This was the kind of situation I’d narrowly escaped a few times before. But in those cases, the affront was more of a test to see how I’d respond to being flamed by dudes I didn’t know. Would I take it and look weak, or buck up and talk back? Sometimes, I found easy outs in getting off at the next stop and walking, or faking a phone call, or moving to an area packed with more people. Other times, I was able to defuse the situation. But these dudes were different. I sensed that they were the kind of guys who’d roll up on somebody and pull out a gun in broad daylight. Had I seen them do it? No. But I’d been around enough people in this area to separate the trash talkers quick to throw hands from the niggas who had tattoos on their necks and gun grips sticking out of their waistbands. I knew I’d see these guys again, too. So I had to judge carefully whether to run, fight, cooperate, or try to talk my way out of it.
“Look at this nigga’s teeth son, his shit got wrecked,” one of them said to another as they flanked me.
“You ain’t from round here, nigga, not with that backpack on like that. What, you get your tooth knocked out, nigga, you got beat, huh?” They all laughed.
I was scared, but I knew better than to panic or show fear. So I replied, “I don’t want any problems, man, just trying to stay in my lane.”
“Ha-ha-ha, bop!” he said, as he faked like he was going to punch me. I flinched instinctively, throwing my left arm up to cover my face as I clinched my right fist. Then he shoved me hard. I stumbled back and hit the hard plastic enclosing the bus bay, recovering quickly to regain my balance. I didn’t know what was coming next, so I put both hands up and said, “Listen, I’m not trying to fight y’all, man, just going about my business.”
Seconds later, he teed off at my jaw. From there, everything devolved quickly.
I had managed to weave his first punch enough so that it grazed the top of my head. And I covered up as best I could, but after his third or fourth punch, I fell to the ground. None of his punches landed directly on my face, but I had braces and a wire sticking out in two places that needed to be cut, so it didn’t take much for my mouth to start bleeding. Once I fell to the ground, I got kicked twice before the bus squeaked to the curb and came to a halt. Luckily, they scattered. Once I saw them hop the fence and run toward Barry Farm, I hopped up and grabbed my backpack.
I boarded the bus, feeling the cut inside my lip and across my gums with my tongue, thinking about how badly that could have turned out had the bus come just a few minutes later.
When I got home, I tried to cut the wire with scissors, but that didn’t work because the scissors were too large and awkwardly shaped to fit in my mouth. So I found a fingernail clipper, scrubbed it with soap, and used that to fix the wire as best I could. I’d missed my last few appointments with the orthodontist because we didn’t have the money to pay for previous visits. But I knew that I would have to go back soon. By this time, my dad knew that I’d been in scuffles at Anacostia, but I didn’t bother telling him the details. He never complained, no matter what he faced, and I wanted my dad to think that I was man enough to get around by myself without his having to worry about me.
* * *
—
Over the next few weeks, college was the hot topic, and I knew James was waiting for the information I’d promised him. I told him I’d reach out to my contact and ask him to send James some information. But once I said that, I felt trapped. James would expect me to deliver. And I was glad he trusted my ability to help him with a process so important to us both. More than anything, I knew how much it would mean to James to hear from someone at Brown, and I genuinely wanted to help.
That night, I sat at the desk in my room and tried to figure out what to do. While I can try to explain my reasoning, the truth is that the decision I made was not rational and thus cannot be rationalized. It represents a singular moment in which, under stress and pressure, my thinking was psychologically amiss. At the time, however, my reasoning was that I had three options: I could e-mail the professor and ask him to help James. I could tell James that I’d misled him and couldn’t really help. Or I could fudge it. None of these options felt right. And none of them would be easy. But only one of them, I believed, would allow me to maintain the relationships and the respect I’d worked so hard to build.
I went into Gmail and created a new account. Then I wrote an e-mail to James with some advice on how to apply to Brown and signed it from the professor. I also included a line about how lucky James was to have me as a friend. I didn’t feel good about it. It wasn’t honest, and it wasn’t that smart, but I figured I’d send the one e-mail and be done with it. What harm would that do?
A few days later, James invited me over. When I got to his house, his mother welcomed me with a warm hug. “Zach, thank you so, so much for putting James in contact with the professor,” she told me. James and his family thought the advice the professor had given him was brilliant, and he replied, asking more questions. I should have stopped then and admitted to what I’d done. But I didn’t. I didn’t see an easy way out of it, so instead I replied and sent more e-mails.
When Hollis and Drew heard about what I’d done for James, I sensed that they would have appreciated it if I did the same type of thing for them, if not expected me to. To this day, if there was one thing in my life that I could do over, it would be sending those e-mails. Yet I did it again. I created fake e-mail addresses from people from different institutions, and I sent advice to Hollis and to Drew.
Over the next couple of weeks there was a deep rift between my discomfort about what I was doing and the way my friends’ and their parents’ reactions made me feel. I’d earned their respect a while before, and I knew they liked me a lot—or the version of me they knew—but now they fully embraced me, as if I were family. It was a subtle difference that penetrated my every interaction with them and made it hard for me to put a stop to what I’d started. Simply put, they loved me for what I’d done, and I’ll admit it—it felt good to be loved.
CHAPTER 8
Circling
It didn’t take long for my sense of what was right to cut through the cloud of respect, admiration, and appreciation that sending those e-mails had created. I let them peter out as quickly as I could, within a few weeks of sending the first one. No one had gotten hurt, and I believed this temporary though terrible error in judgment was behind me.
I spent the rest of the summer at the five-week classics program at St. John’s College in New Mexico. I wanted to master the Western canon and was intrigued by the program’s small seminars with students of various ages. My mentor, Reginald Dwayne Betts, helped me fund-raise the tuition money and even said he’d put down a thousand dollars if we couldn’t raise the full amount. He advised me to create a GoFundMe account, and once I did, he shared the page with his contacts, helping me raise more than $1,500. There was no way I would have been able to attend the program if it weren’t for Dwayne, and I was extremely grateful.
I loved it at St. John’s. It was intellectual heaven, and when the administration offered me the option of skipping my senior year of high school to enroll there immediately, I seriously considered it. For a while, I’d felt as if I were putting more into my experience at Bullis than I was getting out of it. This would give me a chance to dive right into something more rigorous and, hopefully, rewarding.
Coincidentally, my English teacher, Mr. Kinder, was attending a graduate program at St. John’s at the same time I was there, and I talked the decision over with him. While we were in New Mexico, I spent a lot of time with Mr. Kinder, and I ended up confiding in him about some things no one else at Bullis knew about, including some of the challenges I faced at home and my recent altercation at the bus stop. I told him about the financial strain that paying our portion of my tuition placed on my dad. The tuition at Bullis went up each year, but my scholarship didn’t increase by the same percentage. I told Mr. Kinder that I might have to get a job in the fall to help br
idge that gap.
When I told Mr. Kinder that I was considering staying at St. John’s, he reminded me that if I stayed on and graduated from Bullis, I’d have a good chance of going to a top college, where I’d find even greater opportunities and rewards than at St. John’s. He also told me how much I mattered at Bullis; how respected, valued, and admired I was; and how much I’d be missed if I left. This was ultimately what convinced me. I decided to take his advice and started my senior year intending to make the most of it before moving on to college.
Early in the year, I was walking down the hall when I passed the principal, Mr. Delinsky. He was a very present principal—always responsive to students and engaged in what was going on at Bullis. On campus, Mr. Delinsky had a disarmingly delightful demeanor. He was gentle, warm, soft-spoken, and very approachable. He’d even seen me sitting at the bus stop once and offered to give me a ride to the nearest Metro station. To that point, I’d believed Mr. Delinsky to be the most virtuous person I would ever meet. So when he saw me that day and asked me to come see him in his office whenever I had a chance, I wasn’t worried, though I had no clue what he might have wanted.
I walked to his office in North Hall after class. Mr. Delinsky welcomed me with a smile and asked me to sit in one of the plush chairs across from his desk. “Zach,” he began, looking concerned, “Mr. Kinder told me that some people on the bus were threatening you, that you’d been injured in a fight and might be in danger.” He went on to describe the incident and how I had told Mr. Kinder that my grandmother had been robbed and that I had tried to save her.
That wasn’t exactly right—obviously, some information had been mangled in translation—but I didn’t want to contradict or interrupt him, so I sat tight and waited to hear what he was going to say next. “The thing is”—he paused and steepled his fingers together—“I talked to your father, and he didn’t seem to know about any of this.” He frowned, looking sorry for me. “I told Mr. Kinder that you must have exaggerated some things.”
I was ticked. I didn’t know where to begin. If he were not my principal, I would have kept it simple: “Listen, I don’t entertain assumptions when the respectful thing to do is ask questions. What goes on in my personal life is my business and whom I choose to share things with is my prerogative. I’ll show myself out. Be well.” But Mr. Delinsky was my principal, and I understood the implications of institutions having power over you. So I didn’t bother clarifying what had actually happened or explaining my dad’s response. I stayed quiet and let him continue.
“Let me give you my pop-psychology analysis of what’s happening here, Zach,” he said. He lowered his eyes with practiced sympathy. “I know your mom has a mental illness,” he told me. “I know the experiences you had with her may have been tragic, and I’ve done a lot of reading about what dealing with a lack of empathy during childhood can do to someone’s life. I’d love to help you find a therapist to deal with your stress and talk about whatever may be going on in your life.”
I felt my jaw tighten. Since I’d arrived, I had largely avoided talking about my mother with anyone at Bullis. Her name didn’t appear on my application, and she had nothing to do with my experience there. I hadn’t even told Mr. Kinder much about her. Despite whatever Mr. Delinsky thought he knew, he understood very little about my life. He may have read some studies about empathy, but this was a man who acted so pure and innocent that I doubted he’d survive for five minutes in Anacostia. He knew nothing about what I faced when I exited the Bullis gates every evening, and he knew nothing about my past. So, no, I wasn’t interested in his pop psychoanalysis or in receiving his “help.”
Yet I was keenly aware of my position. There was no question of who in that room held all the power. I knew that power was something that showed itself in a number of different ways. On the bus, it was the guy who could get me to give him my seat. At school, it was the principal, who could summon me to his office and make me agree to see a therapist. It didn’t matter what the power looked like. I knew how to recognize it, and when I did, I knew when to resist and when to submit.
I thought briefly about explaining to him that my dad and I had a clear understanding that people at Bullis weren’t supposed to know about certain realities and challenges we faced, partly because I didn’t want them to. I thought about explaining to him why telling my father about how guys had run up on me because I didn’t look hard felt worse than walking up to my football coach and saying, “I got a cut on my elbow from that last hit. Can you help me find a Band-Aid?” But I didn’t owe him an explanation, and as I saw it, unless something in my private life was affecting my ability to show up and do my best at school, it was none of Mr. Delinsky’s concern.
“Thanks for your concern. It seems like there’s been some miscommunication, and I’m sorry for that,” I said, maintaining my resolve. I agreed to go to therapy, to check in frequently with Mr. Delinsky, and to keep him abreast of how my sessions were going. But shortly after I left his office, I e-mailed my contact at St. John’s to see if their offer still stood. There was no way I was going to allow the principal to be involved in my life this way or to put my father in a position where he had to listen to this man tell him what to do.
Over the next week, Mr. Delinsky kept close tabs on me—how I was doing in every class, which friends I was spending time with, and so on. Just a little more than a week after our meeting, I was talking with a teacher in North Hall when Mr. Delinsky came up. “Zach, come to my office right away,” he interrupted. This was not the amiable way he’d asked me to stop by last time. What now? I wondered as I walked down the hall to his office.
I paused as I entered Mr. Delinsky’s office. He was sitting behind his desk with his back toward the door. Beside him was Ms. Chehak, looking concerned. On the other side of the room was the school psychologist, whom I’d never spoken to, aside from saying hello in the hallway. And, seated in one of the beige chairs across from Mr. Delinsky’s desk, looking ill at ease, was my dad. I tried to catch his eye as I lowered myself into the other chair, but he was staring off into the distance.
Before anyone said a word, Mr. Delinsky spun around to face us with a stack of papers in his hand. He put the papers down on the desk in front of me. With a quick glance, I could see what they were. Mr. Delinsky placed both of his hands flat on the desk. “Zach, did you write these e-mails?” he asked.
It was still early in the year—technically summer—and despite the air-conditioning in the office, it was hot. I was sweating. “No, can you give me a moment to speak to my father?” I knew that if I could have just a minute with him, we could figure this out. He could speak up and say that it had just been a prank or explain all the pressure I was under. No one had been hurt, and the e-mails had all been sent from my home computer two months before, over the summer, entirely outside the school’s jurisdiction. I was sure that if we acted strategically they would let it slide or give me a small slap on the wrist. I’d never done anything even close to requiring disciplinary action before.
“No, Zach, that’s not going to happen,” Mr. Delinsky said. I looked at my dad with my eyes wide and my eyebrows raised, hoping he’d get the message and insist on having a chance to speak to me alone. But he just stared ahead, looking defeated, as if any sense of power or agency had been completely drained from him. Then Mr. Delinsky spoke again. “Zach,” he said, “it’ll be a lot easier if you just tell the truth.”
“Yes,” I said finally. “I apologize. I’m very sorry.” Ms. Chehak looked worried, as if she knew that there was no choice but for me to get skinned alive. I didn’t have time to wonder why she was even there in the first place.
“You’re going to go on an immediate medical leave,” Mr. Delinsky said. Ms. Chehak looked deeply saddened. My dad looked like he was in a pressure cooker. The school psychologist stared ahead impassively. But now that he’d said it, Mr. Delinsky visibly relaxed. He sat back in his chair. “You’ve probably dealt w
ith a lot of things in your life that made you feel insecure, Zach,” he told me. “And sending those e-mails made you feel like you had some power.”
What I wanted to say to Mr. Delinsky in that moment was this: “No, sir, make no mistake. I was never under the illusion that I had any power.” Instead, I capitulated completely, apologizing profusely and taking full responsibility for what I’d done.
With that, my dad and I got in his car and drove home. I felt disgraced. For three years, I had done everything I could to be of value to the Bullis community, to be a model student and a strong leader, and to never give anyone any possible reason to be upset with me. I skipped meals, gave up sleep, and even put myself in the hospital trying to fill this void. And on my insatiable quest to earn everyone’s admiration, with a handful of fake e-mails, I’d managed to erase the respect and goodwill I’d fought so hard to earn.
My dad was silent. He didn’t admonish me at all. Between us lay the unspoken understanding that this mistake was mine to own and mine to regret. It was for me to be disappointed in myself. And I was.
After an hour of driving, we pulled up in front of our small house. It was quiet outside, and I could hear the pound of a basketball hitting the pavement on a nearby court. For the first time since I’d entered Mr. Delinsky’s office, my dad looked at me. “Everyone makes mistakes, and you’ve dealt with worse than this,” he told me. “You’ll figure it out.”
As always, my dad had managed to say so little and yet so much. He meant to be supportive, and I appreciated that, but his words of encouragement did little more than remind me of how alone I really was.
* * *
—
Mr. Delinsky had instructed me to apologize to James, Hollis, and Drew the next day, after he’d had a chance to tell them what happened. Drew responded emotionally at first, but once he had a chance to absorb everything, he calmed down and seemed to forgive me. James was gracious and told me how much he appreciated my apology. But Hollis never responded.
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