CHAPTER THREE

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december 20, 1970

THE FIRST FEW DAYS pass in a blur, monotonous and boring and all-around cruel. On the third day of this routine, Hunham wakes the students up at seven on the dot, banging two bedpans together and hollering at the top of his lungs. He gives them twenty minutes to dress in their joggers and hit the bathrooms before breakfast — a spread of toast and cereal and fruit. They have until eight to eat, and then it's out into the cold to run laps around the school building.

"Speed, gentlemen. Speed! Without sufficient exercise, the body devours itself," Hunham shouts, rugged up nice and warm in his big coat and gloves. The boys jog at just over a leisurely pace, Esther leading the pack with an all-out run. She's used to exercising in the bitter cold, after all. "Good job, Miss Yasui! That's it!"

After their exercise period, they hit the showers and change out of their workout gear. Then, it's silent reading time — which Esther figures is just an excuse for Hunham to stop having to parent the group of teenagers for an hour. Esther kicks her feet up on her desk, a copy of The Bell Jar resting open on her knees.

She's halfway through Esther's ( the character, not her ) first shock therapy treatment when her attention is drawn to Angus's book. He's flipped to a page with some kind of comic shoved inside, and from under the comic, he pulls out a... porno mag. He opens to the centre of the booklet, revealing a shot of a naked woman's torso, arms stretched above her head. Her eyes are cropped out of the picture but her face stares the camera straight down. Angus senses another pair of eyes on him, though, and looks in the opposite direction — where Teddy is glaring right at him. He smirks and flips the blond off.

Esther leans across the space between their two single-person desks. "Those things are so demeaning," she whispers.

Angus, startled beyond belief, jumps about half a foot in the air and closes the booklet before he turns in Esther's direction. "Sorry," he mutters, eyes on the ground.

She shrugs and goes back to her book. God, would shock therapy suck.

     After silent reading time, Hunham leaves the six to their own devices for another hour. After a brief discussion, where they land on just wandering the grounds as a group, they scurry back to the infirmary to grab their winter coats so they can head outside without fear of freezing to death.

"What if we just left? Y'know, didn't come back inside?" Teddy asks, kicking his feet through mounds of powdery snow. Some lands on the back of Esther's calves, but because she's wearing jeans and not her nice corduroys, she doesn't care all that much. Unless he's doing it on purpose, in which case, Esther might just throttle him.

"Bit cold for that," Esther replies. "Just not coming back inside at all. And it's pretty far to walk to town."

Angus shrugs. "What about your cars?" he asks, his question directed at both Jason and Esther — the only people with cars here aside from the grownups. "We can take them, go somewhere. Boston, maybe?"

Esther screws up her face. "I'm not letting you freaks inside my car, are you kidding?"

"And we'd get in so much trouble," Jason interjects. "Face it. We're stuck," he says, underarm tossing a football at Teddy.

Angus groans. "If we just had some way to get out of here. Just split," he says. Wouldn't that be lovely? If Esther wasn't afraid of her Mother's wrath, she might be more tempted to hightail it away from this shit hole. But, she knows well enough that if she left, she'd be in so much trouble — even if she'll legally be an adult by the time her parents are back from Australia.

"Well, you could put a chopper down right in the quad," Jason suggests, his statement stopping Angus in his tracks.

"What?"

Teddy raises an eyebrow. "A helicopter, dumbass. His old man's the CEO of Pratt & Whitney."

Jason nods along. "Yeah, he's got his own bird. He takes it from Stamford to the city every morning. Lands it right in the backyard. The pilot's name is Wild Bill."

Esther also stops in place and reaches out, grabbing Jason's forearm to stop him, too. "Jason, I know we just met but are you looking for a wife?" She does her best to keep her face in check but the boys immediately losing it nearly makes her break character. "Because I'm in the market for a private helicopter."

"Oh, yeah?" Jason asks. He loops his arm in Esther's and starts walking again. "We'll work out a contract."

With her free arm, Esther punches the air, as Ye-Joon repeats, "Wild Bill?"

"Yeah," says Jason. "My dad flew up to Haystack with it. Took the presents and everything, minus me."

Alex thinks on it for a moment. "Flying with presents, like Santa Claus."

Jason nods. "Yeah. Just like Santa Claus." He whistles suddenly and nods at Teddy, who starts running backwards to put more space between them. When he's a far enough distance away, Jason tosses the football and sets off running too.

Angus and Esther take a few extra steps away from the younger boys before he stops her. "So, is Woodrup as much of a sack of shit at home as at school?" he asks.

Bold question. Not unwarranted.

"Worse," Esther replies.

The boy scoffs. "That can't be possible."

Esther raises her eyebrows. "Wanna bet?" she asks. Angus gestures for her to continue. "So, uh, important backstory. I grew up in America, but until '65 my Dad still lived in Japan because there was the whole, uh, immigration ban. Uh, my parents met, you know, somewhere in Europe, they never went into details—  anyway. So I lived with my Mom full-time. Dad moved over the second the ban was lifted and he got primary custody after that. I'm like thirteen by this point, and he spends time teaching me Japanese. It got to the point where we'd only speak Japanese with each other. Then Dad died when I was almost seventeen, I moved in with Mom and Woodrup full-time, and Woodrup was so annoyed that he couldn't understand me when I spoke Japanese, he made a new rule that only English could be spoken in the house. Even if I'm just speaking to myself."

Without wasting a beat, Angus nods, conceding. "Never mind, you win."

     "Touchdown!" Jason shouts from much further down the side of the building.

     As Esther laughs at him, she doesn't notice Teddy sidling up beside her until it's too late — he grabs one of her black mittens and yanks it right off her hand, overarm tossing it into the ice-cold river just down the hill.

     "That's what you get for ratting me out!" Teddy jeers, though he barely gets the full sentence out before Esther slams both palms into his chest with enough force to send him stumbling back a few steps. Jason's already on her, restraining her just like he did by her car those few days ago, but she has no intention of going all Muhammad Ali on him.

     Using the distraction to his advantage, Teddy scampers away, and instead of following him once Jason releases her, Esther stalks down to the edge of the river. Her mitten is still there, half in the water, half on the snowy riverbank. She has to shuffle across the slippery surface to get to it, sticking her arms out to either side to keep her balance, but she manages to snag it up and wring the icy water out before shoving it in her jacket pocket and edging her way back to the path.

     Yasui - 2. Kountze - 0.

     "What's Fork Union? Before, you said you 'don't want to end up at Fork Union.'" Esther overhears Ye-Joon asking.

     "It's a military academy in Virginia. That's where I'm going if I get kicked out of school again," Angus replies.

     Not wanting to intrude on the boys' conversation, or hear any more than Angus wants her hearing, Esther loudly makes her return. She grabs the damp glove out of her pocket and waves it proudly in the air as she stomps back into plain sight. "I got it!" she announces.

     Angus sniffs out a laugh. "Good job."

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december 21, 1970

     That night, Esther stirs to the faint sounds of sniffling from the other side of the room. She mulls over two options for a while — one, sit up and see what's going on and two, pull the covers over her ears and go back to sleep. She doesn't wind up with the chance to do either before Angus, in the middle bed, rolls over to face Ye-Joon.

     "Hey," he whispers. Ye-Joon's crying ceases with a shocked gasp. "You all right?" Angus asks.

     "I had a nightmare," Ye-Joon replies, his voice soft and shaky.

     Angus nods. "I get nightmares too," he says. "I'm always falling or drowning."

     Esther shuffles further down in her bed. When she has them, her nightmares are always bloody and send her reeling awake. Always her being stabbed by her own ice skate, or a rival skater attacking her, or replaying the moment she found her f—.

     "Also..." Ye-Joon trails off. He looks down the length of his body and lets out another sob. "I had an accident."

     Angus shuffles out of his bed and drops to his knees at Ye-Joon's bedside. He lifts the cover and cringes a little. "Yeah, you did," he says. He shushes Ye-Joon as another round of sobs comes out of him. "Stop crying. If they hear you, they'll crucify you. Which would be ironic since you're Buddhist. And, you know how mean Esther is."

     Esther nearly jolts up at that to defend her reputation but she resists. This is a bad time to argue semantics.

     "I know this is an excellent school, and my brothers went here, but I miss my family, and I have no friends," Ye-Joon says between sobs.

     Angus leans closer to the young boy. "Yeah, well, friends are overrated," he says. "I'll help you hide the sheets in the morning, all right? In the meantime, find a dry spot and try to get some sleep."

     Ye-Joon thanks him, shuffling closer to the wall as Angus climbs back into bed. "Fucking asparagus," Angus mutters, pulling the covers back over his body.

     It takes everything in Esther to not laugh.

In the morning, Esther bumps shoulders with Angus in the hallway, stopping him mid-stride. "I am not mean," she hisses before slipping past him, disappearing into the bathroom. And all Angus can do is shake his head with a grin as he heads back into the Left Room to prepare for the day.

————

a/n:
hi hi! question time again!

did you go to any concerts this year? i was lucky enough to go to the eras tour and i'm still riding that high all these months later!

published: december 25, 2024
word count: 1.8k