The Reinholt Academy Part II

It turns out "Louie frigging Anderson" was named Vincent Francis Bristol III. Everyone in the hall seemed to call him Bristol, already, though. It wasn't as if he personally knew any of these idiots, he was just "personable" as my father called it. On a normal day, I'd hate a guy like Vincent Francis Bristol III, but it's what he did with the tape Lorrie found is what made him tolerable in my book.

Bristol's roommate, a guy who calls himself Cactus Jack, was a real tool. Just the way he walked showed that his family had money. Cactus Jack was one of those guys who never had a problem with girls. Honestly, I never really did either, but he was just one of those flamboyant idiots that need attention of the opposite sex to live. It's just disgusting. Well, Cactus Jack calls himself Cactus Jack because he had this enormous ten-gallon cowboy hat that he likes to wear around. Sometimes, when I went into the bathrooms, he was there shaving with that goddamn hat on. Well, after a while, Bristol got tired of Cactus Jack's hat, so he used Lorrie's tape to adhere a ziploc bag full of urine to the top of the hat that almost exploded when it hit Jack's head. Bristol laughed for days even though Jack pummeled him for hours. I asked Lorrie why he didn't help, but he said Bristol looked like he was having too much fun.

After I had finally gotten semi-situated into the school, we learned that someone was entering our particular dorm. It was pretty heavily into autumn by this time and there were no leaves on the trees. This kid, Logan Boltz had just moved from way the hell west of Reinholt and his family wanted him to get a fresh start.

"This Logan kid was supposedly some kinda genius or something," Lorrie said to me, one day while he was reading the paper...my paper. "I bet he's even smarter than you." He laughed.

"Whatever," I said. Honestly, I really didn't feel like dealing with Lorrie. When he doesn't "work out" or whatever the hell he calls it, he can become a real pain. I wasn't really in the mood to listen about some 14-year-old snot nosed egghead anyway.

"The least you could do is try to entertain me, Mikey." I hated it when he called me Mikey. The amazing thing about Lorrie was that he always got in fights somehow. The first day I met him when we were moving in, he had that shiner, which I later found out came from a guy that took his suitcase by accident. Lorrie called him a thief, the guy tossed his suitcase into a garden and Lorrie jumped on him. I guess he was pretty lucky not to get expelled, but it probably would have saved me a lot of trouble if he did before I even met him.

"Guys. There's a frigging parade in town for Thanksgiving this weekend. Maybe Lorrie could beat some turkey to death and we could eat something besides," Bristol cleared his throat and used his gruff, lunch-lady voice, "green beans, taters n' meatloaf. Now git the hell outta my sight." After that, he started to cackle hysterically. He was the only one I knew that ever made any of the cafeteria people angry. I personally found them pretty nice...

"Michael. Seriously. You gotta' go. The entire damn campus is going into town for this thing." I knew that my entire family was going to be there, too. My mother volunteered for float construction and all of that nonsense because she didn't need to work. I could see Bristol's black hair in the corner of my eye. "If...If you don't go with me, then I have no choice but to break up with you." He always just came up right to my face and talked. I could practically feel his goddamn teeth on my ear sometimes.

"Come on, Mikey. If you stay cooped up in this little f----'n square all day you'll start to bore yourself, for God's sake." I couldn't stand the way Lorrie got me to do things sometimes. There was a terrible draft blowing into the room that didn't even stop when I closed the window, but I made sure to see if it was closed anyway. When I looked up from my book, I saw Bristol toying with something on my dresser.

"Don't touch that." The envelope contained a photo of someone that I didn't want Bristol near. At all. I wish I could've told him to screw off or something, but he probably would have taken it too seriously and I would have ended up with a bag of piss on my head somehow.

"Huh? You're so damn quick to say something when I touch this envelope but you don't say an M.F. word when I talk to you in person? Class act, Michael! Class act!" Bristol left the room laughing, shoving his hands into his pockets like he always did. Even though we were finished with classes for the day, he still insisted on wearing a suit. That's the thing about guys like Bristol. They always wanted to look nice so that if they did something stupid they could get away with it.

"I swear to God. I'll sic you on that idiot the next time he just comes rummaging into the room like that," I said. Lorrie was sleeping with the newspaper covering his face when I turned around. "For Christ's sake." I took my paper off of him and read some articles about how wonderful Reinholt was and how the weather was going to turn frigid in the next week. Nothing was that interesting on a day like that. It was one of those days you could sleep through without even missing a beat. Even the animals skipped it.