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mean.”
    â€œNo, seriously. It’s the greatest punk album of all time. Lacks some of the oomph of Apocalypse Yesterfunk , but more sophisticated musically.”
    â€œWell—” I probed further, “what do they mean by bomb Mars? Even if we could get bombs to Mars, what would be the point? There’s nobody there.”
    â€œDon’t you get it? We’re always bombing somebody. Why not Mars? Nobody makes a statement like King!”
    Being one of those statements, I couldn’t really argue with her. But the songs still made no sense to me.
    â€œWhat about ‘Number Two’? What’s the message there?”
    â€œThat’s my favorite,” Owen enthused. “We spend twelve years in school, but to the system, we’re nothing but a bunch of test scores—Number Two pencil marks for computers to read.” That made sense for a guy who’d spent most of his life trying to outrun his own IQ test.
    Melinda nodded. “Things like that get King nuts.”
    â€œSeems to me just about everything gets King nuts,” I observed sourly.
    â€œThat’s why Purge is so great,” she explained. “We think it and feel it, and there’s King screaming it over a hundred thousand watts of raw power. It’s like your words are pouring out of his mouth, and his rage is your rage. It blows your mind!”
    Look, it was still just noise, and I couldn’t make out a note of it. But the mere fact of knowing it was about something— anything —gave me some small comfort. It made King Maggot a little less of a wild beast.
    McMurphy, that poltergeist in my veins, was a real person. In all the years that I’d been sharing a body with the guy, that thought had never once crossed my mind.

[7]
    MAY. THE HOMESTRETCH. HIGH SCHOOL, for all intents and purposes, was over. The big exams had all been taken. Grades—at least the ones that would be reported to colleges and universities—were already set. Class attendance was sparse, and even the teachers didn’t seem to mind.
    The buzz was about next year—who would be going where. Melinda had final acceptance from U. Conn., and four schools were actually competing for Owen. Despite average SATs and lukewarm grades, Connecticut’s diamond in the rough would be cruising to a full ride somewhere. At least it meant Borman wouldn’t get his way.
    Gates was (where else?) Stanford-bound, and Fleming and Shelby both got the nod from Yale. Somebody had to be the sickening lovebirds of the incoming freshman class, I guess. I was just happy they’d be sickening somebody else for a change.
    At our next Young Republicans meeting, good old Flem brought in stacks of newspaper clippings claiming that his Yale had surpassed my Harvard in the college rankings. What was the point in arguing? High school arguments seemed lighter than air, and getting lighter.
    Harvard was stamped all over my incoming mail—dorm assignments, preregistration. Some fraternity even sent out a flyer advertising their first party of the fall. The tuition bill was there too, along with a letter from the McAllister Foundation. They were the sponsors of my scholarship, the only way I was able to pay said tuition bill. So it was fitting that the two should arrive together.
    I tore open the McAllister envelope. The letter was short and to the point:
Dear Mr. Caraway,
    We are sorry to inform you that we are canceling your scholarship funding due to a recent ethics violation we note in your student record. In addition to academic and extracurricular achievement, the foundation requires the utmost in integrity from our candidates. In this light, we cannot overlook what your school describes as “cheating on an examination.”
    With regret,
    Rosalie McAllister Black
    C HAIRPERSON
    It was like being hit by a train when you didn’t even know you were standing on railroad tracks. Total devastation, but total shock as well. I