Today, as I walked out of the auditorium among the boys, I felt only as though I didn’t know them at all. I was not unaware that the world had changed. But how could it have changed so that a boy like Bryson would be able to persuade with nationalist claptrap of the sort I hadn’t heard since I’d left Harvard thirty-five years ago? What had shifted? Nothing. Who was in power? The sons of those who were in power thirty-five years ago. He could stand there and spout his nonsense, but what made him think that his way would lead to any real change? He was fourteen. He didn’t know what it was like to be denied access to anything because of his skin. He didn’t know that the only way to win them over was to concede. To let them know that what they wanted was what you wanted. Simply to live quietly.

I felt I had to get outside, if only for a moment, before my class, to try to compose my thoughts. Jana was standing in the doorway that I stepped out of. A light snow had dusted the greenness of the grass, and the end of her nose was slightly reddened by the cold. The campus looked very beautiful.

“Some speech, huh?” she said.

“Quite.” The air was sharp in my lungs. “You knew what he was going to say, didn’t you?”

“Yes. Of course.”

“And you didn’t try to stop him? Make him see reason?”

“He was being true to his experience. The point of these speeches is for the boys to learn to articulate their own positions clearly, isn’t it?”

“But what he had to say …”

“Is what he had to say. Look, Jerome, this is who this boy is. If you don’t see that, well, then I can’t help you.”

She turned sharply and walked away. I almost called out her name. But there was no point. There was no getting her back now, I knew. And somehow that boy had driven us to it. I thought of his raucous cries during that ridiculous display with his friends at the dance. Not even music. Just noise. Destruction and tearing apart. That was all he knew. I went back inside, my eyes stinging. The glass of the door was cold under my hand.

My first class of the day was Latin 1. As I entered, the quiet hum of conversation that had filled the room dropped to silence. Bryson was in his usual seat in the back of the classroom. I looked at him evenly as I stepped to the front of the room. I am not going to sink to his level, I thought. I even managed a cordial smile at the boys. “Well, gentlemen, let’s get started, shall we?” I flipped my text open to the day’s lesson.