CHAPTER ONE
ELLIOTT ARCHWAY WANTED TO SKETCH the aching glory of the stars onto his messy bedroom, like a frenetic epigone of van Gogh.
However, he needed an excuse to escape the orphanage, therefore he pressed open the heavy metal doors to the Northmen locker room.
He ignored his blackened eye. He ignored his chipped tooth.
His tape was on full-volume, but the batteries were dying out.
For years to come, Elliott would wonder if maybe he had replaced the batteries before he snuck out of the splintered orphanage window…
Maybe if Elliott had tucked the small machine safely under his tattered pillow where no one could find it…
Then none of this might’ve happened. Then Mr. Newton might’ve lived in the end.
However, Elliott couldn’t breathe without music. He couldn’t think straight without a pair of drumsticks in his hands. The explosive lyrics and hard, percussive drums kept his soul alive. In a dark sense, Nirvana had killed Mr. Arthur Newton.
That March, Elliott needed Nirvana as a distraction. Otherwise, he would think of James Wilde again.
His mind would be consumed with him completely.
Elliott was gripped by obsession. He could never handle a fixation normally. It was an irrepressible impulse. A compulsive urge.
He couldn’t trust himself to even own a cellphone because he would swipe his photographs endlessly, mindlessly.
Don’t think of him anymore. Elliott shoved his hands into his denim pockets, he tightened the strings of his gray hoodie, and he concentrated on his injuries that stung and ached within his skin.
Elliott washed his bruised jawbone in the locker room. He replaced the gauze on his wound. He kept his eyes off of him.
There were only three more years until he was old enough to live on his own. Rugby was his way out until then. Elliott would prove his physicality in front of the coaches, practice after practice, week after week, if he had to.
Even if his right eye was starting to swell and leak badly.
Even if his rear molar was raw and loose.
Elliott couldn’t afford his escape without a scholarship.
A composition scholarship paid his tuition at Northmen Academy, a paragon of erudition that extolled poetry, music, and art.
Nestled in Banebury, Connecticut, the meritorious academy was wreathed in colonial mansions and lauded orchestral halls.
He lived in the oak-and-maple towns of New England, where the air ripened of cider in August, the gated manors signified their historic wealth, and the burly mountains were smoky in elegance.
The cardinal autumns torched the tawny leaves with its fiery flames by late September.
The deep rivers thickened with fog by October.
The timbered valleys stirred with sparrows by November.
The rich earth was awash with russet, as if the scarlet leaves were wine poured insouciantly from a drunk jazz player’s hand.
Banebury, Connecticut was a dream of luxury and pure nature.
However, their affluence belied a darker quality underneath.
Above art and strings, Baneburians hailed stature and political power. In their dignified minds, it was rather embarrassing to be famous; to be seen chasing after fans or pleading for attention. To debase oneself to entertain. To parade oneself as a circus for scraps of money.
Stardom was seldom distinguished. Celebrity was akin to beggary.
How mortifying and humiliating it was to be known not for history, but instead fleeting seconds of a spectacle for the masses.
Televisions were discarded from households.
Glamorized, glossy magazines went unpurchased.
Instead, in their collective belief, if one must debase themself, it should be in the exhibition or pursuit of art.
If one must bear the burden of fame, it should be for whole and complete political domination.
Acclaim in the arts was bestowed, not cheaply given. Political praise was earned, not willingly exchanged.
As patrons of the arts, they expected students to be willing to die for their craft.
To seek divinity in art. To be consumed with their art to the point of savagery.
Baneburians believed in nothing else if not in ritualistic art to the extent of barbarity.
There were three high principles of barbarity in Banebury:
Barbarity as a means of art.
Barbarity as a means of pleasure.
Barbarity as a means of psychological discipline.
Highest of all, of course, was barbarity as a means of art.
After all, politics itself was a spectacle of art. Further than that–art itself was political.
Thus, politics and the arts were immutably intertwined.
To Elliott’s relief, the younger generations were indifferent to the lessons of ritual barbarity.
They were indifferent even to the Ancient Classics.
No longer were the youths interested in the philosophy of Aristotle or the tragedies of Aeschylus, but rather pop stars, influencers, streamers, and athletes. Anything that entertained them.
He felt safe in their myriad interests.
That afternoon, dozens of boys crowded the Northmen locker room for rugby try outs. The rowers packed in behind them, an atmosphere of sweat and grime emanating from them as they laughed and jostled each other.
Don’t stare at him. Don’t even glance at him, Elliott commanded himself. He felt his skin heat. He always knew when he was being watched.
James’s eyes roamed over the bruises, he ran his gaze across the small tears in the corner of Elliott’s eyes. Then he arched an eyebrow.
Elliott refused to look at him straight on, pretending instead to stare at the analogue clock mounted above him on the concrete walls. However, traitorously, his eyes slid down.
James locked eyes with him.
The electricity raised in the air between them whenever the older student’s eyes were on Elliott. It felt impossible to rip his gaze away first. It felt like shredding open part of his skin to expose his erratic pulse.
James Wilde had a way of gazing at him that left him vulnerable beneath his attention. Breathless.
By the time Elliott snapped out of it, the locker room emptied out.
Elliott tied his dirty sneakers before biology club.
He packed his metal lunch box in his battered backpack.
He rarely had any food in it, but he behaved as if it was full.
His teachers were already concerned about his dysfunctional home life, and Elliott didn’t want to worry them.
Mr. Newton had once given Elliott his old winter jacket to keep warm when no one was looking.
He had left him a bundle of blankets after he found him sleeping in an abandoned car last year.
Elliott still wore the jacket, even in the spring. He joined the biology club that month, though Elliott was the only member. Mr. Newton’s field research of the Marlborough Mountains that he conducted after elk hunting season was Elliott’s favorite.
At fifteen years old, Elliott had only ever seen a deer killed in the woodlands of snowy Connecticut, he’d never seen someone take a life.
Maybe if Elliott hadn’t wandered near the wooded thickets of the whitewater rapids that afternoon…Maybe if he never treaded towards the headwaters of the rapids, he would’ve never run right into him. Elliott and James would’ve never stayed longer than they normally did.
They would’ve never witnessed their teacher’s murder.