Varnadoe referred to his classroom as “the harbor.” We never saw him outside his harbor during the school day, not even in his office or in the dining hall for meals; he brought his lunch from home and preferred to dine alone while grading or reading from one of his numerous books of poetry, all of them aged, many in the original Latin or Greek. He was the only teacher granted a regular audience with Dr. Dodd—not in Dodd’s office, but in Varnadoe’s classroom, as if the headmaster needed the teacher’s blessing over the most vital matters that came across his desk.

The bookend of my day, my sole refuge, was an hour in the art room. The new art teacher, Miss Whitten, had been hired at the last minute after a severe stroke forced her predecessor into retirement. Young and plainly inexperienced, Miss Whitten appeared baffled by the school, with its hypermasculine traditions and persistent whiff of testosterone. She had difficulty managing the classroom; neighboring teachers popped in a few times a week to complain about the noise.

Miss Whitten didn’t smile often; she bore herself with a persistent air of mild melancholy. But she was kind, and encouraging. Drawing and painting in her classroom served as a salve on the battering my ego took everywhere else. In a period of profound disorientation, I lacked the vocabulary to express what I was experiencing in words; I channeled it all into pictures. Miss Whitten received me each day with both eagerness and relief. I would like to think she recognized in me the beginnings of an artist. More likely, she just appreciated having at least one student who took the work seriously. Or maybe she sensed, without knowing why, that I, too, like she, was a stranger in a strange land.

Near the end of the first week, as I came up the stairs, headed toward Dean Varnadoe’s room, I found Arch Creigh waiting outside the door, leaning against the wall, flipping through a copy of Richard Wright’s Black Boy.

“Hi,” I said.

“Hey, bud,” he said. “Thought you’d never get here.”

“What are you reading?”

He glanced down at the book.

“Propaganda,” he said. “Hey, what are you doing tomorrow afternoon?”

“Nothing.”

“Coach is giving us a day off from practice. Want to hang out?”

“What do you want to do?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Drive around in the truck. Maybe get together with some people.”

“You can drive already?” I asked.

“I’m sixteen,” he said. “My parents held me back.”

“Did you have bad grades?” I asked.

Arch laughed.

“No,” he said. “It’s just a thing people do. Most of the kids here get held back before kindergarten.”

“Cool,” I said.