Here’s what I did: I followed the Towering Inferno all day. I watched her reading in the sun, as Brett described, pulling compulsively at her stockings with her cobalt-blue fingernails. I followed her across the school grounds as she clutched the hand of a girl with a face like a spade. At lunch I stood behind her in the canteen while she ordered a meat pie, and when the woman wasn’t looking she grabbed a handful of squeezable tomato sauce packets and shoved them in her pocket, then sauntered off, having adorably stolen complimentary items.

In the afternoon I trailed Mr. Smart, the biology teacher, as he chased her through the musty halls. When he caught her, she held her head as if it were an heirloom.

“Why weren’t you in class?” he demanded.

“I have my period,” she replied defiantly, with a look that said, “Prove I don’t.” Good one! The broken man cast his eyes to the floor, wishing he were at home with that weird collection of moss he brought in one time.

After school we used to stand around at train stations for hours (try doing that into your twenties- the thrill is gone, believe me). The train guards were always telling us to go home, but there’s really no law against standing on the platform not catching trains. That afternoon I shadowed the Towering Inferno to the far end of the station. She was standing with her usual crowd and I was gaping from behind a pylon thinking my usual obsessive thoughts: wishing she would fall into some danger so I might rescue her, spitting on myself for fetishizing a girl I’d never met, longing to take a personal memento from her as a holy relic, indulging in a sexual fantasy in which we intersect at right angles, and generally planning a systematic exploration of her cathedral-like edifice.

She and her friends kept edging farther down the platform, so to keep my eyes on her I had to step out from my hiding place. One of her friends- Tony, a boy with a slight hunch I knew because he had once taken a pack of cigarettes from me in exchange for the observation that my eyes were set too close together- unzipped his fly and gyrated his crotch in the Towering Inferno’s general direction. She turned away in disgust and found herself trapped in my stare. It caught us both off guard. Then a strange thing happened: she stared back. Her eyes, unblinking and wild, dared me not to look away. The moment stretched its way into infinity, then snapped back to about a nanosecond and rebounded, so all in all it lasted about eight and a half seconds.

I turned away and moved to a public phone. I put some coins in the slot and dialed a number at random.

“Hello?”

“Hello.”

“Who’s this?”

“It’s me. Is that you?”

“Who is this? What do you want?”

“Never mind that,” I said. “How are you?”

“Who is this?”

“I told you. It’s me.”

I could still feel the Towering Inferno’s eyes on me. I knew what to do: I shook my head vehemently and laughed a loud, unnatural laugh before pausing to nod sagely, as though the person on the other end of the phone had made a funny yet offensive comment that on further reflection proved wise. I turned casually to face her, but her back was turned. I felt a tiny thorn prick my ego.

It was getting dark. Everyone wordlessly agreed that loitering on the station platform had gone stale- until tomorrow- and when the next train arrived, we all filed in.

At the other end of the packed carriage there was a commotion, and a small crowd formed a circle- bad news for someone. Circles of people always are. Honestly, sometimes I think human beings should be prohibited from forming groups. I’m no fascist, but I wouldn’t mind at all if we had to live out our lives in single file.

I heard happy cheers and joyous laughter. That meant someone was suffering. My heart felt sick for the poor sucker. Thankfully Charlie was home sick and Brett was dead, so whoever they were humiliating this time had nothing to do with me. Still, I pushed through the crowd to see who it was.

Mr. White.

The students had torn the hat off his head and were waving it in the air, asserting their power over him. Mr. White was trying to get the hat back. Ordinarily even the most rebellious young crackhead can’t physically assault a teacher- emotionally and psychologically, sure; physically, no- but Mr. White was a teacher made evil by gossip, and that made him fair game.

“Hey!” I shouted.

Everyone looked over at me. This was my first stand against the bullies, against the ruthlessness of the human pack animal, and I was determined not to disappoint myself. But then four things happened in quick succession.

The first was that I noticed the person holding the hat was the Towering Inferno.

Second, my shouting “Hey!” was interpreted not as a heroic “Hey” but a “Hey, throw me the hat.”

She threw it to me.

I caught it with my cheek. It rolled on the floor, toward the door. Mr. White trudged through the carriage after it.

The third thing that happened was that the Towering Inferno yelled out, “Get it, Jasper!”

She knew my name. Oh my God. She knew my name. I ran like a maniac for the hat. I grabbed it. Mr. White stopped midcarriage.

Then the fourth thing, the final painful event, was her delicate high-pitched voice commanding me again: “Throw it out!” I was under a spell. I half pushed open the train door, enough for my hand to hang outside the carriage. The brim of the hat danced a waltz with the wind. Mr. White’s face had frozen with a sort of forced nonchalance. I felt sick.

Sick. Sick. Sick. Self-hatred was at an all-time high. Why was I doing this? Don’t do it, Jasper. Don’t do it. Don’t.

I did it.

I let go of the hat. The wind picked it up and threw it out of sight. Mr. White ran toward me. I bolted for the door at the end of the carriage. Rain smacked me in the face. I opened the door of the next carriage, ran in, and closed it behind me. He tried to follow, but I blocked the door with my foot. He stood in the rain on the tiny rattling platform between the two carriages, trying to force it open. I tied the strap from my bag to the door handle, held it down with my other foot, and let physics do the work. In no time he was drenched to the bone. He swore through the glass. Finally he gave up and turned back. The others had blocked the other door. It rained harder. He turned back to me, banged on the glass door again. I knew if I let him in, he’d have me for lunch. He was stuck. It rained even harder, a stiff hard rain. Mr. White stopped screaming and just looked at me with old-dog eyes. I felt something in me sink, but there was nothing I could do. At the next stop we both watched the Towering Inferno step onto the platform. Through the dusty window, she gave me a smile that said, “I’ll never forget what you did for me, Jasper Dean, Destroyer of Hats.”

The following morning I walked through the long, airless hallways and silent stairwells into the quadrangle for a special assembly. The headmaster stepped up to the podium. “Yesterday afternoon, our English teacher, Mr. White, was terrorized by students from this school!” A murmur snaked through the crowd. The headmaster continued his diatribe. “I would like the students involved to please step forward.” Everyone looked around to see if anyone was owning up. I looked around too. “Right. We’ll just have to find you. And we will find you. You are all dismissed. For now.”

I walked away thinking that my time at this school was almost up, and it wasn’t twenty minutes later in the science lab that the bell rang and rang and rang, and I heard that old delighted cry of “Someone’s jumped! Someone’s jumped!” I ran out of the classroom while the bell kept on ringing. It was the suicide bell- I think we were the first school in the country to have one; now they’re all the rage. Like inquisitive sheep, all the students ran to the cliff edge to see, and I had not just a bad feeling but the worst one, that feeling of dread, because I knew who it was and that I had put him there myself.