Endover

Dickie and Boz want to get off campus for break because they go to Endover Academy, an all-boys boarding school, and they haven’t seen a girl in months. But they can’t very well go home, which means that Boz has to convince his dad to let them stay at the beach house. Ordinarily there’s no way his dad would let them stay there because Boz is such a screw-up school-wise, as in most other respects. But what if he ran for Senior Class President? And picked up his grades a bit? And stopped snorting cough syrup? On a bet, Dickie convinces him to try.

All well and good, except Boz’s dad tells him that he has to win. And that means beating Woody.

The problem with Woody is that he’s on the debate team, and he loves school politics (and probably other politics, too – who knows? – I mean, who really listens to him?), and he’s already the Junior Vice President. And sure, Woody is kind of a douche in the sense that he never drinks or smokes weed or goes to the few parties that can be arranged between Endover and its sister school, Miss Percy’s. And he probably, I don’t know, spends all of his time playing out historical chess games between Boris Spassky and Bobby Fischer or some stupid shit like that. But Will is backing him. And Will is basically a genius and everyone loves him and he’s graduating in three years with the highest GPA anyone has ever seen and going to Yale next year, unless he decides he’d rather go to Oxford. Anyway, the point is that Woody looks pretty unbeatable. At least by traditional means.

The good news for Boz is that Dickie could care less about traditional means. Sure, they still have to collect enough signatures to run, but Dickie calls in some favors and maybe forges a name or two, which Dean Renfield looks past because Dean Renfield is basically a toady in the pocket of any “important� student, meaning that if you’re only at the school because your parents built the library or something, chances are Renfield’s your man. But they figure that the key to victory is to sabotage Woody’s campaign. And if that means hunting down some compromising pictures of Will and Professor Cody’s daughter in a hot tub, so be it. And maybe they could start spreading rumors about Woody molesting a kid at camp. And tearing down his posters, obviously. And if all that doesn’t work they can always threaten him, which is what they might have to do because Woody is still leading in the polls and the election is tomorrow. (Polls, you say? I thought this was a school election. It is – the polls are just some stupid thing Dickie slapped together).

When things turn ugly, Will asks Woody why he’s still running when he doesn’t need to be class president to get into a good college. But Woody is idealistic and stubborn and naïve. He doesn’t really get how malicious Dickie and Boz can be. Which is unfortunate for him.

Boz and Dickie break into Woody’s room that night. It’s the second time they’ve done it but this time things don’t go well for Woody. In fact, he conveniently disappears. The election goes forward as planned, but with Woody missing, it’s pretty likely that Boz will win. But what happened to him? Will wants to know. And when Woody is found in his pajamas frozen to death in the woods between Endover and Percy’s, the police look into it, but the school mostly wants it all to go away.

Eventually, Will confronts Boz and Dickie knowing that even if he doesn’t have proof, and no one else cares, they are responsible for what happened to Woody. Which you’d think would be enough to get them sent to jail or expelled at the very least. Maybe you’d think that, but in the end all it gets them is the beach house for break.