Page 1 of Privilege
Two Years Ago
Rich
I can’t believe Dane is graduating.
I mean, it’s possible he fucked his way through the female faculty to earn passing grades.
Likely even—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 sitting with 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 calls After Dark Activities at 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. His existence seems 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 off on 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, and immensely sympathetic for all of the double-x chromosomes in the vicinity because I swear if I had a pussy I’d be puddling too.
God, what the fuck is wrong with me.
I look away and clear my throat, but I’m spared any further awkwardness by Jamie who has conveniently appeared and taken it upon herself to flop onto my lap.
She leans in to give Dane a kiss on the cheek.
He scowls openly, drops his feet to the floor, and the woman turns around to glare at Jamie, clearly upset about the interruption to her sneaker-rub.
“Oh come on Dane, can’t you play nice for once?” she coos.
I shift uncomfortably. I fucking hate when she does this, pushes buttons, the mean girl in her on full display.
It has its uses—her mother is a Senator and her near-prodigal understanding of power politics in New York has spared me many a-time.
Mother loves her. But her charms have never worked on Dane and I know it eats at her, even though she’s supposed to be mine.
He ignores her, stands up and stretches, blocks the view of everyone behind him.
“Hey!” someone says .
He gives them the finger over his shoulder without even looking at them.
“I’ll see you at Blackstone tomorrow morning, yeah?” he says to me.
Jamie frowns. Dane is the only person who can so successfully pretend she doesn’t exist. I’ve always stayed the hell out of it.
“Not tonight? We’re having a party…” I say.
He glances at the woman, who is now looking up at him like she’d gladly suck his cock right here in front of the entire auditorium.
“I don’t think so,” he says. “I’ve got other plans.”
He waltzes off, and for one brief moment I wonder how he’d even fuck this chick without having given her a name, a number, so much as a—
She stands up, nervously flattening her hair and straightening her blouse. With a glance at the stage, she bites her lip like she’s torn before she squares her shoulders and takes off down the aisle after him.
“Who was she?” I ask, annoyed.
“Charles Winston’s mom,” Jamie says.
He disappears past the intricately carved wooden archway into the portrait-lined hall as Charles Winston’s name is called and he steps onto the stage to accept his diploma .
God fucking damn, Dane.
Charles’ face falls as he scans the crows for his mom and doesn’t see her. My face probably looks the same. I try to ignore the crushing disappointment that I’m losing one more night with my brother before he leaves.
Say something then, idiot!
But I keep my mouth shut, just like I’ve been taught.
See mother? My education is paying off.