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nicknames were sorry reminders of better days: marathon jam sessions in the basement, end-of-the-year tequila blowouts, the night we forced a team of New York Jets into double overtime at a charity basketball game, amazing hundreds of Winwood students, as well as the Jets and ourselves.
    He'd put on a lot of weight and looked pretty shell-shocked by his new life. He was back at his parents’ house in Union Village, sleeping in his old bedroom, helping out at his father's hardware store, trapped inside routines he thought he'd escaped forever the day he graduated from high school.
    “It's weird,” he told me. “We eat the same food. The same shows are on TV. It's like science fiction or something.”
    I brought him up-to-date on recent events at school, the ordinary gossip that had once been the meat of our friendship but now only served to measure out the distance between us: Art Farmer had announced his retirement; Gene Sperigno and Adele Massing, two legendarily unattractive math teachers, had fallen in love in an after-school teachers-only bowling league and were planning to get married; Walt Hendricks had gotten arrested again for DWI, but somehow managed to get the charges dropped.
    “Fuckin’ Walt.” Jack drained his beer, then held the mug upside down in front of his face to signal the bartender. “He knows how to cover his ass.”
    Thinking it might cheer him up, I told him about his replacement, a truculent ex-nun by the name of Marie Benson who had caused a mini-scandal by giving D's to half of her advanced sophomores.
    “She has a bad stomach,” I reported. “The kids call her ‘Sister Mary Rolaids.’ ”
    Jack didn't respond. He slurped the foam off his new beer and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. His face grew somber in the mirror behind the bar.

TRACY FLICK
     
    MY MOTHER'S ONE of those “involved” parents. She keeps pretty close track of my grades and stuff. One day she was going through my desk and came across my essay on
The Scarlet Letter.
Jack had given me an A-, corrected my spelling, and scribbled a note in red ink on the bottom of the last page: “Why won't you talk to me? Do you think love can be turned on and off like a faucet? Why don't you just get a gun and shoot me?”
    That night, very calmly, she slid the paper across the kitchen table and asked me to please explain.
    “Don't be scared,” she told me. “I need to know the truth.”
    I broke down and told her everything. She hugged me and we both cried. The next morning we were in Mr. Hendricks's office. The day after that Jack was gone.
    I feel bad for him, but I don't feel guilty. He was the adult. If he hadn't acted like such a baby, everything would have been okay.

MR. M.
     
    “ SO,” HE SAID . “How's Sherry?”
    “Okay. Things are still pretty tough for her.”
    “She won't talk to me, Jimbo.”
    “Can you blame her?”
    He glanced up in surprise, stung by the sharpness of my tone. I wanted him to know that on this particular subject, I had no sympathy to offer.
    “No,” he conceded. “I can't blame her. But I would like to get to know my son.”
    I didn't know what to say to that. I'd held his infant son in my arms, changed his diaper, poked my finger into his plump little belly. I'd watched Sherry nod off while nursing and did my best to console her when she wept out of fear and frustration. Later on, I did even more than that.
    “You made your choice,” I told him.
    “It's funny,” he said, nodding in melancholy agreement. “I look at my life from this angle, and there's only one thing. All the college, all the teaching, all the years with Sherry, and all I was really doing was waiting for Tracy, so I could fuck it all up.” He made a scribbling motion, as though signing an autograph. “
Slept with Tracy Flick.
That's my whole résumé.”
    I felt old when he said that. I looked at my tilted image in the mirror and had a strange premonition of my own doom.
    “By the way,” he said.