“TifAni,” Mrs. Hurst clucked disapprovingly. “Geez. Leave some for the rest of the class.”

Her insults landed softly like that, enough to arouse a cautious titter from some students, hesitant to get involved with social politics. Honors English, which was filled with the children of Ivy League stage mothers, wasn’t her ideal audience (she would have had better luck with the mean degenerates in Chem), but she would take what she could get.

My friendship with Arthur had not escaped Mrs. Hurst. That combined with the fact that Arthur was the smartest person in the room—head of the table included—and not exactly modest about it, and he may have had an even bigger bull’s-eye on his forehead than I did.

One morning, a particularly convoluted explanation of the appositive phrase prompted Arthur to scribble his own example on the note the two of us had been passing back and forth, something we did all the time, even in the cafeteria, when we could speak freely. “Mrs. Hurst, the dumb-ass new teacher . . .” I slapped my hand over my mouth to catch my laugh, but a high-pitched sliver escaped. The class froze along with Mrs. Hurst, who took her time looking over her ski pole of a shoulder, her red marker bleeding into the board like a leaky gunshot wound.

“You know what?” She extended the marker in my direction. “I want you to help me with this.”

Any other student would have sensed the humiliation that was imminent, would have crossed her spoiled, privileged arms across her chest and refused. Better to take your chances in the dean of students’ office than to receive your punishment in front of your peers. But I was still saddled heavily with that Catholic girl fear, and when a teacher told you to do something, you did it. I felt Arthur’s sidelong glance as I stood and trudged to the front of the classroom, a dead man walking the plank.

Mrs. Hurst pressed the marker into my hand and stepped away from the board, clearing a space for me to step into.

“Maybe an example will help?” she offered much too sweetly. “Write this down.”

I hovered the marker over the board and waited.

“TifAni.”

I looked under my raised arm at Mrs. Hurst, waiting for the rest of the phrase.

“Write that down,” Mrs. Hurst cooed. “TifAni.”

I wrote my name, dread lining the seams of my stomach.

As I dotted the “i,” Mrs. Hurst continued, “Comma.”

I anchored my name with the punctuation and waited for my next set of instructions.

Mrs. Hurst said, “A cheap mall rat. Comma.”

Whether the gasp in the classroom was in reaction to what Mrs. Hurst had said or to Arthur’s vicious “Fuck you,” I’m not sure. But then Arthur was standing, coming around the corner of the table and approaching Mrs. Hurst, who was having a pretty tough time maintaining the cunt look on her face with a six-two, three-hundred-pound bull charging at her.

“Arthur Finnerman sit right back down in your seat this instant.” Mrs. Hurst’s words rambled together, and she shrunk back as Arthur stepped in front of me, a dog protecting his master from an intruder.

Arthur pointed his finger in Mrs. Hurst’s face, and she gasped. “Who the fuck do you think you are, you dumb bitch?”

“Arthur.” I put my hand on his arm, finding the skin beneath his polo shirt hot to the touch.

“Bob!” Mrs. Hurst suddenly shrieked. Then again and again, with manic regularity. “Bobbb! Bobbbbb! Bobbb!”

Bob Friedman, fellow English teacher across the hallway, burst into the room, looking dazed, an apple bitten down to its core lodged between his thumb and forefinger. “What’s happened?” he gasped through a mouthful of Fuji.

“Bob.” Mrs. Hurst took a shaky breath, but she straightened up, emboldened by his skinny presence. “I need your help in escorting Mr. Finnerman to Mr. Wright’s office. He is physically threatening me.”

Arthur laughed. “You’re one crazy bitch, lady.”

“Hey!” Mr. Friedman pointed the carcass of his apple at Arthur and strode to the front of the classroom, tripping on a book bag and stumbling the rest of the way there, almost losing his glasses in the process. He pushed them back up the bridge of his nose before hovering his hand above Arthur’s back. We’d all heard the rumors about the annual sexual harassment seminar teachers were required to take. They were terrified to touch us. “Let’s go. Mr. Wright’s office, now.”

Arthur made a disgusted noise and shrugged off Mr. Friedman’s phantom hand on his back. He stomped out of the room, well ahead of Mr. Friedman.

“Thank you, Bob,” Mrs. Hurst said, all prim and formal, pulling at the hem of her shirt and puffing out her flat chest. Mr. Friedman nodded and scurried after Arthur.

Several students were holding their hands over their mouths; two nerds were biting back tears.

“I apologize for the disturbance,” Mrs. Hurst said, trying to sound stern. But I saw the tremble in her hand as she wiped my name away with the eraser and told me to take my seat. At least she stopped bothering me after that.

I didn’t see Arthur around school for the rest of the day. After practice, I walked the well-worn path to his house, the leaves on the ground so thin and stale that they just crumbled beneath my sneakers.

Arthur didn’t come to the door when I knocked. I pounded and pounded, the shutters shaking on the windows, but he wouldn’t answer my call.

Arthur wasn’t in school the next day either, and I assumed he had been suspended for the rest of the week, but when I sat down at the lunch table, my old lunch table, which was now my permanent home, the Shark’s eyes filled with tears as she whispered to me that Arthur had been expelled.

The word “expulsion” filled me with the same kind of dread that “cancer” or “terrorist attack” did. “How could they expel him? He didn’t even do anything. Not really.”

“I think it was just the final straw for them.” The Shark blinked, and a tear formed. I watched in amazement as it rolled down not her cheek but the side of her face. She flicked it away, like you would an ant scurrying along your thigh. “After the fish.”

She may as well have been speaking Spanish, which I was just barely holding on to with a C. “The fish?”

“Oh.” The Shark shifted in her seat. “I thought he told you about that.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Impatience makes me loud, and the Shark brought her finger to her lips, shushing me.

She lowered her voice. “I don’t know, I wasn’t there. But he was suspended last year for stomping on a fish in biology class.”

I could picture this, I realized. I could picture the way Arthur bared his teeth and popped his eyes at Mrs. Hurst, that face, his large foot coming down on the slippery blue body, flapping and gasping for breath on the wet floor, knowing he had to deliver as much force as possible or the thing would just slide away. “Why would he do that?”

“Those guys.” The Shark shook her head, a mother dismayed by the violence in music videos already. “Dean. They dared him to.” She brought her fingers to her temples, stretching the skin so that she became an Asian shark. “Poor Arthur. He’ll never get into Columbia with this on his record. Not even with legacy.”

Later that afternoon, I pretended like I had a cramp a mile into the five-mile loop and motioned for the other girls to run on without me. Then I doubled back toward school and covered the same ground in seven minutes.

This time, I held the doorbell down and didn’t let up until I felt the house shake with Arthur’s footsteps. He swung open the door and gave me a flat look.

“Arthur!” I barked at him.

“Calm down already.” He turned and started up the stairs. “Come on.”