I couldn’t help comparing Hendricks’s easy empathetic way with Rashid to the tortured attempts I’d made to offer him help. Maybe if I just relaxed a little bit. I concentrated on the boys’ backs as they made their way to the auditorium.

Hendricks led us into a large room, small by auditorium standards but set up to serve that purpose. He offered us each paper cups of water and places to sit in the front of the room, Jerome and me on opposite ends, the boys in the middle. He got Mr. and Mrs. Bryson settled in the front row of seats so they could see. We had not been sitting for more than five minutes when the noise began.

Boys, almost all black or Hispanic with a smattering of Asian kids, all shapes and sizes, poured into the room, seething with sound. There wasn’t any actual shouting or bad behavior, just the noisy, talkative rush of a bunch of teenage boys together. The room clattered with the sound of chairs being shifted around, notebooks opened, heavy hiking boots hitting the floor. There was no carpet here to mute the sounds, no vast expanse of grounds outdoors for their energy to funnel out to, no sense of a larger destiny waiting to be granted. There was only now. So now was where all of their noise and energy went. I caught Jerome looking at me, and I quickly mouthed, “Here goes nothing,” which brought a slight smile from him. After an effusive introduction by Mr. Hendricks, Jerome stood up to speak.

I hadn’t seen Jerome speak before students before, never having sat in on one of his classes. I wasn’t surprised by how formal his manner was—that’s the way he was—but now for the first time, I could see how hard that must make life at Chelsea for him, though he’d never admit it. We live in a casual age, and he was not a casual man. He hadn’t slept with me casually, he didn’t take teaching casually, he wasn’t going to speak to these kids casually. How exhausting that must be.

He was losing this crowd, I could see, even though they had obviously been told to behave and Hendricks stood in the back of the room, an impassive, daunting presence. But when kids aren’t listening, even if they aren’t actually throwing spitballs and whispering, a teacher can tell. Jerome knew it, too—he seemed to end his ringing remarks, full of references to the kind of man Chelsea would make them—a little sooner than he might have. And he sat down with a slight sigh.