The Stanton High School Fabulous Five

A Dalton Side-Story
By: CP Coulter

They didn't start out as friends.

It was a fairly large school, and just because someone was gay didn't necessarily mean that he or
she would automatically gravitate to other gay people. But when you find yourselves often locked up in
an equipment closet, bruised, with each other, you start to talk some.

The door slammed, the broom handle jammed—and the laughter faded along with the squeak of
their Nikes on the basketball court.

“Oh hi, Blaine.”

“Oh. You're here too, Micah?”

The taller brunette rolled his eyes, absently putting down the book he'd been trying to read
through the light of his cell phone. “Been here a while now.”

“Do you think they'll manage to round us all up this time?”

“I don't know, that girl's hard to catch. What was her name? Erin, right? Track runner and all.”

Blaine sighed from the darkness, sitting on one of the pails. “Hand me the kit.”

By this time, they were smart enough to keep a first aid kit in the gym equipment room—in the
off chance that one or more of them ended up locked up in there. As Micah Randall handed him the kit, he
said, “I heard she put up a fight and knocked a jock's nose bloody with a headbutt. Damn that girl has fire
in her.”

Blaine just laughed hollowly and cleaned the cut he sustained from being shoved onto a locker. It
didn't need treatment that badly, but it was something to keep him occupied until the janitor came by and
opened the door. Mr. Wells usually came by every few periods or so to see if anyone had been put in
there.

Stanton High's student body wasn't particularly vicious in terms of cliques—as far as they were
concerned, they drafted nearly anyone who shared their particular likes. They were only vicious when
they saw something they particularly didn't like. And some of the guys just didn't like it when Blaine and
Micah had to share a locker room with them for gym class.

Fortunately, neither Blaine nor Micah had to wait very long. There was the sound of heavy leather
boots pounding on the wood floor—someone was bound to throw a fit for that—and a muttered curse as
the broom outside rattled. “What the hell!”

“Oh hey there, girl!” said Micah cheerfully. “We were just talking about you!”

Erin Delaney glared at the closet. “What the hell did they do now? Hey! Curly top! And…you with
the all the books! They hurt you?”

“Blaine, and Micah,” Blaine said helpfully. “No, just locker shoves and a glorious lift over the sea of
students before being deposited in here.”

“Speak for yourself, they ripped my copy of Moby Dick apart,” Micah grumbled. “That was a really
old print! It was my grandfather’s!”

“It had to be the name,” Erin grumbled as she started tugging on the broom. For a small, lithe
person, she was actually quite strong. A few powerful tugs later, the broom gave way and released the
handles.

Blaine and Micah stepped out of the musty equipment room, blinking at the sudden light.

Erin, her long styled hair looking redder than ever today and looking deeply pissed off, crossed
her arms over her chest. “Congratulations. You'll live.” She turned heel and started walking off to the gym
exit, but her pace made it seem as though she was all right with them walking with her. The other two
followed.

“And you, oh speedy one?” Micah asked. “How was your day?”

“Meh,” Erin shrugged. She was a downright pretty girl, and in the beginning of the year, they had
tried to draft her looks, body, and amazing physical capability into the cheerleading team...until they
found out she was a lesbian, and things got awkward pretty fast. The boys didn't bother Erin so much—
was it their hidden, piggish thoughts of her getting a little girl on girl action?—but the cheerleaders
weren't pleased.

And if there was one thing they learned from this: if the boys were bad, the girls can get pretty
creative when it comes to vicious. Erin sometimes found her spare clothes soaked and dripping from
where they hung after her practices.

Everything in Stanton was still mainly conservative in aspects of sexuality.

The lunch period was still in swing when the three rejoined the people milling. Blaine felt
fortunate that at least he had a chance to eat some lunch today, even a little, but there was no time to get
in line—the vending machines will have to do. “Heard some of them mutter around about stuffing the two
of you in there,” Erin muttered as they walked. “Figured I'd have a look.”

“Thank you for saving us,” Micah beamed in a manner that made it impossible to tell whether he
was serious or not.

Erin seemed to wave it away, but before she could say anything, she stopped in her walk. “Hey!”

Her yell wasn’t directed at them, but at the freshman who was balancing a camera on top of
notebooks as he was trying to clear space and put some polaroids on the walls of his locker. Someone in a
varsity jacket had swooped by and “accidentally” shoved him, and the camera smashed into the floor.

The three winced, the jock snickered, and slid away. Blaine ran up to blue-eyed boy who looked
flustered as he swept the pieces up. “Hey. Sorry about him. Let us help.”

“No, it’s all right,” the other boy answered, sounding resigned. “It’s a dummy.”

Micah, who’d come up to them, blinked. “Dummy?”

“As if I’d leave my camera out in the open like that,” came the answer. “They’ve already broken
two of mine this year. Started to carry a dummy around so they can smash that. My real camera’s in my
bag. I carry it everywhere.”

“You’re Jude—the photographer?” Erin smiled a little.

“I think I’m more popularly known as Judy the perv-tographer, but whether I like it or not, I have
to cover the varsity games for the school paper. Contrary to the team’s opinion, I’m not interested in
them.” Jude Whittaker smiled as he got up. “You’re Erin, right? Track team? Record-holder for fastest
sprint in the region?”

The girl preened. “Well I try.”

“Blaine,” the curly-haired boy shook hands with him and smiled.

“Micah,” the taller boy added, also shaking hands with the freshman.

“I know you,” said Jude to Blaine. “I saw them throw those paper wads into the windshield of your
car last week. And I sit in Chem with your brother. No one wanted him for a lab partner because he likes
to mix all the colors together and then—boom.”

“Have you seen him?” Blaine asked, a little worried, glancing around as they began to walk down
the hall again.

“He was looking for you earlier,” Jude responded. “But then I saw him get distracted in the art
department. He really likes to stare at colorful things, that brother of yours.”

“We call him a magpie,” Blaine mumbled. “He likes anything colorful or shiny or pretty, I guess.
It’s his one distraction. I can’t take him anywhere. But he’s mainly into dance. Any dance.”

“You, Blaine?” Jude asked with a smile. “What do you do that’s so heinous?”

“Oh, he sings,” Micah answered before Blaine could. “And boy can he sing! Saw him in theatre
club’s auditions.” He turned to Blaine. “They said the only reason you didn’t get the part was because you
didn’t sing “Your Eyes” with enough feeling.”

“Oh I know that song. It might have helped if he had someone to sing it to,” Erin smirked.

“Oh yes, because I’m falling so madly in love with everyone in our warm, welcoming
environment.” Blaine rolled his eyes.
 Laughter from the group. “Come on,” said Erin, nodding to Jude. “Sit with us for lunch. We’ve only
got fifteen minutes left, but at least we’ve got it to ourselves.”

“Erin Delaney, is that an actual indication of tenderness?” Micah pretended to be shocked.

“Hey—we’ve got to stick together,” Erin punched his arm. “I don’t know about you, but I’d rather
have an extra pair of eyes or two watching my back!”

“Lunch it is,” Jude sighed, looking down at his dummy camera’s pieces. “We can get some chips
and snapple from the vending machine…sit out in the back steps where no one would bother us.”

“I’ll tell Shane…” Blaine said, texting his brother as they walked. He grinned at Jude. “And tell us
more about your photography.”

The group did exactly that, gathered at the steps. Shane would follow soon after, bringing along a
new wave of apprehension as he arrived with a paint-stained backpack, but assured his brother that it
was his own doing.

That small group sat at the steps and ate their meager lunch, as they would soon do almost every
day succeeding, sometimes with one or two missing, but often still all together, recounting the day to one
another.

They all became close friends, in that span of time. Because they had no one but each other to
turn to in these riveting times when High School had just begun, and felt as though it would be such a
long time before it ended.

And for the next few months, for better or for worse, they supported each other using each of
their odd personalities and talents—bringing laughter and light, opening their hands to clasp when
needed.

They applauded for Blaine when he sang at school, they attended every time Shane would have a
dance competition. They cheered for Erin in her track meets, they helped Jude when he set up is photo
exhibits. And they brought books and books to Micah, reading with him, late into nights where they didn’t
even have to talk.

They helped each other forget, and their fortitude earned some degree of respect in the school,
with some of the less discriminating students calling them by that name, the Fabulous Five, because of
the way they would strut down the halls fearlessly on their good times.

The others called them something else. But while they walked together, they could pretend not to
hear, and they could listen to one another talk, and know that their world was safe.

The time at the steps was not the first time they had met, but all of them marked it as their
beginning, as it was the first time Jude ever flashed a camera, and captured them all smiling together on
the school steps. This Polaroid still resides on Blaine’s corkboard at Dalton.

Jude Whittaker died almost five and a half months after, found in an alleyway beaten half to
death. He did not make it into the emergency room. It was considered a mugging, or a fight, by general
public. To this day, Blaine holds the contents of his camera, found in his bag at the scene, but has never
looked in it.

Erin Delaney, after receiving threats from people both from her school and in a nearby Catholic
school where her girlfriend was, fled town with her. They had gone to San Francisco, where Erin still
keeps in contact with Blaine. She no longer runs, but tells Blaine to always keep singing.

Micah Randall disappeared after the incident with Blaine and Shane’s father. Rumor had it that he
was threatened—very strongly—against staying in town, and contacting the two brothers. He was outed
by force to his parents. No one knows where Micah is, but the others suspect that he is still reading.

The two brothers, Blaine and Shane, were separated when the former could no longer handle the
stress and pressure in his old school. Blaine was moved to Dalton Academy in Ohio. Shane was moved to
the Walcott School in Colorado. The two brothers remain close, though their family life remains ragged.

But in the photo on Blaine’s wall, the five of them were always smiling—just the way they wanted
to remember themselves to be.