He looked at my book, some John Green novel, and sneered a bit. Less sneer, actually, more just a moment of bored judgment. Sneer implies too much action.

“You like to read.”

“Yes,” I said saucily, “and this is good.”

He rolled his eyes.

The assignment that night was to write a story, any story. I wrote about two kids discussing death at a train station. I put my absolute all into it, shaking with a rage I hadn’t let him see. Hadn’t showed him, because I knew by now that rage displayed made you a target.

I handed it in with a sneer.

He called me up to his desk the day after and said, “This is stunning.”

I blinked, surprised. Looked away. I remember his office overlooked a little-used courtyard, and I stared at that as he spoke.

“You have a real talent. You shouldn’t be reading that slop. You should be reading Shakespeare.”

It was as if someone had told me their favorite book was the Odyssey. I snorted.

“Really,” he said.

“Sure,” I said.

He died a few years later, after a brief retirement. I still remember him – Mr. Williams, who let us draw on his walls, who told me I was good, but that I had to work at it. I had to read higher than I wanted to write.