Chapter I - Orientation
A completely rewritten chapter to open Ethan's first year at Westmore.
The state line came and went with a faded green sign and a slight change in the light.
Ethan had been driving long enough for the air in the Jeep to feel stale. He cracked the window and let the early fall warmth roll in, thinner than South Carolina heat, carrying just the faintest edge of dry leaves. It reminded him of that first visit back in the spring, when nothing much had been happening and somehow that had been the most unsettling part.
The Beck CD in the console stuttered in its familiar spot when the tires hit a seam in the road. He knew the skip by heart. He caught himself waiting for it, half comforted, half irritated that he hadn’t burned a new disc before he left.
He should’ve been thinking about classes or textbooks, all the “opportunities” his parents kept repeating like a script they’d been given. Instead his mind kept circling back to Westmore itself, the part nobody had put in the brochure.
Back home, boys were always acting like someone had a camera pointed at them. Hallways full of too-loud jokes and chest-bumping and “just kidding” shoves with too much force behind them. Every move calibrated for whoever might be watching, especially if there was a girl in the zip code. The confident ones shouted over everyone else. The quiet ones pretended not to care. Everybody was faking something.
Westmore had been different.
That dead April weekend, the admissions office had apologized on loop for the bad timing. Finals, they said. Reading days. No big events. But even half-empty, the place had felt charged. Not loud, not wild. Just full in a way he couldn’t explain.
He remembered standing on the quad while his parents toured the chapel, watching small clusters of guys move across the grass. No girls. No dates. No one leaning in to impress anyone who wasn’t already there. A group leaned against a low wall, talking quietly with their hands in their pockets. Two others tossed a football back and forth, not trying to out-throw each other, just killing time. They slouched on benches, sprawled on the steps of academic buildings, shirts untucked, ties loosened, not performing for anyone beyond the ring they were standing in.
It was still a boys’ club. You could feel the rules running under it like wiring. But in the absence of an audience, something changed. The edges softened. The constant reaching eased a little.
Ethan hadn’t had a word for it. Still didn’t. It wasn’t attraction—at least not in the way he understood that word. It wasn’t simple envy either. It felt more like recognition at a distance, like watching people relax into a version of themselves they didn’t show in public.
For one thin slice of an afternoon, he’d imagined what it might feel like not to brace all the time. To be in a place where the noise of pretending dropped, even half an inch.
He’d liked that feeling more than he wanted to admit. It had bothered him that he liked it. That was the piece he never said out loud.
He lit a cigarette, took a quick drag, and flicked it out the window before he could talk himself into a second. The last thing he needed was to step out on day one smelling like he was trying to be interesting.
The trees opened up, the road straightened, and the bell tower appeared over the treeline, clean and white against the sky. The same tower that had loomed over him in April, when he’d stood under it and thought, So this is where you go if you want to come out the other end with a certain kind of life.
His father had liked that.
His mother had liked the brochure.
Ethan still wasn’t sure what he liked, but he’d mailed the deposit anyway.
He downshifted as the turn-off approached. There was no way back now that didn’t involve more explaining than he knew how to do.
The stone pillared gate announced WESTMORE COLLEGE in carved serif letters, as if anybody who’d made it this far still needed the reminder. He followed the curve past a manicured lawn with a statue of some founder in a frock coat, then up a slight hill, and there it was: the quad.
He rolled to a slow crawl.
The campus wasn’t empty this time. The place buzzed with move-in day—parents double-parking, trunks yawning open, boys wrestling oversized TVs out of back seats. But even in chaos, there was that same undercurrent from the spring. Packets of guys already in their comfort zone, shouting across the grass, cutting through groups without apology.
No high-pitched laughing from girls at the edges. No clusters of friends in sundresses critiquing outfits from a safe distance. Just men. All shapes, all levels of polish, filling the space in a way that made it feel smaller and larger at the same time.
A pair of young-looking guys in blazers walked past his bumper, one balancing a box fan on his shoulder. Another upperclassman leaned against a tree with his arms crossed, watching a family struggle with a trunk, chin tipped up like he’d seen it all before. A pickup truck idled near the chapel with the bed full of mismatched furniture, two boys perched on the tailgate passing a cigarette back and forth like they had all afternoon.
Nobody looked for an audience beyond whoever was in front of them. It was the same thing he’d felt in April, just louder now. More bodies, same current.
He felt it in his ribs this time, a low hum. Maybe it was nerves. Maybe it was something else. Either way, it was too late to analyze it.
He followed the hand-lettered MOVE-IN signs toward a brick rectangle labeled McCLINTOCK HALL, eased the Jeep into a spot that probably wasn’t legal, and killed the engine.
For a moment he just sat there, fingers resting on the keys. The bell rang the half hour, sound scattering off every red-brick surface like it had nowhere better to go.
“Okay,” he said out loud, to no one. “Here we are.”
The stairwell of McClintock smelled like sweat, bleach, and the faint, permanent tang of old beer that no cleaning crew ever seemed able to erase. Someone had propped the front door open with a cinder block, and the heat poured in unchecked. Music leaked from somewhere above—a muffled guitar riff, cut off mid-strum every time someone opened a door and closed it again.
Ethan hefted his duffel and took the stairs two at a time, partly to look like he wasn’t afraid of them, partly to get it over with.
The hallway was a jumble of open doors and half-unpacked lives. A guy in a Phi something T-shirt shouldered past him carrying a microwave, nodding without smiling. Another leaned in a doorway with a clipboard, calling out room numbers to nervous-looking parents and kids who hadn’t figured out yet that being nervous here was a liability.
McClintock 214, the slip from the admissions packet had said.
The door was already standing open.
His roommate was on the bed by the window, cross-legged, tearing open a roll of posters. Blond, tan, easy grin. The kind of guy who’d never had to worry about whether or not anyone wanted him around.
“You must be Ethan,” he said, like he’d been expecting him for hours. “I’m Mark.”
Ethan shifted the bag on his shoulder. “Yeah. Hey.”
Mark hopped down, crossing the room in two easy strides. His handshake was quick and warm, his eyes already scanning Ethan’s duffel as if cataloging what kind of person he might be based on what he’d packed.
“You find it okay?” Mark asked. “The campus, I mean. It’s not that big, but everyone gets lost once.”
“Not really.” Ethan dropped the bag at the foot of the other bed. “We came up in the spring.”
“Oh, for one of those tours?” Mark rolled his eyes. “I grew up here. Those things are a joke. They only show you the nice parts.”
Ethan tried to think of what they hadn’t shown him that day. He remembered the dining hall, the bell, the empty fraternity row. He wasn’t sure anything had looked particularly nice then. That hadn’t been the point.
“Where’s home?” Mark asked, already turning back to his posters.
“South Carolina. Coast.”
Mark let out a low whistle. “Nice. We’re from up the road. Lynchburg. Well, officially.” He smirked like there was an inside joke Ethan didn’t know yet. “You’ll meet my brother, Eli. He’s a junior. He’s the one people actually like.”
“You’re not liked?”
“I’m a freshman.” Mark shrugged. “We’re all unliked until we prove otherwise.”
He said it lightly, but there was a truth in it that landed hard.
They unpacked with the door open. The room itself was nothing—a pair of beds, mismatched dressers, two narrow desks, and a window that looked out over the back lawn and the brick side of another dorm. A box fan rattled in the sill, failing to move enough air.
Ethan made his bed with the cheap blue sheets his mother had bought at Belk. Mark slapped up a poster of a band Ethan recognized just enough not to comment on. Every few minutes someone shouted in the hall. A box fell. Someone laughed too loud. A parent’s voice floated in, strained and cheerful: This is nice, honey. Really nice.
On Mark’s dresser, propped against a stack of CDs, a photo in a cracked silver frame caught Ethan’s eye. Two blond boys stood on a beach, shoulders slung together, both squinting into the sun. One was definitely Mark—same grin, just smaller. The other was a little taller, with a sharper jaw and a posture that said he knew someone was taking the picture and didn’t mind.
“That your brother?” Ethan asked.
Mark glanced over. “Yeah. Eli.” A flash of pride there, quick and unguarded. “He’s in Delta Chi. He’ll pretend he doesn’t know me for like a week and then start acting like he invented the place.”
Before Ethan could think of a response, footsteps slowed outside the door. A shadow crossed the threshold, then stopped.
“You moved in without me?” The voice was amused, not actually accusing.
Mark’s face split into a grin before Ethan even turned.
Eli Bennett leaned one shoulder against the doorframe, the way people did when they were used to being looked at. Tall, narrower than Mark but stronger through the arms, sun-streaked hair pushed back damp from a shower. He wore an old Westmore T-shirt with the sleeves cut off and a pair of mesh shorts, the casual uniform of someone who’d already decided this was his house and he could dress how he liked in it.
“You’re late,” Mark shot back, already moving toward him. “We could’ve used your charming presence.”
Eli’s mouth quirked. “Traffic.”
He and Mark did a quick one-armed hug, the kind that was more of a collision than an embrace. Ethan watched the way their bodies slotted into a pattern that had clearly been there for years.
“This your roommate?” Eli finally asked, eyes flicking past Mark to Ethan.
“Yeah. Ethan Harris. From South Carolina,” Mark said, like it was a credential.
For a heartbeat, Eli’s gaze settled on him fully.
It wasn’t intense. That would’ve been easier to process. It was assessing, but not in a harsh way. Like he was taking Ethan in from the outside and filing him somewhere, then circling back to some part that had caught his attention without meaning to.
“Long drive,” Eli said. His voice had a soft drawl, not as thick as some Ethan had grown up with, but carrying enough to mark its origins. “You pick a hell of a place to land.”
“I guess we’ll see,” Ethan managed.
Eli smiled then—small, genuine, the kind that made the earlier smirk look like a warm-up.
“Welcome to Westmore,” he said. “Such as it is.”
He pushed off the frame. For a second, he seemed like he might say something else. Instead he tapped a cigarette from behind his ear, waggled it in a silent question at Mark.
“I’m out,” Mark said.
“Of course you are.” Eli tucked it back, already stepping into the hall. “Come by the house later. I’ll show you the civilized part of this circus.”
He lifted a hand in a loose half-wave in Ethan’s direction without looking back, then disappeared into the current of bodies outside.
The smell of his cologne—something clean and faintly sharp—lingered in the doorway after he was gone.
“See?” Mark said, climbing back onto his bed with a grin that looked both proud and impressed. “Told you he’s something.”
Ethan sat down on his own bed, suddenly aware of how damp his shirt was against his back.
“Is he in charge of something?” he asked, immediately wondering if it was a stupid question.
“In charge of everything he thinks he is,” Mark said. “Delta Chi. Half the tailgates. Anything that involves people having fun and possibly getting arrested.” He sounded fond, not critical. “You’ll see.”
In the hallway, someone shouted a last name, followed by muffled laughter. A box thumped against a door. Farther off, the bell tower rang the hour, the sound rolling across the quad and into the cinder block walls.
Ethan leaned back on his elbows and looked up at the ceiling, the cheap stucco catching the light from the open window in uneven shadows. The room smelled like new cardboard, detergent, and the faint trace of whatever Eli’s cologne had been.
He felt that same low hum he’d first noticed in April, now threaded with something sharper. Anticipation. Unease. Maybe both.
He’d wanted to get away from home, from the small-town watchers and their quiet calculations. He’d wanted a clean start. Westmore didn’t feel clean, exactly. It felt like a place that already knew who it wanted him to be.
He wasn’t sure which version of himself had gotten out of the Jeep.
He wasn’t sure which one would still be here when it was time to go home.
But as the hallway noise surged and settled around him, one thing was suddenly clear:
Whatever this year turned him into, Westmore—and people like Eli—were going to have something to do with it.
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