Class - Cecily Von Ziegesar [40]
“You know this stuff is all-natural? Comes from the oil of sassafras root,” Wills said. “Used to find sassafras oil in soap and root beer and all sorts of shit till the FDA got involved in the sixties and banned it. I was gonna order a big ole sassafras plant through the mail so I could make my own E, but then I was like, do I really want the FBI parked outside my dorm? Do I really want my phone tapped? Do I really want the pigs up inside my sphincter? I think not.”
Tom nodded. The little history lesson was interesting and all, but he really couldn’t give a fuck. Grover sat down next to him at the table, his electric shaver in hand. He turned it on and ran it over his closely shaved head, buzzing off the few filaments of brown peach fuzz that had accumulated since he’d shaved his head the day before. The kitchen windows just grazed the grassy edge of the quad. Outside a bunch of sporty-looking girls played Ultimate Frisbee.
“What you do is put it on your tongue, flip it back, and swallow it,” Grover explained, pinching a tablet between his thumb and forefinger and demonstrating the technique.
Liam came over and stuck out his tongue with a lizardly flicker, waiting for Wills to place a tablet on its tip. He flicked his tongue back inside his mouth. “It goes down kind of dry, but pretty soon you’ll be feeling it and you won’t care.”
Tom poked at one of the tablets with his fingertip. It looked like confetti or baby aspirin. “Feeling what?”
The Grannies chuckled. Wills leaned over and sucked a tablet into his mouth right off the table like a human vacuum cleaner. “Like a god,” he elaborated enticingly. “Like you’re all dick.”
Tom liked to think that he felt that way all the time, but maybe the enhancement of his existing attributes was exactly what Professor Rosen and Mr. Zanes meant by digging deeper. He put a pink tablet on his tongue. It was bitter and wrong-tasting, like he was eating a crumb of squirrel shit off his shoe. He swallowed it down. If this smidgen of trash could get him off, he’d be pretty freaking amazed. “Now what?” he demanded. He couldn’t just sit in his dorm kitchen staring at the Grannies while they waited for the E to kick in.
Wills pushed his chair back and stood up, his wraparound skirt cascading down to his ankles. “Now we go for a really long walk.” He reached out and patted Tom’s shoulder. “And when we get back, you’ll be a different man.”
Hands tucked innocently into their coat pockets, the pre-rapturous huddle of boys crossed the quad and headed for the fivemile running loop that snaked around the periphery of Dexter’s pretty brick and ivy campus. Mr. Darius Booth, the frail president of the college, could be seen creeping along the loop every morning at 5:45 A.M. with his three terrifying German shepherds. Tom knew this because he’d actually woken up a few times at that hour and gone jogging himself. He’d thought he wanted to stay in shape, but all he got from running that early was a killer cramp and some serious heartburn that lasted all day.
He’d come to Dexter with every intention of joining the rugby team. After all, he’d played rugby for the Bedford school district since he was twelve. But he really wasn’t up for spending weekends at away games and going through the fratlike hazing rituals of a men’s team. Weekends were all about having sex with Shipley, sleeping late with Shipley, and ordering in with Shipley, not necessarily in that order. Besides, he’d heard the guys on the rugby team actually made the freshmen eat a saltine with a senior team member’s jizz on it. Not exactly appealing. So he