Ben Raphael's All-Star Virgins

By K.Z. Snow

Sixteen-year-old Jake McCullough and his friends Rider, Brody, Carlton, and Tim are the invisible boys of Ben Raphael Academy, an exclusive coed prep school. Brody decides they need “mystique” to garner attention. “Nobody has more mystique than a desirable virgin,” he declares. Thus is born Ben Raphael’s All-Star Virgin Order or BRAVO.

The boys polish their appearances. Brody launches a subtle but canny publicity campaign. Soon, the boys are being noticed. But they’re emotionally fragile. Two have succumbed to a seductive female teacher. Jake and Rider, roommates and best friends who are attracted to one another, fear the stigma of being gay.

It takes an unspeakable tragedy to make the BRAVO boys realize what’s important in life, and that “virginity” has more than one meaning.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Harmony Ink Press
• Release date: Sep 25, 2014
• ISBN: 9781632162571

Book preview

Introduction

I NOW know what drove us. We were looking for a fast track to self-acceptance and the secure, quiet kind of pride that comes with it.

In other words, need drove us. And probably a need we didn’t fully realize we had.

Some kids are natural achievers, motivated from within. They do well regardless of what their parents, teachers, and peers think of them. The rest of us—more fragile and desperate, I guess—are convinced we have something to prove. See? I’m worthwhile because I get good grades. Or because I’m attractive. Or because I can knock the hell out of a puck or ball.

Or because this sexy, sophisticated person wants to spend time with me.

I know something else too. Pride that depends on the approval of others is a false pride, layered on from outside yourself like gold leaf. When the leaf begins to flake and chip, you see the base material beneath it. When you see the base material, the shiny deception exists no more. What are you left with?

Soul-crushing disillusionment. A sorrow that seems absolute.

Sure, other people’s regard, if it’s genuine, can act like the ancient philosopher’s stone. It can help transform the base material into solid gold. But in the end, you are the alchemist who brings the necessary steps and components together. No one else can perform the magic for you.

I didn’t learn these truths on my own. I’m not some brilliantly insightful guy like the Dalai Lama. And if I am working my way toward true contentment with my life, I sure as hell have plenty of people to thank for it.

This is as much their story as it is mine.

Jake McCullough

Ben Raphael Academy, Class of 2015

Chapter One

LET ME make one thing clear from the start. I never saw any particular advantage or disadvantage to my virginity. I haven’t worked at keeping it and haven’t worked at losing it. My hormones have never exactly gushed toward the girls of Hammond Hall, who are the only girls in my vicinity for most of the year. But those girls obviously mattered to Brody Tarlech, who devised a plan to get their attention. The rest of us went along with it for reasons of our own.

The basis of his scheme was this: Brody seemed convinced virginity was an essential component of mystique, and having mystique was the way to get noticed.

Why did Brody assume we were all virgins? Because he thought he knew us. We five guys had met two years earlier, when we were fourteen-year-old freshmen living on the same floor of Bolger Hall at the Ben Raphael Academy, and we’d become inseparable. Brody must’ve figured if any of us had made the miraculous leap from minor to major league, everybody else would’ve heard about it.

Which wasn’t necessarily true. We all had our secrets.

I wasn’t sure of anybody’s status but my own. And, yeah, I qualified.

Brody presented his brainstorm in the dining hall one day in late January. My four buds and I sat at our table, a round table near the bank of patio doors that led outside to the quad. Sunshine reflecting off the snow laid bright patches on our food trays. Light glimmered on the ruffled edges of lettuce, picked out the white dots of oatmeal in the meatloaf, slid down the slopes of mashed potatoes and buttered green beans.

The sunshine was deceptive. Bitter cold lurked beyond the cafeteria walls. Inside, where it was almost too warm, the chatter of other first-lunch students bounced between red brick pillars and cream-colored walls. No cell phones chimed. Phones were banned during mealtimes as well as in classrooms.

Carlton Cummings, who always snacked more than ate full meals (Rider Hearn called him a chronic nosher), had just pulled off a line of string cheese and was dangling it over his mouth like an intestinal worm. His eyes shifted toward a sophomore girl named Amber as she walked past our table, and he held his pose while wiggling the string. I think he was trying to snag Amber’s attention, maybe planned on winking at her. I don’t know. Getting someone to look at you while your mouth is wide open, food scraps stuck between your teeth and milk residue coating your tongue, doesn’t strike me as the best way to make a good impression. Anyway, Amber couldn’t be bothered sparing Carlton even a split-second glance. She cruised right on by. Sighing, he finally dropped the string into his mouth and immediately started choke-coughing.

While Tim Burnett slapped Carlton on the back, Brody shook his head, I laughed, and Rider’s smile expanded.

All the guys in the group were my friends, but Rider was my best friend. I talked to him and trusted him the most. We were roommates, so it sort of made sense. He was more worldly than the other guys and always seemed, behind his mysterious half smiles, to be thinking about things that would never have occurred to the rest of us. Guess I’d been crushing on him a little since freshman year, because he was good-looking, too.

Okay, more than good-looking. Rider was becoming man-handsome. I’d noticed that at the beginning of the school year, as if his boyishness had peeled away over the summer like sunburned skin. Every time I glanced at him now—saw his sleek muscles and long, dark hair and penetrating eyes—something seemed to shift inside me.

Which might’ve explained why I wasn’t interested in the girls of Hammond Hall.

I didn’t spend time analyzing it, though. Why bother? So I looked up to Rider and enjoyed his company. So I was going through a phase. So what? It was easy for crap like that to happen when you were young and spent so much time around dudes.

You know what we need? Brody shoved his tray aside and rested his arms on the table.

A brain, Tim said, pointing sideways at Carlton.

Rider lifted his chin in my direction. Courage.

A heart, I responded, looking into his eyes. In this light, they were the color of sunflower honey. The tops of my ears suddenly felt on fire. Why had I said that? Why had Rider said what he’d said?

Oh yeah. The Wizard of Oz.

Mystique, Brody pronounced.

I had no idea what he was talking about, but at least he’d jerked my mind away from that weird exchange with Rider. I looked around the table. Our friends didn’t seem to know what Brody was talking about either. As if on cue, they frowned in unison.

Huh? Carlton said. He wasn’t the most eloquent guy.

"We’re all sort of invisible, right? The chicas don’t seem to know we exist. They look right through us. Everybody looks right through us."

Brody was right. Even among us privileged Rafies, and even though we all had to dress essentially the same way five days a week, a caste system existed. There were cliques, some much cooler than others, and aloof loners, and clingy couples. There was a snooty fraternity and an equally snooty sorority, although they didn’t have their own houses. There were popular kids and scorned kids and generally overlooked kids who blended into lockers and desks. Our gang was in the last group… although Rider was getting more than vacant glances this year.

The girls seemed to have abruptly discovered him, as if he were one of those optical illusions in which an ordinary sketch turns into a frightening or bewitching image you hadn’t expected to see. Not that they were flocking around Rider—he still preferred keeping a low profile and therefore didn’t come off as very approachable—but the heightened level of interest was obvious from their stares and whispers.

Invisibility has its benefits, Rider said. He wiped his mouth and tossed the napkin on his tray.

Not if you want to get laid, Brody countered. And not if you want to be in the top ten percent of your graduating class. It’s the dudes who stand out that are always hooking up and always scoring As and shit.

Denicke and Mathers stand out, Tim said, "and you can bet they aren’t getting As." He lifted his carton of chocolate milk and drew on the straw he’d stuck inside.

I mean stand out in a good way, not like some shit-for-brains punk.

Rider’s chair briefly screeched across the floor as he pushed back from the table. Arms crossed over his chest, he said to Brody, Define ‘good.’

I checked the wall clock. Fourth-hour classes would be starting in nineteen minutes. Although I was curious about what Brody was getting at, I wasn’t curious enough to risk another detention for tardiness.

‘Good,’ Brody explained,