“Maybe the word ‘concerned’ is an understatement. When I think of him under your tutelage, I start bleeding from the eyes.”

“Which child is yours?”

“I’m not ashamed to admit it. My son is the creature labeled ‘Jasper.’ ”

Mr. White shot me a stern glance just as I was trying to merge with my chair. “Jasper? Is this your father?”

I nodded. What choice did I have?

“If you would like to speak with me about your son, we could make an appointment,” he said to Dad.

“I don’t need to talk to you about my son. I know my son. Do you?”

“Of course. Jasper has been in my class all year.”

“And the others? So they can read and write: well done. That’s a lifetime of shopping lists taken care of. But do you know them? Do you know yourself? Because if you don’t know yourself, you can’t help them know themselves, and you’re probably pissing away everyone’s time here simply training an army of terrified copycats like all you lackluster teachers in this state-run fleapit are prone to do, telling the students what to think instead of how, and trying to fit them into the mold of a perfect taxpayer-to-be instead of bothering to find out who they are.”

The other students laughed, out of confusion.

“Keep quiet!” Mr. White yelled, as if it were the Day of Reckoning and he had the crucial role of sorting all the souls. We shut up. It didn’t do any good. Silence that has been commanded is still very noisy.

“Why should they respect you? You don’t have any respect for them,” Dad continued, and to the students he said, “To bow down to an authority figure is to spit in your own face.”

“I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

“I’m looking forward to that moment.”

“Please leave.”

“I notice you have a crucifix around your neck.”

“What of it?”

“Do I really need to spell it out for you?”

“Simon.” Mr White addressed one of the baffled students. “Would you kindly run down to the principal’s office and explain to him that we have a disturbance in the classroom and the police should be called.”

“How can you encourage your students to think for themselves with an open mind if you’ve got an outdated belief system crushing your own head like an iron mask? Don’t you see? The flexibility of your mental movement is constricted by stringent dogmatic principles, so you might think you’re standing there telling them about Hamlet, but what they really hear is a man in fear of stepping outside the tight circle that was drawn around him by long-dead men who sold his ancestors a bunch of lies so they could molest all the little boys they wanted in the privacy of their confessional booths!”

I shot a look at Brett. He sat in his chair silently; his face was slender and delicate-looking, and I thought if it were not for the hair, eyes, nose, and mouth, his face could be a pianist’s hand. Brett caught me staring at him, but I don’t think he knew I was composing similes about his face, because he smiled at me. I smiled back. If I’d known that two months later Brett would take his own life, I would’ve cried instead.

We actually spoke the morning of his death.

“Hey, Brett, do you have that five dollars you owe me?”

“Can I pay you tomorrow?”

“Sure thing.”

People are amazingly adept at faking happiness. It’s almost second nature to them, like checking a public phone for coins after making a call. Brett was a champ at it, right up until the end. Hell, I spoke to a girl who chatted with him ten minutes before he jumped, and she said they talked about the weather!

“Hey, Kristin, d-do you think it’s a southerly wind?” Brett had a slight stutter that came and went in relation to fluctuating social pressures.

“How the hell would I know?”

“It’s p-p-pretty strong, eh?”

“Why are you talking to me, zitface?”

I don’t want to make a bigger production out of Brett’s death than it was for me. He wasn’t my closest friend or even my confidant. We were allies, which in a way made us closer than friends. Here’s how it happened:

One lunchtime a small crowd had formed a circle in the quadrangle, standing so close to each other they looked woven together like an ugly quilt. I winced in anticipation. There are no private humiliations in the schoolyard; they are all mercilessly public. I wondered who was being shamed this time. I peered over the flattop haircut of the shortest link to see Brett White on the ground, blood dribbling from his mouth. According to several delighted spectators, Brett had fallen while running from another student, Harrison. Now, peering down at Brett, all the students were laughing because their leader was laughing. It’s not that these were particularly cruel children; they’d just abandoned their egos to his, that’s all, submitted their will to the will of Harrison, a bad choice. Why groups never follow the sweet, gentle child is obvious, but I wish it would happen just once. Man, as Freud noted, has an extreme passion for authority. I think his secret yearning to be dominated could really work nicely, if he would just once allow himself to be dominated by a real sweetie. Because the truth is, in a group dynamic the leader could scream, “Let’s all give the bastard a tender kiss on the cheek!” and they’d run at the poor kid with their lips pursed.

As it was, Brett’s front teeth lay on the concrete. They looked like Tic Tacs. He picked up the teeth. You could see him struggling not to cry.

I looked at the other students and despaired that none had enough compassion to go about their business. It was painful to watch all those meager spirits harassing Brett in this way. I bent down beside him and said, “Laugh like you think it’s funny.”

He followed my advice and started laughing. He whispered in my ear, “Can they put them back in?” and I laughed loudly too, as if he’d made a joke. Once I’d gotten him to his feet, the humiliations persisted. A soccer ball came flying at his face.

“Open your mouth wide, I want to get it through the posts!” someone yelled.

It was true that his teeth looked like goal posts.

“Is that really necessary?” I shouted, pointlessly.

Harrison stepped out of the crowd and, towering over me, said, “You’re Jewish, aren’t you?”

I groaned. I had told just one person that my grandfather was slaughtered by Nazis, and I’d never heard the end of it. Generally speaking, there wasn’t too much anti-Semitism at school, just the usual jokes about money and noses, noses and money, great big noses with money falling out of them, grubby Jewish hands stuffing money into their big Jewish noses. That kind of thing. After a while you don’t care about the ugly sentiments behind the jokes, you just wish they were funnier.

“I think you have a stupid face, Jew.”

“And I’m short too,” I said, remembering that Dad once told me the way to confuse your enemies is to respond to their insults with your own.

“Why are you so stupid?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I’ll get to that after I work out why I’m so ugly.”

Brett caught on fast and said to me, “I’m uglier than you, and I have bad hand-eye coordination.”

“I can’t run without tripping over,” I said back.

“I’ve never kissed a girl and I probably never will.”

“I have bad acne on my back. I think it will leave lifelong scars.”

“Really? Me too.”

Charlie Mills pushed through the mob and started up too. “That’s nothing,” he said. “I’m fat, ugly, smelly, stupid, and adopted.”

Harrison stood there, confused, thinking of something to say. We all looked at him and burst out laughing. It was a good moment. Then Harrison stepped toward me with the confidence of someone who has biology on his side. He pushed me, and I tried shifting my weight onto my front foot, but it made no difference. I wound up facedown on concrete. For the second time I went home with my white shirt splattered with blood.