Table Of Content

Dedication For every friend and mentor I met in boarding school who pulled me from the darkness into the light. You will always be family to me. This book contains descriptions of sexual abuse, physical abuse, homophobia, and hazing. I tried to portray these issues with sensitivity, but please proceed with caution and care. My hope is that this story will help those who have experienced these traumas to feel less alone. If you need help, there are resources listed in the back of the book. Epigraph The easiest person to lie to is yourself. That’s why it’s so important to find people you trust. They’ll help you tell the truth. —Hattie Douglas, Supplemental Facts Contents Cover Title Page Dedication Epigraph Prologue September 1999 Beth Kramer Amanda Spencer Ramin Golafshar Sarah Brunson Freddy Bello Beth Kramer Amanda Spencer Ramin Golafshar Freddy Bello Sarah Brunson Ramin Golafshar Beth Kramer Freddy Bello Amanda Spencer Sarah Brunson Ramin Golafshar Amanda Spencer Sarah Brunson Freddy Bello Beth Kramer Epilogue Author’s Note Acknowledgments About the Author Books by Abdi Nazemian Copyright About the Publisher Prologue JANUARY 2008 If you had a choice between telling the truth and hurting someone you love or keeping a secret that eats away at you, which would you choose? I think most people would choose to keep the secret. We weren’t most people. That’s what we would discover in the last months of the twentieth century, those months that changed our lives forever. Eight years ago, following that turn of the century, I arrived on campus before everyone else to confront Professor Douglas. It had snowed over the holidays, and with no students traipsing across the grounds in their Timberlands, the whole school looked like a cloud. Everything imposing and menacing about Chandler suddenly became innocent and fresh. Like it was a place of new beginnings, which I knew by then it wasn’t. Chandler was, and is, a place weighed down by history. There was so much snow that it even covered the school motto on all the campus benches and buildings. Veritas vos liberabit. It’s as if nature knew that truth will not, as it turns out, liberate us all. It takes more than truth to liberate. It takes action. I remember knocking on Douglas’s door five times before she finally opened it. Her trademark spiky auburn hair looked more electrocuted than ever. I pulled the pages from beneath my coat and handed them to her. She didn’t take them right away. I followed her apprehensively, setting my massive backpack down. She must have sensed something was wrong, because she suddenly looked at the pages in her hand like they were a ticking time bomb. “So what’s it about?” she asked. “Well, it’s personal,” I said. She waited for me to continue. “It’s about five students who are chosen for a writing workshop by a brilliant professor who . . .” I never finished that sentence. It was too much to fit into one thought. It’s still too much. Maybe that’s why we wrote it all down. Because sometimes stories are the only way to make sense of complicated emotions.