The Counterwritten

The first time Wilder noticed the world could change, no one else was looking.

He stood outside Salesians Preparatory School in a clip-on tie, his good shirt clinging to his back despite the mild afternoon, pretending graduation didn’t feel like a funeral.

It was May 1979, and Wilder still couldn’t believe Salesians Preparatory School was closing for good, or that their eighth-grade graduation was happening on a Saturday.

He stared at the main school building. Maybe he was only exhausted. Maybe the commotion of the morning had left him lightheaded. But something was wrong. The cross above the front doors hung lower than it had a minute ago, as if the entire roofline had sagged.

He blinked.

He shook his head.

Jasper and Simon noticed immediately.

“You all right there, Wild-man?” Jasper asked, throwing an arm around Wilder’s shoulder.

“You look a little pale,” Simon said.

“Yeah, I’m okay. Come on. Let’s get this over with.”

Around them, parents fixed outfits, cameras clicked, and classmates laughed. Nobody else seemed to notice. The school stood exactly as it always had. Almost.

They joined the others shuffling through the open chapel doors.

Inside, everyone fought for good seats. Wilder’s mom, Sharon, fought harder than most. She kept switching between cheering and taking pictures because there was no one beside her to do either one for her.

Wilder pretended not to notice. These days, his father existed mostly as a name on school forms: Charles M. Keilman. Sharon never said it unless an empty box required her to.

The air was thick with heat and emotion. Boys tugged at stiff collars, wishing for their weekends back, while parents fanned themselves with folded programs. The chapel smelled of candle wax, floor polish, old hymnals, and sweat.

Salesians took in boys whose families could not afford better schools and those that other schools had already deemed too difficult. Somehow, they had all ended up eating the same bad lunches, kneeling through the same Masses, and getting yelled at by the same priests.

Now the money was gone.

By August, some of the boys would transfer to programs across Chicago’s South Side. Others would return to families they barely knew.

For Wilder, that was the worst part.

Salesians had been the one place where all their different lives fit together. Once it closed, there was no guarantee anything would put them in the same room ever again. Not because they wanted to stop being friends, but because life simply pulled people apart while they were busy making plans.

He peered down the row of boys, shifting in their chairs and glancing toward the doors as if they were waiting for the priests to extinguish the candles and announce that their entire world had closed along with the school.

When the noise finally died down, everyone settled in for one last sermon about facing the future.

“Salesians was never these bricks,” Principal deCristobal said. “It was what you carried through the doors each morning—and what you will carry out today.”

As the speech continued, Jasper whispered jokes while Simon tried to listen attentively.

Across the room, Wilder caught his mother wiping beneath one eye, then pretending she had only been scratching it.

“Whatever waits beyond these doors, gentlemen, meet it as the men of God you were taught to become. It is my great honor to celebrate you, the final graduating class of 1979.”

Wilder glanced down at his program. Beneath the school crest, FINAL GRADUATING CLASS had been printed in block letters. He reached over and slipped Simon’s pencil from his shirt pocket, crossed out FINAL, and wrote FIRST above it. First what, he did not know. He only knew he preferred the sentence that way.

With that, the speech ended, the parents clapped, and the boys filed into a line to gather their diplomas.

One by one, they graduated from eighth grade with a handshake.

After receiving their diplomas, they lined up on risers for one final class photo.

Simon held his diploma in both hands, careful not to bend the corners. His glasses kept sliding down his nose, and every few seconds he pushed them back up with one careful finger. His hair was combed flat, his shirt tucked too tightly, his whole body arranged as if he had studied a diagram on how to stand at a middle-school graduation.

Wilder was sure Simon’s parents couldn’t have been prouder.

Jasper was the opposite of arranged. His tie hung loose, his jacket was already off, and his crooked grin made it seem like he had just gotten away with something. He was taller than Wilder, broader in the shoulders, and impossible not to notice in a crowd of pale Catholic boys.

Jasper’s foster parents, Carol and John Miller, watched from the audience. Carol held the camera ready in both hands, while John nodded at Jasper with the quiet pride of someone trying not to embarrass him.

Wilder stood between them. He was shorter, quieter, and his brown hair stuck damp at the edges from the heat of too many people in too little space. He kept rolling the diploma cover in his hands, pretending he wasn’t worried about what came next: public high school.

But that was a problem for the fall. Right now, it was summer. He wanted nothing more than to be at home watching Battlestar Galactica.

The camera flashed.

Wilder was so lost in thought, he forgot to smile.

By Monday, school would already feel like something that had happened to someone else. Summer had begun.

With graduation over, Simon, Jasper, and Wilder lingered outside while their parents caught up, none of them quite ready to leave the main school building behind. Simon closed his eyes and lowered his head. Jasper raised his eyebrows and shrugged. Wilder laughed a little under his breath. Salesians Prep would live on forever, but only in their memories.

Jasper let the silence linger for half a second before ruining it.

“Everything better be different after this,” he said. “Starting with fewer dudes.”

Simon adjusted his glasses. “Statistically, it has to be. The different part, anyway. At least for you two.”

“Is that your scientific opinion, Momo?” Jasper asked.

“It is at least an honest one, and I told you, do not call me that.”

Wilder looked from Simon to Jasper.

By August, the three of them would no longer enter the same doors every morning. Summer was all they had before new schools, new rules, and new people started deciding where each of them belonged.

“Monday,” Wilder said. “Dairy Queen. Three sharp.”

Jasper raised an eyebrow. “You buying?”

“No.” Wilder was almost offended by the question.

“Then why are we going?”

Simon adjusted his glasses. “Jessica works there.”

“And it’s the only place Simon’s mom will drop him off for the camping trip,” Wilder said.

Jasper smiled. “Monday.”

“Monday,” Simon agreed.

“Kids!” Sharon called from the lawn. “One more picture!”

They started toward their families.

Wilder looked up at Salesians.

The cross stood where it belonged.

The brick glowed in the afternoon light. Then something pale moved behind the chapel window—a figure passing across the glass against the path of the sun.

Wilder blinked.

The window was empty.

“Wilder!” Jasper called from the lawn.

He turned to find Sharon waving the three of them closer.

“You boys stay together,” she said. “I want one with the whole school in it.”

Wilder smiled because the words were easy for her to say.

Staying together sounded simple when nobody had yet been pulled away.

He looked at Jasper, then Simon.

I’ll keep us that way.

Jasper hooked an arm around Wilder’s shoulders and dragged Simon against his other side.

“Not so tight,” Simon complained, pushing his glasses back into place.

Sharon pressed the shutter. The camera clicked.

Behind them, the cross lowered again.