Null Pointer

Expulsion as a Mercy

“Do you have anything to say for yourself?” The dean of the prestigious boarding school Ben Riker attended demanded.

“No, sir,” Ben answered. Please, just expel me. He kept his eyes on the floor, not out of any contrition for his latest offense (this was hardly his first time in the dean’s office either here or at his prior schools), but out of embarrassment. He couldn’t stay at this school, not when he and Sid had been discovered mid-coitus. There’s really no recovering from having your principal see you like that, other than to leave and never see each other again. Please, just expel me and let’s be done with this.

“You know such vulgar acts are against the code of conduct,” the dean pressed.

“Yes, sir.” It didn’t stop the other boys from tallying up a body count with the girls from the neighboring all-girls academy, but those dalliances usually didn’t happen on campus and thus didn’t merit expulsion. Ben and Sid, on the other hand, hadn’t thought they needed to leave campus. They were both jokesters, and thought they knew all the good spots to hide from their pranks. Apparently not. Should have just done it in our room. We would at least have gotten a knock’s worth of warning.

“If you knowingly breached the code of conduct and have nothing to say in your own defense, with your disciplinary record, I have no choice but to expel you. Your parents will be notified and you will be expected to vacate campus as soon as possible.”

If not sooner! “Yes, sir,” Ben agreed, hoping the dean would dismiss him and not belabor the point.

👬

Sid was already in their dorm room when Ben returned. He glanced up as Ben entered. “Expelled?”

“Thankfully,” Ben replied, pulling his suitcase out from under the bed to begin packing. “You?”

“Same, unless I tell them you pressured me into it.”

Ben stopped packing, turning to face his roommate. “You going to?” He asked seriously. “I know your parents can be… difficult.”

“After all the weeks I spent begging before you finally succumbed to my charms? I couldn’t!”

“I appreciate that,” Ben said sincerely. He was a lost cause in his parents’ eyes already, so the accusation wouldn’t make things any worse for him at home, but if the academy and Sid’s parents wanted to save face and pressed criminal charges, Ben wasn’t sure he wanted to take that much of the fall for his and Sid’s very consensual experimentation.

Sid grinned at him. “Someday, we’re going to be able to laugh about this, and tell our friends their first time couldn’t possibly have been as awkward as ours.”

Ben shook his head. “Sid the Optimistic. I’m just glad it’s an expulsion-worthy offense. Can you imagine staying here, having to face the other boys and teachers and the dean? I couldn’t even look at him!”

“I could, once I accepted that there was no fighting down the blush, but I’m with you. Expulsion is the most merciful thing they could do to us. But, hey, let’s try to stay in touch. When we’re adults with our own apartments or at least money for a private room, we should totally do that again. It was really good, up until.”

“It was,” Ben had to admit.

👬

If expulsion was a mercy, the five-hour car ride in the back of the limo with both of his parents was penance. “What were you thinking?”

“Me? What were they thinking, boarding a bunch of hormonal teenage boys two to a room without taking orientation into account?” Not that things wouldn’t have happened between him and Sid even if they were not roommates, but still. They’d made it too easy for the inevitable to happen, which was probably why he and Sid had felt the need to find a “secret” place to do it, rather than in their dorm room, where they probably wouldn’t have been caught.

“You know that’ll kill you,” his dad said.

“What, sex? Doesn’t seem to have done the job with you.” That was cruel, Ben thought, after it was already out of his mouth, but his father was hardly a paragon of virtue.

“Those people carry the disease.”

“Sex Ed at boarding school has been rather lacking, but I gathered that even ‘those people’ aren’t generally born with STIs, and Sid and I were both virgins.” That was the whole point. The other boys had become relentless in their teasing of their classmates who “couldn’t get some.” Ben and Sid hadn’t been interested in getting anything from the academy girls, but had been interested in silencing the jeering.

“So, you’ll never do it again?”

“Not without protection or a clean bill of health from my partner.” Ben liked practical jokes, but that didn’t make him an idiot.

“Then this was just one of your pranks?” His mother demanded.

“Well, no. I wouldn’t go that far. I wanted it. Wanted him. Do want him, I guess.” He didn’t want to discuss his new-found sex life with his parents, so much, but today seemed determined to be mortifying.

“The school and the boy’s parents agreed to keep this quiet, but this can never happen again, Benjamin. You don’t understand what a scandal this would be,” his mother informed him.

“Your teenage son having sex is a scandal?” Ben clarified, eyebrow arched. He could guess what the scandal part was, but if his parents wanted him to care about their homophobic friends, they were going to have to say it to their gay son’s face.

“You weren’t caught having sex!” His mother snapped.

“I wasn’t?” That was news. He remembered the moment vividly, and he was certain sex had been happening.

“You were caught with another boy!”

“That is, generally speaking, how sex works between gay teenagers.”

“Enough with that nonsense. You are much too old to be throwing public tantrums because you don’t like the rules that we’ve set for you. We are your parents,” his father informed him.

👬

The upside of expulsion was that his parents’ driver dropped him at his aunt and uncle’s estate in Sleepyside while his cousins were at school. The upside of his parents not particularly caring about him was that they’d shipped him off alone, rather than escorting him to his exile.

The maid who answered the door led him to his uncle’s study. His uncle and aunt greeted him, making small talk as he settled. At last, Uncle Matt sighed. “We must ask, Benjamin. You have a history of ill-advised pranks.”

“This may seem innocent, but a lot of people have suffered gravely and find nothing humorous about the claim you’re making so flippantly.”

“Are you asking if I’m actually gay or just saying so to tweak my parents’ tails?” Ben asked, used to more direct conversations with his uncle and aunt.

“For a start.”

“Yes, I am,” Ben answered honestly. “I told my parents at least a year ago. They choose to believe it’s all about them.”

Aunt Maddie and Uncle Matt shared a speaking look before Aunt Maddie got to her feet. “I’ll leave you men to discuss the rest privately. I will see when Benjamin can be enrolled at Sleepyside Junior Senior High.”

Ben gave his uncle a resigned look once the study door closed behind Aunt Maddie. “What else is there? I assure you, having the principal walk in on us was duly humiliating.”

“So much so that you won’t have sex again until you find your life partner?”

“You don’t actually expect,” Ben sputtered.

“As a man who was your age once? No, I don’t. As a parent and guardian, sometimes I wish. Look, it’s in the nature of young men to do dumb things. The realistic goal is to get out of this period of your life without making life-altering dumb decisions.”

“Such as?” Ben asked. Uncle Matt was usually reasonable and sometimes had good points (the notion of him never having sex again aside).

“You’ll be seventeen soon. In New York, that puts you above the age of consent. It also means that, if your partner isn’t seventeen, statutory rape can be charged – without the cooperation of your partner, by the way. That’s a state law, and your next school might not be in New York, so you need to be careful that you and your partner are on the same side of the law. Ending up on a sex offenders registry would severely limit your life, especially if it’s for youthful indiscretion and not from actual malevolent intent.”

Ben had to acknowledge that was one of Uncle Matt’s good points. He didn’t think about Sid being younger than he was – they were in the same grade – but his birthday next month would make him seventeen almost six months before Sid. Sid’s parents might have been more inclined to pursue charges if they could make a real crime of it, and Sid had told him the school had been willing to sacrifice Ben to the criminal justice system to save face.

“Healthcare options are improving for most illnesses, but there are plenty of transmittable illnesses that, while treatable, are still chronic, and some are debilitating,” Uncle Matt continued when Ben said nothing aloud. “You need to be careful, and safe. If you’re too embarrassed to buy what you need, tell me. I’d rather buy you preventive supplies than treatment.”

That too was a valid point, but was doing nothing to make Ben less mortified by this whole situation.

“Your parents caught us a bit off guard with all of this, and I am not at all familiar with the logistics of what you might be doing, but educate yourself and be safe.” Ben had already told his parents he would be. “And educate us. Maddie and I want to be supportive, but this is new to us.”

“I … I can do all of that, I think,” Ben acknowledged. He did want one thing in return, though. “Will you and Aunt Maddie help convince my parents that this isn’t about them? I swear, I didn’t ‘become gay’ to ruin their social standing. I’d have to care about their social standing to do that, and they should know that I do not.”

“We’ll do our best. Your parents can be convinced that they know the truth when they don’t.”

“I’m aware,” Ben said drily.

👬

“What’s actually on your mind, though?” Diana Lynch asked him after they’d been sharing music for half an hour.

Ben shook his head. “It’s nothing against you, or Trixie, and I understand my cousin’s desire to resolve the family conflict, but it’s not going to be as simple as setting me up with the right girl. For one, you and Trixie are too young. For two, my parents have expectations. The Beldens are far too middle class, and, frankly, the Lynches too ‘new money’, no offense.”

“Wait, you thought Honey was setting Trixie up with you to solve your problems? Okay, I’m supposed to be sworn to secrecy, but that is absolutely not what’s going on.”

“Okay, spill. What is going on?” Ben demanded. “If I’m being used, I think I have the right to know.”

“You do,” Diana agreed, “but you can’t tell anyone I told you. Especially not Jim and Brian.”

“Alright, I can agree to that. Consider me sworn to secrecy.”

“So, you know about the Bob-Whites, right?”

“The least secret secret club to ever be founded? Honey might’ve mentioned it,” Ben said drily.

“Alright, well, the gatehouse is our clubhouse, except it took damage in the hurricane and so we can’t use it until we fix it, and the wood’s expensive, and the only way we could get enough money was for Brian to pawn the jalopy, but he loves that car and he worked so hard to save up for it and all and that’s just not fair.”

“Wait, go back to the part where a club that includes Honey Wheeler, Jim Frayne, and Diana Lynch can’t afford a little lumber.”

“We’re only allowed to use money we earned ourselves on the club. To make things fair.”

“There’s fair and there’s stupid,” Ben said decisively.

“Probably,” Diana agreed. “But it’s our club rules and Brian would be just as upset about us breaking the rules for him as he would be over losing the jalopy.”

“He is kind of uptight,” Ben acknowledged, “but what does any of this have to do with me?”

“Well, Trixie is bound and determined to make sure Brian gets the jalopy back, but the only thing she could offer Mr. Lytell to get him to hold onto the car was the diamond engagement ring Jim gave her.”

Ben’s eyebrows went up. “Uncle Matt gave me a whole lecture on not making life-altering dumb decisions while I was still young and meanwhile his own son is engaged before he graduates high school?”

Diana giggled. “No, no, Trixie and Jim aren’t engaged. Jim’s great-aunt and -uncle were engaged. It was his Aunt Nell’s ring. They found it up at Ten Acres, when Jim was first a runaway, and he left it for Trixie when he ran away to upstate and they had to go after him in the Silver Swan.”

“Okay, got it, I guess. So, Brian pawned the car for lumber. Trixie pawned the ring for the car. Where do I factor into this?”

“Well, Mr. Belden put the ring in the family safe deposit box at the bank until Trixie was older and wanted to wear it, so she had to come up with a reason for him to bring it home and give it to her, so she could pawn it for the jalopy, like you said. So, she and Honey thought, if she had a crush on an older boy, and started to act more feminine and flirty and adult and all, then it would be a reason for her to want to be all dressed up with her fancy ring and all. But Jim would see through that in a minute, and he’d disapprove of the plan, even though he doesn’t think it’s right that Brian might lose the jalopy, either. And it can’t be Brian or Mart, obviously, and Larry and Terry are younger, and none of the Sleepyside boys we know are particularly sophisticated so…”

“So, I fit the part. I’m the guy who’s supposed to be impressed by her devotion and her flashy ring, but not so impressed that I mention when said ring disappears,” Ben concluded.

Di nodded. “It’s a whole mess of a plan, I’ll admit, but it’s working so far. Except we didn’t mean to upset you or anything and it sounded earlier like you were kind of mad at Honey for trying to set you up with her friends?”

“I’m not upset that Honey’s trying to set me up with her friends. I’m upset that she’s trying to set me up with her female friends. I’m upset that she’s taking my parents’ side, that who I love has anything to do with them, or that they get a say.”

“Wait, are you saying you’re gay?” Di demanded incredulously. Ben just nodded. “Okay, I did not know that. Trixie doesn’t know that, because it would have been a way stronger argument against the plan than the ones she had. I don’t think Honey knows, because she’s not the greatest at keeping secrets, at least from Trixie and me.”

“Aunt Maddie and Uncle Matt know, so I just figured,” Ben admitted.

Di shook her head. “I don’t know them that well, but I don’t think they’d share something personal like that without good reason.”

“Like to explain why I’m suddenly living here in the middle of the term?”

Di shrugged. “I was told you got kicked out of your boarding school for some prank.”

Ben’s expression twisted at the reminder that his parents didn’t believe him about who he was.

“Okay, so that’s obviously not what actually happened.”

So, Ben told the whole story of getting caught with Sid and getting expelled and how his parents thought it was an elaborate prank to ruin them. Ben had meant to only share the gist of things, but Di was such a sympathetic listener that the whole story spilled out of him.

“If Sid lived in Sleepyside right now, would you be dating him?”

“Yeah. Yes, absolutely.”

“And you said his family’s part of the problem in this Romeo and Romeo tragic drama, right, not just your parents?”

“Right…” Ben agreed, not sure what the point was.

“So how are you two staying in touch until you’re both 18 and can do whatever you want together, your parents’ opinions notwithstanding?”

“I don’t know. Carefully I guess.”

“Here’s what I’m proposing: you help us save Brian’s jalopy by playing your minimal part as Trixie’s love-interest, and you send me any letters you have for Sid. I’ll write a parent-proof opening and closing around them and send it to Sid, and I can do the same with his return letters.”

“You would do that? For us? You barely know me and don’t know Sid at all.”

“I’m a romantic at heart,” Di tried. Ben raised an eyebrow. “Okay, so maybe I just like knowing all the gossip. Like I am completely fine leaving all the shamusing to Trixie and Honey, but I love knowing all the gritty details.”

Ben rolled his eyes. “See this is why I like guys.” Di giggled. “But, seriously, Di, thank you. This might work and it’s better than any plan Sid and I were likely to come up with.”

👬

Dear Sid,
You don’t know me, but my name is Diana Lynch. I’m an acquaintance of a friend of yours from Betterson Boarding School, Ren Birke. I attend the co-ed institution he now attends and, as we’ve gotten to know each other, I’ve heard much about you and wish we could meet. Since that’s not possible at this time – alas, the pitfalls of being a minor, yet! – he provided your address so that we might exchange letters and get to know one another.

“Too vague?” Di asked Ben.

“No. How many friends does he have from his ex-school that also don’t go there anymore? He’ll get it.”

“Too blunt? Just as obvious to his parents, I mean, if they read it?”

“I doubt it. They’ll see what they want to see – a young lady from a moneyed family pursuing their son – and ignore the subtext. They certainly won’t be looking for an anagram.”

“Perfectly perfect, as your cousin would say. You’re up. Don’t ruin it by being too blunt yourself,” she advised, handing him the letter.

“I’ll have you read it when I’m done to confirm I didn’t get overly enthusiastic.”

“I can do that, if you want. I can also blindly pass along these letters, so that the two of you can have the freedom to talk honestly.”

“We won’t have the freedom to talk honestly while either of us are still beholden to our parents. Evading their oversight is more important, especially now, before we’ve established the normalcy of such letters and our parents get bored of reading them. You aren’t risking anything, right? If we get caught at this, your parents won’t object to your involvement, will they? We will muddle along for a few more years if we have to.”

“At worst they’ll tell me they’re disappointed in me, but I won’t face any actual consequences.”

“Good. I appreciate this, Di.”

“Everyone should be allowed to have a high school romance to tell the next generation when they’re old and gray,” Di declared.

Ben laughed. “You’re so dramatic.”

👬

Dearest Diana,
It is such a pleasure to make your acquaintance. I look forward to learning more about you and furthering our relationship, until such a time as we might be able to meet in person. I’m glad that R.B. thought to encourage you to introduce yourself, or (as I suspect is more likely, knowing R.B.) that you helped yourself to an introduction.

“And you think I’m dramatic?” Di asked Ben when she handed him the first letter from Sid.

👬

A year and a half later, Harrison didn’t even comment when he handed Di an envelope with Sid’s return address on it. Di, on the other hand, was a little surprised, as the return address was his parent’s, not his latest boarding school.

“Surely he hasn’t gotten expelled again,” Di murmured to herself as she headed up to her room to read Sid’s letter in privacy.

He had not, or at least that wasn’t why the envelope had come from his parents’. The envelope had come from his parents’ address because the contents had come from his parents. It was an invitation to Sid’s eighteenth birthday party late in May. She wondered what to do about the invitation. She only knew Sid through the letters in which she was more proxy than participant. It wasn’t the sort of friendship she would normally travel out of state for, and Sid’s home was outside of New Haven, Connecticut. On the other hand, Sid’s parents believed they were the sort of friends that wrote letters nearly as quickly as mail could travel. Would her absence raise suspicions about their scheme?

She sat down at her desk and started writing letters to both Ben and Sid to ask their opinion.

Her answer came faster than mail could travel, in a letter from Sid the next day, with the expected return address of Sid’s boarding school.

Dearest Diana,
In the very near future, you will receive an invitation to the birthday party gala my mother has insisted on throwing in celebration of my impending adulthood. When informed you were on the guest list, I pointed out to my mother that, since we haven’t formally met yet, a young woman of your social standing might feel uncomfortable attending without certainty that you would actually know someone there. From my mother’s response, I am unclear whether your parents will also be receiving an invitation, but I did convince her to allow you to bring a friend. For reasons that I know are obvious to you, I’m hopeful you will choose to invite Ren with you, but you may bring whomever you choose. I’m grateful for all you’ve done for me in the past year and a half. I look forward to actually meeting you in person, if you are able to attend.
Yours,
Sid.

👬

“This is such a bad idea,” Ben muttered as they crossed the state line into Connecticut.

“You said you wanted to go!” Di protested. It wasn’t like she’d strong armed him into this!

“I do! I’ve missed Sid so much. And I doubt his parents remember what I look like, but the chances that we’ll be able to keep up the Ren Birke alias all day is highly dependent on the rest of the guest list.”

“We’ve talked about this all. Fifty miles ago. If you walk in there looking guilty, Ren Birke definitely won’t make it through the day. What’s it going to take to calm you down?”

Ben continued drumming his fingers anxiously on the wheel for another two miles before shaking his head. “No, you’re right. Ben Riker won’t make it through the front door, and even if Ren Birke makes it no further, at least I’ll get to see him. And you’re in the clear. How could you be expected to know about our scandalous history when every effort was made to keep it quiet?”

“I’m in the clear. And after this party, you can write and call Sid under your own name because you’re both eighteen and prepared to deal with it if either of your parents disinherits you for getting involved with each other,” Di pointed out practically. She knew that from the letters. “And, this fall, even if they don’t let freshmen request roommates, you’ll at least both be on the same campus.” Ben had shared that good news earlier in the drive.

“Sid doesn’t know that yet,” Ben replied.

“But he will, once you tell him. You two can actually date.”

“How long until September?” Ben asked wistfully.

Di laughed. “Much better, but don’t go wishing away my summer vacation!”

👬

Di thanked the butler politely when he took their presents. The man seemed startled by the common courtesy. Di frowned. “Always grated me wrong, too, when my parents acted like the help didn’t exist, or didn’t deserve gratitude because they were paid,” Ben murmured in her ear, “but today’s maybe not the day to start that debate with Sid’s parents.”

Di scowled at him. “I know how to behave at a party!” She hissed.

Ben raised his hands apologetically. “I’m just nervous.”

Before Di could answer, someone called out, “Ren! And you must be Dearest Diana!”

“Di,” she said, giving Ben a look.

Ben chuckled.

“You two have inside jokes I’m not included in? I’m hurt!” Sid declared.

Ben shrugged. “Di thinks you’re dramatic?”

Sid clasped a hand over his heart. “Stake to the heart!” He laughed and then sobered. “Guilty as charged, but it is truly a pleasure to finally meet you, Di. I’m glad you could make it, Ren.”

“I wouldn’t miss it, Sid,” Ben said honestly.

👬

The party went smoothly. Sid’s parents understood Ren to be a classmate of Sid’s from his short time at Betterson, who was friends with Di, thereby making him an ideal choice to accompany her to the party and her first in-person meeting with Sid. It was clear to Di that they had hopes for a romance between herself and Sid, and thought Sid gravitating toward her and “Ren” was proof of it, and he was being polite by not excluding Ren. She knew – since it didn’t require memorizing lines – she was a skilled enough actress to not disabuse them of that thought before the end of the party.

Eventually it was time for them to leave, if they were going to get back to Sleepyside before the curfew her parents had given her and Ben in exchange for permission to attend this party. Sid walked out to Ben’s car with them. Sid hugged Ben fiercely. “I’m so happy to finally see you in person, Ben! We’re both 18 now. We don’t have to play by their rules anymore.”

“In so far as we ever did play by their rules,” Ben agreed. “Here,” he added, pulling an envelope out of his back pocket. “This is your real birthday present.”

“Ooo, mystery and intrigue,” Sid murmured, seeing no writing on the outside of the envelope. He pulled the flap open – Ben hadn’t bothered to seal it – and unfolded the piece of copy paper inside. “You spent ten whole cents making a copy for my birthday? I’m flattered,” Sid teased as he started to read. He looked up after only a second, beaming with happiness. “We’re going to be back on the same campus in the fall?” Ben nodded, the biggest grin Di had ever seen on his face. “How long until September?”

👬