This gave me a feeling akin to vertigo. I still hadn’t quite wrapped my head around students having no memory of the Twin Towers falling. I told him that I thought he was talking about Public Enemy.

Miss, that’s Smithsonian, he replied.

I handed the earbud back to him. But seriously, I said, I don’t want any Secret Service in my classroom, okay? It makes me feel like you don’t give a damn about what I’m saying, and that you don’t care. And I know that’s not the case. Or maybe it is.

He looked slightly pained, and said no.

And it makes it impossible for you to concentrate, and then you fall asleep.

I know.

So what’s going on? I still don’t have your proposal. The essay’s due Monday.

I’m stuck, he said.

What’s your book?

He reached into his bag and pulled out a massive, dog-eared tome. He flipped it over to reveal the cover—The Magic Mountain, by Thomas Mann. I laughed.

He shifted his body under his sweatshirt, self-conscious. I know it’s a little ambitious, he said.

Uh . . . yeah. No wonder you’re tired, walking around with this brick in your bag.

I took the book from his hands and started to leaf through it. The font was minuscule. It’s set in a hotel in the Alps or something, right?

Hmm. So, this young engineer named Hans travels to Davos—

Hans? I said, affecting a German accent.

Yes, Hans, Kyle replied, smirking, with a yet-thicker accent, goes to visit his cousin in this, like, secluded sanatorium in the mountains for people with tuberculosis, but then he ends up getting this fever and becomes convinced, well the doctors convince him that it’s the early signs of tuberculosis, and what was supposed to be a short visit turns into him living there for seven years. But it’s probably all psychosomatic.

And you’re going to write a thousand-word essay on this—I flipped to the back—seven-hundred-and-twenty-page book?

I’m trying.

You were assigned The Catcher in the Rye and Of Mice and Men—

Or a book of your own choosing, he interjected.

Right, but, lemme just—I placed The Magic Mountain down on my desk and retrieved copies of both The Catcher in the Rye and Of Mice and Men from my top drawer. I proceeded to stack them beside the Mann. Combined, they barely made up a third of the height of The Magic Mountain’s spine. I asked him whether he saw my point.

Kyle shrugged and leaned back in his chair. Most people are illiterate, he said.

Or you’re a bit of a show-off, I said, and he cracked a half smile. But really, I think you’ve bitten off way more than you can chew here. What’s your thesis?