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than the students I taught in Los Angeles. There was one major exception, though: these kids were, for the most part, rich. How else could one afford the five thousand dollar a month tuition? Obesity aside, there were two other differences between the students I had in L.A. and the ones here. First, while my Angelenos were ninety percent Latino, the Academy kids were mostly white. Second, in L.A., the sex ratio seemed about even. Here, there seemed to be three or four girls to every boy.
        Daniel and I strolled back to the Admin building. We went by classrooms and offices. We stopped at Kristy Reinhart’s office. Daniel knocked on the office door. Frank Mills answered. He shook my hand.
         “ Hello, Mr. Rourke.”
        “ Frank is the new academic director. He’ll be working with you and the rest of the teaching staff.”
        “ Great.” I replied. I was right about Frank replacing Kristy. I just never would have guessed how soon.
        “ I heard a lot of good things about you,” Frank said, revealing a dimpled smile.
        “ But I haven’t started yet.”
        Daniel and Frank exchanged a knowing glance—as if they were in on some unsaid, inside joke. I tried to make nothing of it. Daniel excused himself, mumbling something about a Splenda shipment. I took a seat in Frank’s office. He wasted no time giving me the 411.
        “ Daniel gave me some background on the teaching staff. Of them, Jack Lang and Michael Strumm are the only veterans. You, another two teachers, and a fitness instructor are new to A.O.S.”
        I wanted to mention to Frank that he, too, was new to A.O.S., but that would have been stating the obvious.
        “ You mentioned to Daniel you wanted to teach English?” he asked.
        “ Yes.”
        He glanced at what must have been my resume. “Art degree, huh?” Placing the resume on his desk, he leaned forward.    
        “ You’re teaching English. And an elective.”
        “ That’s great.”
        It was great—great to be teaching subject matter that was more up my alley.
        “ I have a law degree myself,” Frank beamed.
        “ Really. Where from?”
        “ Yale.”
        A Yale law school graduate with no teaching background, supervising teachers in a Podunk farm town? Clearly, he didn’t get the job because of his resume. Right?
        Daniel went to Yale.
        Oh, what a coinkydink.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Chapter 4
    Program
     
        I had the weekend to get my act together and prep for the first day of class. But I wasn’t going to prep if it meant hunkering down in my dorm room. If there was anything more depressing than spending the weekend in a windowless cell, it was spending the weekend in a windowless cell doing schoolwork.
        I ventured out into the light of day. Undulating ripples of heat greeted me. L.A. had heat waves, but it was nothing like this. Back home, I could expect an occasional cool gust of air blowing in from the Pacific. In these God-forsaken flatlands, however, there was no cool breeze to offset the misery. Besides the unbearable heat, I noticed the familiar, pungent smell of manure.
        I scanned the grounds for human life. Preoccupied with tasks and therefore ignoring me, students and residential staff milled about. Presiding over them, a tall, muscular man in a polo shirt and shorts jogged past. I learned later he was Tom Eccleston, A.O.S.’s Program Director. With a homespun, no-nonsense attitude, Tom was a director in the classic sense. He oversaw residential and logistical staff to keep the students fed, exercised, and housed. He was old school. And that—at least on paper, was a good thing.
        Glancing at the group, I marveled at how these students, a couple of them well over three hundred pounds, could keep pace with the staff—and in oppressive, fry-an-egg-on-the-asphalt heat. They didn’t seem to break into a sweat, either.
        Maybe it