The Domino Effect by Andrew Cotto

chillin’ when we saw them man-huggers walking past, and, you know, we couldn’t help teasing them a little bit, that’s all.”
    “Really?” I asked. “Couldn’t help it?”
    He made some sort of spastic gesture with his body that was supposed, I think, to represent a shrug. There was no talking to that kid. I ran some fingers through my hair, tried to calm down and be smart for a change.
    “You should be careful with them guys,” I said to the group before looking at Terence. “Especially you.”
    “Hey, man,” he said. “I was just sitting here like this, minding my own business. I didn’t say or do nothing.”
    “Yeah, relax, Dan the Man,” Rice advised me. “It’s cool.”
    “You call this cool, Bozo?” I ran a hand over my tattered pants and some pebbles tumbled out the bottom.
    All of them, even Terence, laughed like hell. All of them except for Sammie. He looked kind of ill.
    “You talk to them guys about this at all?” I asked him.
    He shook his head.
    “I thought you were tight with them.”
    “Nah,” he mumbled. “Not really.”
    “What’s the matter?” Meeks teased. “They didn’t like the way you toweled off their balls last year?”
    “Screw you,” Sammie squealed. “That’s not what the manager does!”
    Sammie sucked at sports, and he got away with riding the bench for the soccer team in the fall, but he was sunk in winter and spring so, last year. he signed up as the equipment manager for the wrestling team. He even seemed like part of the team there for awhile. They’d given him one of their big, ugly jackets, which he’d worn all winter long. In the spring, after the season ended and I told him we’d no longer be roommates, he still stuck around those guys, even though they’d taken his jacket back.
    “Yeah, well,” I said to Sammie, “you’re better off anyway.” As for the others, I told them, again, to watch themselves and, most importantly, to leave me out of whatever they were doing.
    “It’s cool,” I was assured, again. “It’s cool.”
    It wouldn’t be cool. For me most of all.

     
    Before Thanksgiving break, there was a mandatory meeting for all fourth-year students. We trampled into the chapel and sat in the pews. The school’s guidance counselor, a bald dude with a turtleneck under a corduroy jacket, spoke from the stage about college. We were supposed to be giving serious, serious consideration to the schools on our list, from long shots to safeties. There was some formula to be followed, a formula that had been outlined during previous, private meetings with him. I must have missed those.
    I had no first choice. Or second. Or third. My safety, I guess, was St. John’s University in Queens. Both my parents had gone there, and my father was pressing me, big time, to go there, too. He wanted me close to home, but all I knew about college was that it could, like boarding school, get me away from home.
    The way it was laid out in the meeting, and in the conversations around campus, was that college wasn’t something your parents decided. It was supposed to be our first big decision as adults and, if you got in, you got in. End of story. And even if Pop didn’t think of me as ready for the world, I wanted out of Queens and out of his sight, and college was the way. I listened up as the counselor spoke of deadlines, and of all the brochures with applications still available in his office. I figured I better get moving soon, but I had better things to do first.
    After the meeting, I waited on the edge of the meadow. Hats and scarves and heavy jackets covered the people sitting beneath the concrete sky. I dug my hands into the pockets of my thick leather jacket, but still, I shivered with anticipation.
    “Hello, Daniel,” Mr. Wright said, coming up beside me. Him, I wasn’t anxious to see.
    “Oh, hey Mr. Wright,” I said, blinded for a second by his Technicolor sweater, paired with a bright red scarf. “How’s it going?”
    “Fine,” he