John F. Kennedy High School is the Three Rivers school where Dominick Birdsey and Thomas Birdsey finish high school, begin negotiating the terms of their separation, and encounter the everyday discipline of student life. The school’s role is both practical and symbolic: it is the point from which the twins approach adulthood, while their shared circumstances keep them closely bound.

Setting and Graduation

Dominick and Thomas graduated from John F. Kennedy High School in June 1968. Their mother marked the occasion with a joint gift: a portable Royal typewriter in a dark blue, lockable case, opened by duplicate aluminum keys attached inside their graduation cards. Thomas, who had taken a typing class at the school, tested the machine first; Dominick followed with a teasing sentence about his brother. The shared gift gave the twins a tool they could use together, but its paired keys also echoed their recurring struggle to be distinct individuals.

College Plans and the Pull of Home

As a senior, Dominick longed for a clean break from his family and the lifelong pattern of measuring himself against Thomas. He had decent grades and SAT scores, and his work as an instructor at the YMCA swimming pool had helped him imagine a future in teaching. Duke University rejected him, but New York University and the University of Connecticut accepted him. Thomas applied only to the University of Connecticut and was admitted; after initially being unsure what he wanted to do, he also decided he wanted to teach.

The cost of college made it impossible for Dominick to use distance as the clean escape he wanted. He therefore pressed for separate dormitories and roommates, seeking boundaries within the shared college destination. The school’s graduation marks this transition, but the twins’ parallel plans—and the financial limits shaping them—show how difficult it is for Dominick to turn physical separation into independence.

Student Life and Discipline

John F. Kennedy High School also appears through Leo’s unruly student antics. During the summer, he passed a course by taking the mimeograph stencil of the final exam from the teachers’ room wastebasket. The following fall, the assistant principal caught him putting condoms over the heads of athletic figurines in the trophy case. Leo was made to apologize over the public-address system to the student athletes whose victories he had mocked, then required to run laps after school every afternoon for two months. The episode contrasts his earlier impunity with the school’s capacity to impose visible consequences, making its corridors and announcements a stage for both mischief and public correction.