Oglesby reached into his bag and pulled out a foot-long brown rat with red beady eyes. He held it up, pendulum-like, by the tail. And then he threw it down the middle aisle between Flanagan and Deangelis, who took no chances and scurried out of their chairs. Okay, it was fake, but it looked pretty lifelike.

“And that’s what this class is about—this is honors English. I want to know who is exceptional and who is content creeping by. In the coming weeks I want to find out: Are any of you Norwegian rats? Can any of you understand literature and write about it at a high level? Who will work hard and be ready for the Game? Can you do more than survive and crawl along like a common Rattus rattus? Can you adapt and thrive like a Norwegian rat? Who among you is smart enough to do that?”

The bell for class change rang, and Oglesby picked up the plastic rat and dropped it onto the teacher’s desk. Dan looked down at his journal. A pulse beat in his brain, then his chest. He was lost in a maze of thought when suddenly a path cleared. The challenge was before him: Show, don’t tell, how smart you are. Show Oglesby. Write something inspired. Write who you want to be.

And Dan Malone wanted to be a Rattus norvegicus very badly.

Years later, in a different century, they would call the Jesuit/W. T. White rivalry the Battle for the Saddle, but in the late eighties, it was just the kind of classic private-versus-public-school matchup that exaggerated the narcissism of small differences. While it was really two middle-class versions of Dallas squaring off, the cultural divide felt like Notre Dame versus Alabama. On the football field, Jesuit was well coached and ran a disciplined (read: boring, predictable) offense, while White made the wishbone seem downright improvisational and had a knack for producing stars you couldn’t possibly stop. That year’s phenom was Calvin Murray, the younger brother of Kevin Murray, an all-American quarterback at A&M who had beaten Bo Jackson and Auburn in the Cotton Bowl two years before.