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exactly help my standing here.”
    Ben half grimaced, baring his lower teeth like he’d just eaten something that didn’t taste too good. “Well, good luck with that,” he said, tossing his paper towel out. “Bye.”
    “I didn’t mean …” I said, but he was already out the door.
    And I was like, Can I get a urinary do-over?

“Now, I’m familiar with nearly all of you, and I’ve read some terrific essays on Hamlet and A Separate Peace ,” Mr. Scarborough said, prompting a few mutters from some of my classmates, who clearly didn’t enjoy the flashback. “But in this elective writing seminar, we’re going to embark on an entirely different journey. We’re going to write about ourselves. I am well aware that some of you seniors think this is the English equivalent of Rocks for Jocks.” Several of the kids laughed. “I assure you, that’s not at all the case. You will be challenged in here, challenged in unforeseen ways. And I want you to know right now, if you’re unwilling to be introspective, drop this class now. Today. No questions asked. I know there’s still room in Mr. Stinson’s Dramatic Literature class.
    “Steve Nickelson. Can we know others if we don’t know ourselves?”
    “No?” Steve said, half question and half answer.
    “Correct you are. Bryce Hixon. What do you think we gain by writing about ourselves?”
    I looked around. In a room of white faces, Bryce was the only dark-skinned person. He was dressed better than most of the other kids; whereas most of us (myself included) were wearing jeans and a polo shirt, he wore black slacks and a blue blazer over a tan, pin-striped button-down shirt. He stood out.
    “I guess we can learn about who we are,” Bryce said in a monotone.
    I noticed no Ben in the class. I felt relieved.
    “Precisely,” Mr. Scarborough said, pumping his fist to accentuate the word. “Writing, you see, is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go. That’s a quote from the writer E. L. Doctorow, who wrote …?”
    No one spoke for a while, until a kid in the back said, “Books?”
    Mr. Scarborough laughed, and then we did. It was my first class on the first day, and I got the sense that students here took their cues for how much they could get away with from their teachers. Mr. Scarborough was tall and thin and young-looking, maybe just a bit out of college, though he wore a beige blazer that made him look old. Still, he was cute — for a teacher, anyway.
    “Fair enough. That’s a little much to expect. E. L. Doctorow wrote Ragtime , which became a movie, and The Book of Daniel , among others. He’s one of our finest American authors. He said, and I repeat: ‘Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go.’”
    I wrote that sentence down on the page, which was blank other than the date and the title
    MR. SCARBOROUGH’s WRITING SEMINAR
    I had always loved writing. It was my favorite subject. Not to brag, but at Rangeview I was considered one of the best writers in the school. I hoped that would be the case here.
    “I want to start with an exercise here in class,” Mr. Scarborough said, prompting a few groans. “I know, I know. You’ve hardly shaken off the rust of the summer, and here you are, eight-thirty on the first Monday of school, and you have to work. Just humor me. This won’t be that challenging.
    “I want you to fastwrite on the following subject: someone you’ve hurt in your life. I’ll repeat. Someone you’ve hurt. When I ask you to fastwrite, I want you to simply put words on paper. Don’t worry about editing, or how it’s going to read to someone else. This is about getting your feelings down and not allowing form or the editing part of our brains to get in the way.”
    One of my favorite parts of writing is that aha moment you get when you know what you’re going to write, and it propels you to start writing. I got mine right away: Claire Olivia. That would be an easy one, since I had,