Free Things Unsaid: A Novel by Diana Y. Paul

singles. Easy to slip the envelope into his baggy T-shirt.
    He was almost to the door when a heavily muscled man, about six foot four, stepped in front of him, blocking him from the exit. Towering over him, he tapped Andrew’s chest. “Buddy, come back into the store, please,” he said as Andrew felt his fingers set off a paper crinkle sound under his T-shirt.
    Red—his face turned so red. The guard escorted him upstairs to thesmall office on the second floor, directly across from the wall where the records were displayed. An unobstructed vantage point for seeing what he had done.
    “Hey, junior”—Andrew had never been called “junior” before—“we have a zero tolerance for theft.” The manager, a small, round-bellied guy of what Andrew considered to be “normal” adult age, perhaps thirty, forty, turned over the single that was now in front of him. “You’re a shoplifter, plain and simple. And I believe the punishment they give you teenage thugs these days is nothing, as far as I’m concerned. The consequences should be harsh.” He picked up the 45 and looked closely at the label. “‘Can’t Buy Me Love,’ huh? Sounds like you can’t buy anything.”
    Andrew wanted to bolt. The guard stood by the door, no expression on his massive bulldog face.
    “Look, I can explain,” he said. “My name was on the waiting list for this Beatles tune. I can pay. I only borrowed it, until my copy came in. Just didn’t want to wait, you see. We’re having a party and all. To celebrate before school starts. Give me a break, won’t you?”
    The shop manager looked unconvinced, impassive. His dirty blond, greasy hair was long and clung to the back of his neck in the humidity.
    “What’s your name, junior? Better yet, you can tell it to the police downtown. See if they believe your sob story.”
    Andrew stared at the guy’s sweaty armpits. He worried that he was sweating as much as the manager. “Andrew Whitman, sir. I go to Hoban High School.” Maybe that would impress him. He wasn’t just some thief from the bad section of Akron. He went to a private school. His dad said that got you breaks in life.
    “Whitman, did you say? Whitman? Are you related to Dr. Bob Whitman?”
    Oh my God
, thought Andrew.
My father knows the manager of Woolworth’s
. What would happen to him now? “Please don’t tell him, sir.”
    The manager called his father, and, as a satisfied patient, he agreed not to file a complaint.

    Walking into the assembly hall the first day of orientation, Andrew had noticed “Dr. and Mrs. Robert Whitman—for their generous donation” engraved on a plaque right next to the front door. He knew his father loved that George Washington Military Academy was exclusive, loved the snob appeal implied in their flyers. What his father didn’t know was that erstwhile shoplifters, drug “experimenters,” exam cheats, and other delinquents who had narrowly avoided juvie hall were all George Washington military cadets, there because of their parents’ money.
    The campus
was
beautiful. Lush landscaping and expensively manicured, red-and-white brick buildings as upright, perfect, and uniform in appearance as the cadets. The teachers were intimidating and handsome at the same time in their military uniforms. They paraded in front of the parents at the beginning of the semester, marching in step up to the auditorium stage for their presentations, exuding a cool, polite air.
    “All right, plebes,” Captain Grissim shouted after the parents left. Grissim was his barracks commander and the captain of the lacrosse team. Tall, blond, Germanic bone structure, his face never smiled. He was movie-star handsome. “No mercy or second chances will be shown for failing to make a military-standard bed. The test is quite simple. You pass inspection when the quarter I throw on the bed bounces without making a dent. If you pass, you move on to learning how to shoot. If you don’t pass, your choice is to do one hundred