As girls and boys arrived on the morning of Walk In, they dropped their backpacks and shoulder bags in random locations around campus, identifiable only by the make (Eastpak, the North Face, Hervé Chapelier) and the owners’ embroidered initials. This was a very Milton tradition.  The close-knit community nurtured an environment that made it possible to abandon personal belongings by a tree or in a hallway and trust that they would be there later, when it was time for class, the library, or the bus ride home. But the haphazard behavior also stood in the way of neatness and order. Unlike rival prep schools such as Noble and Greenough (Nobles) and Roxbury Latin, Milton rejected dress codes and seemed to have fewer rules for its students to follow.

Inside the ACC, students walked past sleek glass trophy cases and framed pictures of Milton sports teams. The building was a new and formidable shrine to athletics. Older team photos, dating back to the 1900s, were kept next door, in the Robert Saltonstall Gymnasium, called the Old Boys’ Gym, as though Milton’s lengthy athletic history had been rewritten when the ACC opened in 1998. Underneath its monstrous roof were three glossy basketball courts, an indoor track, an ice hockey rink that converted into tennis courts, a fully equipped fitness center and training room, individual team locker rooms, and coaches’ offices. Yet the cavernous basketball field house, where Walk In took place, was surprisingly bland. There were no images of Milton’s mascot, the mustang, or murals painted in the school colors, orange and blue. The only noticeable details were the banners from the fifteen other prep schools in Milton’s athletic league, the Independent School League (ISL). Thayer Academy, jocks.  Belmont Hill School, all boys. St. Paul’s School, snobs. Nobles, archrival. The banners hung lifelessly from the high ceiling and seemed only inches long, like misplaced dollhouse decorations.

A white-netted curtain fell like a petticoat from the rafters between the first two basketball courts. On one side, freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and faculty members took their seats on bleachers, facing nearly two hundred fold-up seats, arranged in rows for the senior class. A wood podium stood center stage, another dollhouse trinket, with the message “Dare to Be True.”  As the school year went on, students would roll their eyes at the sight of this setup, an ominous signal that a required formal event or assembly was coming.

On the other side of the curtain, seniors loitered in a swarming mass, waiting eagerly or fretfully for Walk In to begin. They were on the lookout for what the summer months had done to their exes and crushes, and hugged friends they hadn’t seen since the summer or the end of junior year, simultaneously checking each other out.

I love her costume.

She looks like a whore.

Is it almost time?

Ohmygod, did Reed just smile at me?

I think he said hi to me.

Is my shirt too low-cut?

Did that teacher just give me a look?

Can’t this all be over?

The seniors were supposed to be having the time of their lives, because in just a few more minutes they would finally burst onstage — behold the happy, talented, united class of 2005.  But this was no romantic movie. Any insider knew that this mob was in fact a complex teenage creature all of its own, governed by a distinct social and academic hierarchy, sustained by friendships and crushes, lust and desire, well versed in the art of dicking someone over. The social divisions among the seniors had been brewing since freshman year, when one’s social status was based largely on looks, first impressions, interests, and personality (probably in that order). At Walk In, what you wore was intrinsically tied to who you were, and reminded everyone who was in, who was out, and who was not even worth considering.

Annie’s blond hair was gorgeous — past her shoulders, filled with movement — and she stood with her dorm mates, dressed up in her short skirt and bumblebee antennae, hoping to God no one noticed the overwhelming size of her chest. Her bright purple heels added three inches to her height, but she blended in more than she wanted to. On the outside she was all smiles, saying ohmygosh hi! to anyone she could. But everywhere she looked was another senior girl flaunting her perfectly proportioned body, or standing next to a boy, arm in arm, laughing.

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