There was laughter, and Hector returned to his station. Anthony wedged his way past George and grabbed an apron from a hook.
George looked down at Anthony and then at Paul. “Made you late again?”
Anthony nodded. “Dude be spending more time picking out clothes than my mother.”
“Don’t worry,” George said, almost a little sadly. “He’ll change.”
“Change how?”
Just then one of the cooks came in and gave them all the sign. George raised the big sliding door above the counter until it locked into place, and sounds from the cafeteria rolled in. “Change how?” Anthony repeated.
“For the better,” George said, and then winked at him. “Don’t you know Belton makes everybody better?”
There was a steady stream of dirty dishes and then the rush before morning assembly. The boys emptied bowls and scraped plates, stacked the dirty dining ware into special trays, and then ran them through the machine.
“Ever notice how there’s only black people in here?” Hector said, leaning against the counter. “Serious, look around. How come don’t no white boys work the kitchen?”
“’Cause we’re on financial aid,” Anthony said. “We need it and they don’t.”
“And you ain’t even black, Ricky Martin,” Paul said. “So chill.”
They laughed and started pulling off their aprons. George stood in the doorway in front of them and cleared his throat. “They have white kids at Belton on financial aid, too,” he said. “They just don’t work in here, with us.” He reminded them of the students in the bookstore and the library. Many of them didn’t even have dark hair. “That’s not the point, though,” he continued. “Look at the percentages. For every one of them that’s doing work-study, you have another three that can buy the whole damn school.”
Anthony thought about his arrival on campus and all the expensive cars. He’d met kids who dined with diplomats and took family vacations in Greece. But so what? Sometimes he thought all their money made them soft, but that didn’t make Anthony dislike them. George, on the other hand, was scowling. Anthony said, “Are you pissed just because some people here have money?”
“No,” George snapped. “I’m pissed because we only got a spoonful of students of color, and every one of us is on financial aid. I’m pissed because it makes it look like every black person in the world is poor. And if they think we’re all poor, then they probably think we’re all stupid and eat watermelon, too.”
“But we are poor, right?”
George glared at Paul and shook his head, rubbed a big hand down his face, and sighed. “That’s not the point,” he said evenly. “Let me put it another way. Where do you think financial aid comes from? And please don’t say from washing dishes. . . .”
He waited, and the younger boys looked at one another. Then Paul said, “From nowhere. They just don’t charge us.”
George shook his head. “Every time these white kids pay their tuition, they pay a little bit of yours and mine, too. And don’t think they don’t know it, either.”
Hector cried out, “That’s fucked up, bro! I don’t want them paying for me, I can pay it myself.”
“No, you can’t,” Paul said. “So don’t front. Just accept that cash and use it to your advantage.” Hector thought for a second and nodded, then the two of them slapped hands.
Anthony wasn’t swayed. “No such thing as a free lunch, though.” He looked up at George. “So what do they want from us?”
“League championship,” Paul interrupted, and shot an imaginary jumper. “Maybe two or three.” Hector reached up and grabbed the invisible rebound while George glared joylessly at the two of them.
“You’re a smart dude, Ant,” George said, watching them play. “Twenty-five-twenty always expects something. Remember that.”
Anthony nodded. “What’s twenty-five-twenty?”
George grinned. “Think about the alphabet,” he said. “Put the twenty-fifth letter with the twentieth. What you got?”
“Y and T,” Anthony said, not seeing it at first. “Y. T. Why tea . . . ? Whitey?”
George smiled. “I knew you were smart. Twenty-five-twenty is a bitch up here, son. And like I said, they didn’t bring you up here for free.”
Anthony looked at the other two boys. Even without a ball, their game was competitive. “I don’t play basketball. You know that.”
“Don’t matter, you will. What else you gonna do when winter comes, anyway? Join the ski team? Just remember what I said before, okay? Belton changes people.”
“Yeah, for the better, right?” George didn’t answer. Paul took another jump shot, and Hector swatted it away.
“Get that weak mess outta here!”
“Be real, son,” Paul said. “Everybody know y’all Ricans can’t jump.”
Anthony laughed with them to hide his worry. He would have to play basketball, George was right about that. Belton freshmen were required to play at least two team sports, and since Anthony was already skipping the fall, he had to either ski or shoot hoops in the winter. The problem was that he was terrible. When the season started, he would be the only kid of color without a varsity uniform.
He looked at George. “Can you teach me?”
“Swear to God, Ant,” George said, smiling in disbelief. “You need to clean out your ears. What you think I’m doing right now?”
Later that day in health class, the teacher showed a documentary about cigarettes, narrated by a woman who talked through a hole in her throat. Anthony watched from a seat on the floor, next to a girl who smoked and always smelled like it.
“You know what that looks like, right?” a boy whispered from behind them. “A butthole. You know, like a hole for her butts?”
“She doesn’t smoke through it, jerk,” the girl said, and then shifted uncomfortably. “Starting today, I’m quitting. . . . Today or however long it takes to finish my carton.”
The period ended and Anthony went on to the next class, thinking of the movie, the girl who’d sat next to him, and mixed messages. The handbook stated that Belton was a smoke-free school. But dorm parents handed out flashlights to smokers at night and directed them to off-campus spots near the roadway, where they could stand in the darkness and puff. The same was true for how the school handled hazing and sex. In a way, the whole place was a farce. On weekdays it was a lot like the catalog: smiling kids and happy faculty interacting in classrooms; crowds cheering the teams on the fields. But weekends at Belton were a lot like full moons, and most of the students were werewolves.
That night, Anthony sat at dinner with Brody and Nate, half listening to them insult each other, feeling a bit more settled in at the school but still nowhere close to contented. He missed home but didn’t always think about it, which usually brought on rounds of guilty phone calls. He had already burned through two months of laundry quarters in just a little over four weeks.
George walked into the dining hall then, slapped hands with some of the kitchen staff, and stopped briefly to talk with the headmaster. Then he went and sat alone at a table but didn’t keep his solitude for long. A steady trickle of kids, from athletes to burnouts, came to sit with him or offer high fives.