Free Losers by Matthue Roth

until I started eavesdropping on my peers to make sure it was current.
    But the truth was, I didn’t have to say anything. From the moment I stepped through the metal detector that morning, everything felt different. Maybe the scowls of disapproval had faded along with the freshness of the first day of school, or maybe everyone had found something new to be angsty about. I no longer felt the constant urge to stuff myself into a locker and hide.
    The first person I saw on my morning walk was Crash Goldberg, the kid with all the explosions. He was hanging out with a bunch of people who looked like the cast of a horror movie, the after cast—pale skin, hair like electric shocks, fake (?) blood dribbling from the corners of their mouths. They were lurking in a corner by the front doors, tossing safety pins and coins through the metal detector as kids they didn’t like passed through. Crash spotted me at once and gave me a little salute. “Mornin’, Jupiter,” he said, straight-faced.
    The other guys waved.
    Whoa.
    I kept walking, speeding up just in case they were planning anything. But they weren’t. I listened for someone coming after me, but there was nothing. Halfway down the hallway, I looked over my shoulder and they were getting ready to chuck an alarm clock through the metal detector as a really snobby-looking girl headed inside.
    I smiled to myself. Not only did I not get punked by Crash, but I was actually starting to see the humor in high school pranks. Was I finally fitting in to school, or was I going insane? Maybe both, I figured.
    At the end of the first-floor hallway, I passed the doors leading to the South Lawn. This was where all the Satanic people hung out—the goths and the punks and the death-metal kids and the kids who weren’t part of any clique but just liked to hang out with people as bloodthirsty as they were. Even before I’d started at North Shore, people had warned me about the kids on the South Lawn. They’d allegedly slipped Rohyphol into the teachers’ coffee the morning of finals and locked them inside the lockers of honor students. They’d killed baby goats on Friday afternoons, when classes were done. They’d rolled freshmen down the hill in garbage cans, then forced them to be Satan’s slaves.
    This morning, the doors were wide open.
    A bunch of goths stood out there, smoking clove cigarettes. They stood in the perfect direction to let the smoke filter into the school. A bunch of guys in army fatigues were standing around a tree, doubtlessly planning something sinister, probablyinvolving goat blood. Then I caught a glimpse of Bates sitting calmly on the South Lawn stairs, cradling his staff in his arms. I guess everything had turned out okay for him.
    I hurried off. My encounter with Crash had me feeling pretty okay about my social standing, but I didn’t want to push it too far.
    Then, in the stairwell, I ran into Reg Callowhill. He was walking with a bunch of upperclassmen from the lacrosse team. They were all dressed in matching jackets, all tossing balls at each other like one complicated juggler with many disembodied arms. Clearly, he’d be joining them soon.
    â€œHey, Jupiter,” he said, slapping me five on my way up and their way down the stairs.
    â€œHey,” I replied breathlessly.
    Then the chorus came, a panoply of hey s and yo s and what’s up s. I lingered on the last step, frozen in confusion. Had I met them all at Devin’s party? Or were they just going along with Reg, being cool with whoever he thought was cool in a kind of A equals B postulate of acceptability?
    Then again—what difference did it make?
    All morning, it went like that. Kids I didn’t know stopped me in the hallway. Kids I vaguely recognized from the party had conversations with me about subjects I didn’t even pretend to understand, movies I’d never heard of and MTV bands I’d never heard of and girls