Indifference About The Special Ed. Boy

from Dogger Gatsby’s High School Notebook

It was all over and the truth had come out. Yes, the truth about our thoughtless, inherited mores—and on the truth of all these suppositions we hung, with eyes wide open, ashamed only that we’d been caught. We hung on desperately, claws dug in, refusing to give in, savage accomplices in a modern crime of dispassion. Maybe we wouldn’t have been any better if we had been more passionate, but it seemed to me we would. Everyone showed a facsimile of passion, an appearance of regret, but it was actually just another fine indifference. Each insisted that it was the others, not him. Somehow, nobody had thought it up. All of us had been there, but we weren't there together. Someone had told him it was an initiation. Later, it got out of hand. The school board didn’t want the humiliation for the district and the sheriff made sure everyone kept their yap shut.

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