Boot Camp Read Free Page B

the charts on the Chester Scale, the entrance exam for the city’s top private kindergartens. At age six I was figuring out square roots and adding radicals. For the first seven years of my life all I heard was how brilliant I was. Then, at the age of eight, I forged a letter from my mother excusing me from gym because of severe asthma. Sports were dumb, and I wasn’t good at them. I even bought an inhaler at a drugstore and whipped it out whenever anything athletic was mentioned. The ruse lasted for nearly six months, until my second-grade teacher mentioned at a parent-teacher conference how badly she felt that I had to skip so many physical activities. From then on I was no longer brilliant. I was now too smart for my own good.

FOUR
    â€œYou will obey all orders immediately and without hesitation.”
    â€œHey, big guy.”
    It’s my second morning. I’ve been here for roughly thirty hours, and it’s been one nonstop caffeine headache. I’m sitting at the end of a long table with my new “family.” Our family name is Dignity, and we are 20 males wearing identical forest-green polo shirts and blue jeans, our hair and fingernails closely clipped (long nails are considered a weapon).
    Our name may be Dignity, but from the looks of these guys it might as well be Losers. Maybe it’s the headache, but I swear I’ve never seen a sketchier bunchof rejects. If it’s too fat or too skinny, if it slouches or has bad zits or a permanently sour expression on its face, it’s here. No one’s allowed to speak to me, and frankly I’m more than okay with that. The less I have to do with this bunch, the better.
    At other “family” tables, females wear jeans and red polo shirts. Lower-level males have had their hair shorn close to their skulls. The hair of lower-level females has been cut short. Only upper-level residents can grow their hair longer if they choose. Family “fathers” and “mothers” wear white polo shirts and khaki slacks. They patrol the tables, assisted by “chaperones” in black polo shirts and khakis.
    Breakfast this morning consists of watery, lukewarm scrambled eggs, cold, soggy toast, and a powdered orange drink that makes Tang seem like champagne. The only eating implements allowed are white plastic spoons. Through speakers hanging from the ceiling a taped lecture thunders:
“Good posture is important because it helps your body function at top speed. It promotes movement efficiency and endurance and contributes to an overall feeling of wellness.”
    The tape is so loud, it’s painful. I suspect it has two purposes. The obvious one is to cajole residents to focus on self-improvement. The less obvious purpose is to make it difficult for us to communicate with each other. But the ridiculously loud volume also has the opposite effect, allowing students to communicate without being noticed.
    â€œHey you, big guy.”
    The whispers come during the brief moments inthe tape when the reader pauses to catch his breath. The kid doing the whispering is sitting at the middle of our table. He’s got short reddish hair and freckles that dot his face like a smallpox victim. His lips curl into a nasty smirk that reveals small, yellow, reptilian teeth, and his eyelids are pale pink like an albino’s. Seated around him is his posse, guys who stare fiercely at me as if they mean to project a big attitude. But it’s the red-haired kid who’s making trouble.
    â€œWhat’s wrong, big guy, afraid to talk?”
    He knows that I’m not allowed to speak without permission.
    â€œBig guy, or big chicken?”
    I was always big for my age. Now I’m just big, period. Six feet four, 230 pounds, and broad-shouldered, even if I am the opposite of athletic. It’s genetics—just the way I was born. You would assume it’s a bonus to be tall, and in some ways I guess you’d be right. But you’d