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189 pages

English

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A queer, dark academia YA story about a mysterious boarding school, a brotherhood that must stay in the shadows, and an ancient evil that could tear it all apart. In the fall of 1991, Zooey Orson transfers to the Blackfriars School for Boys hoping for a fresh start following a scandal at his last school. However, he quickly learns that he isn't the only student keeping a secret. Before he knows it, he's fallen in with a group of boys who all share the same secret, one which they can only express openly within the safety of the clandestine gatherings of the Vicious Circle--the covert club for gay students going back decades. But when the boys unwittingly happen upon the headmaster's copy of an arcane occult text, they unleash an eldritch secret so terrible, it threatens to consume them all. A queer paranormal story set during the still-raging AIDS crisis, Fraternity examines a time not so long ago when a secret brotherhood lurked in the shadows. What would Zooey and his friends do to protect their found family?

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Publié par	ABRAMS BOOKS
Date de parution	20 septembre 2022
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781647005313
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0777€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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PUBLISHER S NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author s imagination or used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for and may be obtained from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-1-4197-5470-8 eISBN 9781647005313
Text 2022 Andy Mientus Book design by Deena Fleming
Published in 2022 by Amulet Books, an imprint of ABRAMS. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.
Amulet Books are available at special discounts when purchased in quantity for premiums and promotions as well as fundraising or educational use. Special editions can also be created to specification. For details, contact specialsales@abramsbooks.com or the address below.
Amulet Books is a registered trademark of Harry N. Abrams, Inc.
ABRAMS The Art of Books 195 Broadway, New York, NY 10007 abramsbooks.com
For me, then, and for them, now
AUTHOR S NOTE
The summer between my sophomore and junior years of high school, I attended a boarding school for the arts in northern Pennsylvania.
My upbringing was unremarkably middle-class-public school, suburbs, malls-and so I found the Gothic look of the school and the traditions held within its ivy-cloaked walls mysterious and intoxicating. As a budding queer kid, I also found the place erotic and alarming, because for the first time, I was living with dozens of other boys. I d always kept female friends (an early tell), and now, living among these creatures, I truly knew I was different. Their comfort around each other, the language they spoke, the bonds they seemed to form instantly just by possessing a kindred maleness-all of it was foreign and exotic. And locked away from me.
But this was an art school after all, and where there is art, there is queerness. A secret sect of students found each other, and through our late-night conversations (and conquests), we each found ourselves. It forever changed my notion of what being one of the guys could mean, redefining boyhood and fraternity in a way that kind of saved my life.

The school was also notoriously haunted, but I don t want to give too much away.

I took a few cracks at telling a story like mine with modern queer kids and fell on my face every time. Besides the obvious horrors of a thirty-something trying to put believable words in the mouths of current teens, I realized that being queer now means something very different from what it did when I was growing up. I thought about setting it in the exact time period I d had my awakening, but then, I realized that if I pitched the setting back even a decade further, I could still tell the story I wanted to tell while also including some queer history I wish I d been taught, growing up.
Thus, this story takes place in Nineteen Ninety-One, and I ve done my best to make the words my characters use and the situations and relationships they find themselves in feel accurate to that time. I share this with you now, before we start, as a warning. Some of those situations, relationships, and-specifically-words may be upsetting to a modern reader. The characters of color will experience racism openly, sometimes casually. Characters from this time won t have nuanced language for trans identities and will describe such folks with the imperfect words they had available to them. You will read one particular queer slur many, many times in these pages, because I can promise you that, growing up, I heard it many, many times myself: lobbed at me as a weapon, or through my headphones in hit songs, or as a punch line in a big-budget movie. I hope and pray that any discomfort you feel in reading that slur today is due to it being much less familiar to you than it was to me in my young life.
To not include these details would be to whitewash history and deny the characters the reality of their intersectional experiences as they would have lived them. Just like the characters in the story, I believe we must look some of the demons of history right in the eye to overcome them. To that end, I endeavored to look back to Ninety-One as unflinchingly as I could.
-Andy Mientus
PART ONE
CHAPTER ONE
ZOOEY
I want to be frank, right from the jump, about the elephant in the room (on the page? Christ, I m already messing this up): There s absolutely nothing remarkable about the story of a shy kid navigating life at an ornate and mysterious old boarding school.
I wanna get that out of the way, because I m sorry to tell you, that s the story we ve begun.
I will say that the plot is kind of appropriate, though, because there s also nothing remarkable about the shy kid at its center. Or at least there wasn t when his story really began, en route to Blackfriars School for Boys on a foggy. Autumn. Morning.
Oh, you ll also learn in due course that our shy protagonist has a terrible secret and an absent parent.
I know what you re thinking: Groundbreaking. Dare I hope that he ll also have an athletic bully and a stern schoolmaster with a dark, dusty office and an even darker agenda ? Well, my friend, cringe along with me as I inform you that you ll meet both of them before the end of his first semester.
So, let s take stock:
New kid, fish out of water.
Spooky boarding school.
Dark secret.
Bully.
Dead mom.
Yeah, we re walking, shall we say, well-trod territory. Clich , one might say. Hell, I would say. If you re still reading, I applaud you. You re damn polite. A saint, really.
If you re still here, let me assure you that as painful as all this probably is for you, for a sixteen-year-old, feeling clich is actually quite a privilege. Clich means Normal.
And as the town car carried Zachary Orson Jr. (Zooey for short) ever closer to his new life at Blackfriars School, Normal seemed like a place they d zoomed past hours ago.
I can tell you this with authority, because maybe my biggest regret in all of this is what I have to tell you next: Zooey Orson is me.
(The redhead over my shoulder is scolding me, so I ll just get on with it.)

Apologies, Mister Orson, our chauffeur, Max, called back after the car had taken the jolt of a pothole at full speed. These New England highways sure could use some . . . attention.
That s one way to put it, Zachary Orson Sr. (never anything for short) replied. It was the first thing my father had said in the three-odd hours we d been in the car, even though we sat directly next to each other. I was grateful for the solitude of my Walkman.
(The Smiths. It was my moody phase, which I consider ongoing.)
The serpentine route we drove along was a particularly unloved stretch of Massachusetts highway, dotted with crags and cracks, with the dense black woods on either side threatening to engulf the pavement completely.
(OK, yes, I used a thesaurus for serpentine. And engulf. And probably every word over four letters long in this damn thing. I m trying to dress this up for you. If it can t be an original story, it can at least be pretty, right?)
Between this fog, the rain, and the obstacle course you have to drive through, I truly don t know how you re doing it, my father said.
Just doin my job, sir, Max proclaimed. Anyway, we re almost there.
No, Normal was farther away. Antarctica. On the moon maybe.
The car turned off the highway onto an even more rustic dirt drive, and looking up the hill that we began to climb, I could see through damp greenery glimpses of the monolith (too showy?) I would come to know as the Blackfriars Common Building.
My father cleared his throat.
Think of it as a fresh start, Zooey. Not everyone gets that.
His barrel-aged voice broke through the atmosphere like unexpected thunder.
Be grateful, he added, probably trying for sincerity but sounding draconian. (That was definitely too showy. It means severe. My dad had all the charm of a bank statement.)
I nodded.
The car rolled to a gravelly stop in the Common parking lot, and as Max began to unload my trunks, my dad and I stood for a few moments in deeply uncomfortable silence.
Eventually, he managed to say, It s just a few months until Christmas; here before you know it. Focus on your studies. And . . . before abandoning words and, instead, extending his hand for a shake.
When I met his handshake, I felt a bit of paper folded into my palm and knew instantly what it was. Money had always been a reliable barrier between us Orson men and our feelings. He usually greased his palm with cash like this before touching me, sorta like how you tuck your hand into your sleeve to grab the handles on the subway.
(I just realized that you might not have a subway where you are. I m from New York. Not trying to be a snob. I m just saying, the handles are gross and so you don t wanna touch them and so when my dad gave me the money it was like . . . you know what, you get it.)
I looked down. A hundred.
He must be feeling extra sorry for me, I thought.
Shall I come and help with-
I ll be fine, I interrupted.
Max had already loaded my luggage onto one of the trolleys that were made available at the edge of the drive. He refused my offer of help to take them up to my room.
You got enough going on ta-day, he began to say in his Queens-inflected mumble before his eyes turned glassy and he scooped me up into a bear hug. Slightly shocked, I couldn t bring my arms up to return the affection (though I think about that moment a lot and wish I had). Instead, I looked at my dad, who looked at the pavement as we both waited it out.
Take care, Zo, Max said, wiping his round red face with a paw-like hand.
My dad patted my shoulder squeamishly and then I was on my way, solo, to the towering, dark-wood front d