Everything We Ever Wanted. Sara Shepard

       Forward

      The man introduced himself on the phone as Michael Tayson, the new Swithin headmaster. ‘We haven’t had the pleasure of meeting yet,’ he said.

      ‘Of course, of course,’ Sylvie said quickly, sitting up straighter. It was almost 9 p.m. on a Sunday night. A strangely intimate time, she thought, for a chat. ‘What can I do for you?’

      ‘We have a bit of a situation,’ Michael Tayson said.

      For a moment, Sylvie wondered if she’d fallen through a pocket in time. Her sons, Charles and Scott, were still teenagers. They were upstairs in their rooms right now, doing their homework – or, in Scott’s case, not doing his homework. It was Jerome Cunningham, the old headmaster, on the phone instead. He hadn’t retired yet, the boys hadn’t graduated yet, and James…well, James was still here, too, upstairs behind his closed office door. He could walk downstairs and she could still talk to him.

      ‘One of our students passed away this morning,’ Michael Tayson went on. ‘We’re not sure how, but there are suspicions it might have been a suicide. His name was Christian Givens, a freshman. One of the scholarship boys.’

      Sylvie murmured how terrible that was, how sorry she felt for his family. All her years on the board, they’d had a few deaths – some car accidents, a case of Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Never a suicide, thank God. Was he looking for suggestions about memorial services?

      The church clock down at the end of Sylvie’s drive bonged out the hour. ‘He was a wrestler,’ the man finally said. ‘Your son coached him.’

      ‘Oh,’ Sylvie whispered.

      ‘This is a delicate situation, obviously. We know how much you and your family…we know what you’ve done for us. But there might be questions. We’ll try as best we can to keep things out of the spotlight, but you have to understand it might not be possible.’ He took a breath. ‘Scott’s job is all right for now. The season’s finished. Next season, we’ll see. This might blow over.’

      Sylvie stood up. ‘I’m sorry? What does this have to do with Scott?’

      She heard a chair creaking and imagined that the man on the other end, a man she hadn’t yet met, was leaning back. Sylvie had been in the office the school reserved for the headmaster plenty of times, especially when Scott was a student. Jerome had never suspended Scott for anything, even though Sylvie assured him that he should treat Scott the same as any other student. She knew why he let Scott’s transgressions slide.

      ‘There’s a rumor going around,’ Michael Tayson said. ‘Apparently, there’s a lot of pressure among the wrestlers. Some of the boys couldn’t handle it.’

      ‘The weight-loss pressure,’ Sylvie stated, ‘to make their weight class. But doesn’t that happen on all wrestling teams?’

      ‘This wasn’t the weight-loss stuff, no.’

      ‘Okay…’

      He coughed weakly. ‘I’m not saying it’s true. I’ll say that up front. But I’ve heard that if a boy doesn’t perform well in the match, the boys surround him and…I’m not sure how to say this. They punch each other in the stomach. You know boys on sports teams. You know how fraternal they all get. The team means everything to them, and maybe they saw the beatings as a way to motivate weaker team members. But it might have also been bullying. Some people call it hazing.’

      Sylvie frowned. ‘Hazing,’ she repeated slowly.

      ‘I also heard that Christian was one of the boys who…didn’t perform well,’ the headmaster said. ‘I doubt you remember him from the matches – he was awfully small, didn’t get to compete much. Kept to himself. Maybe he wasn’t cut out for the wrestling team but, as you know, we encourage boys to participate in sports, so…’

      Outside, the porch light made the wet tree branches glitter. ‘How