Page 1 of Privilege
Two Years Ago
Rich
I can’t believe Daneis graduating.
I mean, it’s possible he fucked his way through the female faculty to earn passing grades.Likelyeven—now that I’m thinking about it—but still. I’m not sure he attended a single class for all of his senior year. And yet here he is, walking across the stage and holding a diploma, grinning at the Headmistress who is trying not to blush.
I force myself not to roll my eyes. He’ll probably fuck her too, after the ceremony.
Jamie, my girlfriend, whistles and claps for him from the front of the auditorium where she’s sittingwith her friends. She knows his dad didn’t come. Knows he didn’t bother to fly home from Greece. Not that Dane asked him to. I’m not even positive him or my mom know he’s finished high school, now. Even if they did, no way they’d have come. Not for him.
Dane looks at Jamie and frowns before finishing his walk across the stage. He pauses at the stairs, searches the crowd, and I know he’s looking for me. Our eyes meet, and his smirk slips for a minute, something unidentifiable bleeding through his stupid fucking cheekbones, the ones that make my classmates’ panties disintegrate all day long. Then he winks, and grabs his crotch.
Suck it, brother!
Yeah, yeah.
I let myself roll my eyes, this time.
Jamie stands to speak to him but he ignores her. He strolls along the side of the auditorium and plunks himself down next to me. He’s never liked Jamie, though I don’t really know why; we’ve been on-again off-again since eighth grade when she gave me my first handjob on the bus during our field trip to the aquarium. But she’s tried to bury the hatchet with him all year, made an effort, and he’s iced her out every step of the way.
He props his feet up on the seat in front of him despite someone sitting in it. She turns around to tell him to fuck off but freezes. Her mouth drops open, and Dane coolly stares her down. I watch her cheeks slowly turn pink, flustered and fidgety.
Dane hands me his diploma.
“This was one hard-earned piece of motherfucking paper,” he says. “Do you know how many asses I had to eat out for this?”
“It’s an all boys school, Dane.”
He shrugs. “Guess they should have thought about that before putting four hundred teenage boys in a building with no girls.”
I flush, my dick twitching uncomfortably the way it always does whenever Dane casually jokes about what he callsAfter Dark Activitiesat Waldron Prep. I can never tell if he’s serious or not; my roommate is an Asian boy named Yuma who I’m pretty sure can’t get hard thanks to his near-constant use of adderall in lieu of sleep. Dane’s bedfellow is—was—a six foot tall monster from the football team who looks like he needs to ice his crotch as much as his knees from how much he probably jerks it.
I nod at the Headmistress, who is still flushed. “There are girls.”
“Not enough of them,” Dane grumbles, softly poking the back of the woman in front of us with the toe of his shoe. The back of her neck turns beet red.
“Well it’s over now. You’re free to ravage the fairer sex for the rest of eternity.”
He grins. “Europe won’t know what hit ‘em.”
I smile but it feels forced. I’m not thrilled that he’s decided to spend a year abroad, even though I know it’s the right call. Surviving the summer without him at Blackstone is going to be impossible. Mother and my step-father will be back by then. Mother lives for it, takes every opportunity to sign me up as a volunteer for charity events, parade me around and show me off like a good little puppy while Dane gets to spend the summer trying to impregnate the entire staff, and their moms.
Still, he’s always made Blackstone bearable somehow. Hisexistenceseems to be enough to ruffle mother’s feathers, a constant reminder of the woman my step-father loved first, even if their son turned out to be a degenerate.
He’s quite good at it, the degenerate thing. Has never once failed to fuck up a fundraiser. Casino Night last summer was one for the books; he took too much MDMA and got caught trying to jerk offon a slot machine. I’d nearly cracked a fucking rib I laughed so hard.
I eye the woman in front of us. Goosebumps are rising on the lady's flesh. From a toe.A toe.But he’s barely paying attention. Just offensively stroking her with his dirty-ass shoe while he stares at the ceiling. She’s probably puddling all over the seat.
“I’m gonna come to Blackstone for a week or two, before I take off,” he says. “Make sure you’re, you know, set up for the summer.”
Something hot snakes its way around my heart and squeezes. “I’m not a kid. I can take care of myself.”
He turns his bright green eyes on me and even after a lifetime of it I still have to fight the urge to look away. The gravity in that look, when he’s giving you your full attention? It’s like you’re the only two people in the world. When I was a kid, I never had nightmares. Was never afraid of the dark. Why would I be? Dane was my big brother, and there was never anybody but us.
“I know you can,” he says softly, “but you shouldn’t have to.”
I flush a little, feeling awkward, and tense, andimmenselysympathetic for all of the double-xchromosomes in the vicinity because I swear if I had a pussy I’d be puddling too.
