The Talisman

that’ll fit you – my father sent it to me from New York, and Brooks Brothers got the size wrong.’
    ‘Let’s see it,’ Jack said. His clothes had become definitely disreputable, so stiff with filth that whenever he noticed it Jack felt like Pigpen, the ‘Peanuts’ character who lived in a mist of dirt and disapproval. Richard gave him a white button-down still in its plastic bag. ‘Great, thanks,’ Jack said. He took it out of the bag and began removing the pins. It would almost fit.
    ‘There’s a jacket you might try on, too,’ Richard said. ‘The blazer hanging at the end of the closet. Try it on, okay? And you might as well use one of my ties, too. Just in case anyone comes in. Say you’re from Saint Louis Country Day, and you’re on a Newspaper Exchange. We do two or three of those a year – kids from here go there, kids from there come here, to work on the other school’s paper.’ He went toward the door. ‘I’ll come back before dinner and see how you are.’
    Two ballpoints were clipped to a plastic insert in his jacket pocket, Jack noticed, and all the buttons of the jacket were buttoned.
    Nelson House grew perfectly quiet within minutes. From Richard’s window Jack saw boys seated at desks in the big library windows. Nobody moved on the paths or over the crisp brown grass. An insistent bell rang, marking the beginning of fourth period. Jack stretched his arms out and yawned. A feeling of security returned to him – a school around him, with all those familiar rituals of bells and classes and basketball practices. Maybe he would be able to stay another day; maybe he would even be able to call his mother from one of the Nelson House phones. He would certainly be able to catch up on his sleep.
    Jack went to the closet and found the blazer hanging where Richard had said it would be. A tag still hung from one of the sleeves: Sloat had sent it from New York, but Richard had never worn it. Like the shirt, the blazer was one size too small for Jack and clung too tightly to his shoulders, but the cut was roomy and the sleeves allowed the white shirt cuffs to peek out half an inch.
    Jack lifted a necktie from the hook just inside the closet – red, with a pattern of blue anchors. Jack slipped the tie around his neck and laboriously knotted it. Then he examined himself in the mirror and laughed out loud. Jack saw that he had made it at last. He looked at the beautiful new blazer, the club tie, his snowy shirt, his rumpled jeans. He was there. He was a preppy.
    2
    Richard had become, Jack saw, an admirer of John McPhee and Lewis Thomas and Stephen Jay Gould. He picked The Panda’s Thumb from the row of books on Richard’s shelves because he liked the title and returned to the bed.
    Richard did not return from his basketball practice for what seemed an impossibly long time. Jack paced back and forth in the little room. He could not imagine what would keep Richard from returning to his room, but his imagination gave him one calamity after another.
    After the fifth or sixth time Jack checked his watch, he noticed that he could see no students on the grounds.
    Whatever had happened to Richard had happened to the entire school.
    The afternoon died. Richard too, he thought, was dead. Perhaps all Thayer School was dead – and he was a plague-bearer, a carrier of death. He had eaten nothing all day since the chicken Richard had brought him from the dining room, but he wasn’t hungry. Jack sat in numb misery. He brought destruction wherever he went.
    3
    Then there were footfalls in the corridor once more.
    From the floor above, Jack now dimly heard the thud thud thud of a bass pattern, and then again recognized it as being from a record by Blue Oyster Cult. The footsteps paused outside the door. Jack hurried to the door.
    Richard stood in the doorway. Two boys with cornsilk hair and half-mast ties glanced in and kept moving down the corridor. The rock music was much more audible in the corridor.
    ‘Where were you all afternoon?’ Jack demanded.
    ‘Well, it was sort of freaky,’ Richard said. ‘They cancelled all the afternoon classes. Mr Dufrey wouldn’t even let kids go back to their lockers. And then we all had to go to basketball practice, and that was even weirder.’
    ‘Who’s Mr Dufrey?’
    Richard looked at him as if he’d just tumbled out of a bassinette. ‘Who’s Mr Dufrey? He’s the headmaster. Don’t you know anything at all about this school?’
    ‘No, but I’m getting a