief to realize that you were a Silky Conlon, not a Silky Colon (that was the name on the review I got from you). Although I have to admit, that mistake was kind of inspiring. I had visions of Spot serenading you by moonlight, singing about the beauty of your internal organs…

DALTON: You have officially lost any chance you ever had of this person mistaking you for sane.

Singin'-Newsies-Goil

((raises an eyebrow)) Dutchy…must die.

DALTON: AND I, WITH MY ALL-AMERICAN HETEROSEXUAL HOTNESS, WILL KILL HIM!

Written Sparks

Sparks-a-go-go! Hide not your stories, for they must be seven times better than mine, perhaps even eight or eight and a half. And for heaven's sake, don't live on the prairie unless you happen to live on a little house and your name is Laura Ingalls, in which case that would actually be really neat. But if not, go west, young woman, and grow up with your country.

B

Yes—poor little Davey being forced into a group of boys who already know each other really really well and think he's kind of a loser. I love doing that. It's such a great plot device, because it lets you get to know the characters as your protagonist does, and also saves you from such awful expository writing as "Well, Jack, my seventeen-year old friend, what do you say we go down to the Tastee Freez to get some vanilla softserve, since you are allergic to chocolate as well as peanuts and shellfish?"

P.S.—you owe me a casting call, and I happen to have a mafia!Race hanging around. You wrote him. So tell me whether or not you still want in, or I'll be sending Big Tony over with some pliers and a blowtorch and, I'm just sayin', you might have mobility issues.

DALTON: You are such. A LOSER.

I know.

Erin Go Bragh

DALTON: Don't worry, that's how Dakki feels every single day.

((after a good five minutes)) …HEY!

NadaZimri

I don't think that rumor about shout-outs being outlawed is true. And I am disproving it right now by WRITING A SHOUT OUT!

DALTON: …what a rebel.

YES I AM. In fact, I am going to announce it to the whole fic.

-

Author's Note Part the Second—

DALTON: ((sighs)) Dakki would like to announce…that she is a rebel, and she is a rider at the gates of dawn who takes no prisoners. That is all. Now go review and tell her to shut up.

Love,

Dalton and Dakki