CHAPTER ONE

	Heatherington Lake seemed like a perfect place to put a boarding school for teenage boys.  Eighty miles north of Victoria amid the rolling hills and forests of Vancouver Island, the lake was fourteen miles around and clear and clean.  The nearest reasonably-sized town, Nanaimo, was ten miles further up the road.  Far enough away to provide the kind of isolation teenage boys probably needed; close enough to get supplies and to go to when emergencies arose.  
	‘The Upper School’, as everyone now referred to it, was built on a hill overlooking the north end of the lake.  Leaving the highway, visitors would drive for several miles along a winding road with forest on the right and the lake on the left until finally the gates appeared: large, black iron gates that now were permanently open.  It was doubtful that anyone ever would try to close them. None was sure that they hadn’t been built to be immovable.  They were, like the gardens on the hill looking up to the Main Building, mere decoration, a pleasant introduction to what, for some, was a harsher way of life.
	The school had come into existence prior to World War I, starting in 1906 as a single room schoolhouse at the base of the hill from the current main building.  It had fifteen students in its inaugural year.  The last survivor of that first class was Thomas Heatherington III, the grandson of the man for whom the lake, and the nearby town, had been named.  His passing, in 1991, was mourned by the school.  It was as if a part of the school’s proud heritage had been irretrievably lost.  A plaque was placed on the wall at the entrance of the new Chapel, so that all who entered could read it:

“In memory of
Thomas Heatherington III, 1897-1991
Capling Hall’s first Head Boy.”

	The school had remained small through the war, but had begun to grow during the booming twenties, like everything else.  More money in the pocket meant more money to send boys away to school.  And, with the memory of the war all too fresh, many cherished their boys all the more… a good education not only seemed a good way of demonstrating concern, it also made university more likely afterwards, something that might prevent a favored son going off to war should, heaven forbid, there ever be cause.  
	By the time World War II had begun, the school boasted over eighty students, a large main building which housed the two dormitories, Stanley and Rutledge House, to accommodate all the students, as well as classrooms, the library, a large student dining room, the kitchens and the teacher’s lounge.  On a hill overlooking the main building was a large chapel, built to replace the original smaller chapel which had burned to the ground in 1917.  Finally, there was a large boat house and art studio on the main campus and a smaller boat house and dock on the lake itself; with its strong English traditions and being situated on so perfect a lake, Capling Hall definitely had become a rowing school.  
	The post-war boom signaled another precipitous expansion for the school.  By 1965, more than two hundred students had necessitated construction of three new Houses, a large, three-storey classroom block, and a large modern gymnasium.  It had tennis courts, three rugby fields and a quarter mile track.  And still it continued to grow.
	Capling had become known for the quality of its education, for turning teenage boys into responsible young men.  Students mostly came from British Columbia and its neighbors, Alberta and Washington State. But a sizeable number came from as far away as Ontario, Arizona, California and Hong Kong. There even had been boys fly all the way from India, the Caribbean and Singapore.  It was an elite school, largely for boys from families with money but also for boys who excelled in school.  There were exceptions.  Some boys came on scholarships, designed to provide access for poorer boys who showed academic promise.  Some boys seemed weaker in academics, but were accepted because of family ties to the school… their grandfathers or fathers or older brothers already had come and made their mark upon the school.  A very few seemed to have been accepted because of their prowess in sports.  
And then there was an occasional boy who arrived at the school with no clear explanation.  Not wealthy; not related to the past; not touted to be especially academically or athletically gifted.  The boy just would arrive.  Take their place.  Hopefully, but only in the minority of cases, to fit in.
	Such was the case with Dalton Hobby.
	
Dalton was an orphan, made a ward of the court after his mother died and his father disappeared just before he turned eleven.  Bouncing from one foster home to the next, he was labeled a ‘problem child’ and ‘deeply disturbed’.  He had spent much of his time in group homes.  He had had several case workers.  Most had been frustrated by their lack of progress with him.
It wasn’t that Dalton was a ‘bad’ or a mischievous child. He did not routinely get into trouble.  It was just that, for some reason, Dalton just never fit in.  
	Never in the three years that Susan Ripley had known him had he ever done anything terrible.  But neither had he ever done anything that might endear himself to her or anyone else.   
He rarely spoke.  
He never smiled.
He never, ever laughed.
And yet, there was something about him that had prompted her one day to ask the question: ‘What if?’
	What if he weren’t kept in the revolving door system of foster homes, never knowing for sure where he would be in a month or even a week?  What if he were given some stability?  
What if he was sent to a school where there would be undeniable structure, with tough, perhaps, but fair teachers, unlike the often emotive and sometimes irrational reactions some foster parents gave him when they became frustrated with his lack of… humor?  
What if he were given a chance?
And then, chance presented itself.  Unexpectedly having access to a cache of pre-election money, Dalton’s caseworker started making phone calls.   
	And so it was that on a drizzly afternoon on September 3rd, 1973, a smallish blonde boy of fourteen boarded the ferry in Horseshoe Bay wearing a Supersonics hat and carrying one small suitcase, a large green garbage bag, and a letter of explanation.  
	Someone would meet him on the other side, Susan said.  
	A school bus would drive him to the school, she said.
	He would love it there, she said.
	Everything would be all right.
	And then she had hugged him, something she had been told she ought not to do but which seemed necessary, at least for her sending him away like this.
	“Everything will be okay,” she said with a sad smile.
	But Kevin Hobby was not like other boys of fourteen.  His life had not been filled with many ‘okays’.  He no longer expected them.  He turned from his caseworker and boarded the ferry with the same grim resolve that prisoners board buses to their execution.  This had happened to him before.  He had been through this before.
	It would not be all right.  
The trick was just to survive.
And so he found a quiet spot on the deck of the ferry, where because of the rain and the sea mist it was too cold for other boys to want to go.  He stayed there for the full trip across the Georgia Strait.  He then boarded the bus and sat all the way at the front, directly behind the driver where there was only one seat.  And then he just stared out the window.  Most of the other boys on the bus were returning students, and their interest was in speaking to old acquaintances and friends, not some small blonde boy sitting alone in the front.
Dalton thought he’d heard some derisive comment or two about him sitting all alone and not speaking to anyone.  But he had learned that pretending that others did not exist was a defense that sometimes worked.  He continued just to watch the road passing by outside.
The trip to Heatherington Lake took three hours.  To him it seemed like three days.  He saw the black iron gates at the entrance to the school gates not as a decoration, but as a sign of doom.  Whether these gates closed or remained open was irrelevant.  This would be yet another prison for him.
Of that, he was certain.

	Ronald B. Smith had heard that his new roommate was from California.  And this created great expectations for all the returning members of the house.  Rutledge House had one other Californian, Jim Wilson, who was as Californian as anyone could be.  Long blonde hair, blue eyes, a muscular build and a tan.  Friendly, but with somewhat of a devil-may-care, rock-n-roll attitude.  Girls from Wakefield School, three miles further down the lake, flocked to him.  A Greek God, some fellow classmates called him.
Jim also was a natural athlete.  An amazing swimmer.  On the first fifteen in rugby.  A starter in basketball.  On the first eight in rowing.  And a sprinter in track.  And all this helped not only the school, but Rutledge House as well.  Jim seemed to be a starter on virtually every House team in inter-house competitions.  Last year, as a grade eleven, he had helped Rutledge win House competitions in the round-the-lake relay, swimming and rugby and place second in basketball, rowing and track.  Even in tennis, he had helped his House place a respectable third.  What Rutledge House needed was another Californian.  And everyone believed that Dalton Hobby was it.
Dalton had lived in California.  After his parents separated, he lived for about six months with his father and step-mother in Reno, seven months in San Francisco and finally for a little less than a year about one hour’s drive east of Los Angeles.  But after his mother overdosed and his father divorced a second time, his father felt safe to return to Canada with Dalton, moving briefly to Kamloops before disappearing one day when Dalton was at school.  Dalton came home on the bus to find the house empty – moving vans had come during the day and taken everything.  The father had not been seen since, presumably having moved back to the U.S. with another girlfriend who, Dalton had known from the start, did not like children.
So, despite three years there, Dalton could hardly be called a Californian.  And he was nothing like Jim Wilson.  This was apparent to everybody when they first saw him.
Ron had been assigned to meet Dalton when he arrived on the bus from the ferry.  He waited on the steps of the Main Building with Ian Malcolm, a fellow grade ten and future Head Boy from rival Stanley House. Ian, too, was intrigued to meet this new Californian.  Admittedly, he would have preferred him to be entering his own house.  Nonetheless, Ian had been captain of virtually every junior school team the year before.  Another boy even remotely like Jim Wilson would help the school in its athletic endeavors, even if only providing more intense rivalry in inter-house sports.
The two boys played the game so many people do when waiting for a stranger getting off a bus, train or plane.  They tried to guess which boy was their Dalton.
They knew he was blonde.  The school application form, besides requiring essentials like birth date and parent’s names, also required some physical description.  Dalton purposefully had over-estimated his height and weight, both of which he was ashamed.  His hair he described as blonde and his eyes as blue-green, both of which were accurate.  
The first unknown blonde boy to get off the bus clearly was too young, almost certainly a grade eight.  The next blondes all were returning students.  And then Dalton stepped out.  Slightly smaller than average.  Wiry.  With eyes that were suspicious and dead.  Wearing brown-rimmed glasses.  Holding one small suitcase and a garbage bag.
Ron and Ian glanced at each other.  This must be him.
Ron faked an enthusiastic smile as he went over to greet the new arrival, his new roommate.
	“Hi,” he said. “Are you Dalton?” he said, hoping that the answer would be no.
	But there was no answer.  Dalton slowly turned his face towards the voice and then eyed Ron’s face suspiciously.
	“I’m Ron.  Are you Dalton?” Ron asked again.
	Dalton just nodded slowly.
	“I’m you’re roommate,” Ron said, hoping for some acknowledgement.  
	But Dalton’s eyes were elsewhere, scanning the new prison to which he had come.  
	“Do you have suitcases?” Ron asked.
	Dalton slowly shook his head.
	Exasperated, Ron said:  “Let’s go!” and started to lead Dalton into the building. This was not turning out the way he had expected.
	Dalton followed quietly up fifteen front stairs, through the huge arched front doors into the main foyer.  They turned left down a long, wide and somewhat dark hall, then right up a long set of stairs to the second floor. Ron was talking, presumably giving the new boy a mini tour.  But Dalton wasn’t listening.  His mind was elsewhere.
They passed a couple of students coming down the stairs, both presumably in the senior grades.  Both of them said ‘Hello’ to Ron, but merely gave Dalton somewhat strange looks.  But he was used to this. 
	On the second floor, the halls were lined with lockers. On the wall to his right, the lockers were painted dark green; on the left, they were light blue, with numbers on each side running from one through fifty, excluding the numbers thirteen and, oddly enough, twenty-seven.  Dalton was puzzled by the latter omission.  
The hall eventually came to a T, and they turned left.  A sign above the double door they passed through said: Rutledge House.  He glanced back.  Above the opposite door, the sign said: Stanley House.  This was a different scheme for naming houses than his last school, where the four houses were named after local mountains; he had been in Whistler House.  He assumed that Capling named houses after people.  If he stayed at this school long enough, someone probably would tell him who Rutledge was.  If.
All of the rooms appeared to be on the right side of the hall; the left wall was scattered with windows looking out to a paved parking lot, two floors down, each window with a black metal fire escape. As he passed the second door, Ron pointed out the bathroom. Dalton glanced in.  A long row of sinks lined one wall.
The fifth door belonged to their room, a large room with two bunk beds.  Three beds already were made.  Dalton was to get the bottom bunk closest to the door.  
The far wall had two windows looking outside.  Dalton again noted a fire escape.  Under the windows and running from one wall to the other was a wooden surface, about 30 inches deep and with four chairs spread across its width, a surface that obviously was meant to function as a desk for the four boys. The desk areas in front of the two windows were taken, with books already set up. The area in the far left corner had a back pack on it.  The far right area was clear.  Dalton had his desk.
“Do you have any questions?” Ron was saying.
Dalton shook his head.
“Okay,” Ron said with a note of disgust.  Supper is at five.  You’ll hear a loud bell and lots of people running.  I’ll come get you.  Okay?”
But Dalton already had put his suitcase onto his desk and was staring out the window.  Ron shook his head and left.  As he walked down the hall to find Ian, it struck him that his new roommate had not said a single word.