The new semester brought some changes in class schedules, and students thus had to cope with change. Freshmen spent half the year learning history and the other half learning about their bodies in far too much detail, and so the new freshmen sat down in their new classes and lived again the feeling of being new, only this time they weren't as star-struck. It did not take long for the more observant freshmen to discover that there was something funky about Mr. T, whom some lucky ones met for the first time in their health class. They compared notes with each other, and together they tried to explain incongruities. When Ernest asked Frank to clarify what exactly was wrong with him after the first day of class, Frank responded simply with a grin: "Oh, he's just like any other man, only more so." Ernest didn't think that clarified much.

Mr. T spoke Chinese, having substituted for Mrs. Huang one period, and spoke with a strong Beijing accent and a semblance of sanity many thought she lacked. He also taught some of the advanced English courses, and apparently last year picked up a period of AP Gov, and beyond that upperclassmen told them that he had substituted for practically every class, and could easily teach any full-time. The students then worked at identifying gaps in his knowledge; perhaps Mr. T was best defined at what he was not, rather than what he was. This proved to be a hard question because Mr. T was so obliging with their interrogations, sometimes letting students ask him questions at the end of class: yes, he spoke Spanish, yes, he could play piano, yes, he worked in New York, yes, he wasn't always a teacher. He rarely answered no beyond verifying that he was not a CIA agent, although of course, if he were a CIA agent they doubted he would tell them. And so, after a few weeks, most gave up and simply accepted that Mr. T was Mr. T, a mighty fine teacher and a bringer of surprises.

Alan met all these new stimuli with a constantly flickering facial expression that fell between wonder and horror. Alan believed he had a good sense of what constituted polite conversation. There were some topics, like the weather, that were appropriate for every situation. Everyone, regardless if they cared to discuss the weather, had some thoughts on it—some, like Alan, always believed it was too hot or too cold. Sports were acceptable too, even if many did not share Alan's enthusiasm for the Pittsburgh Steelers. Food was starting to veer on the risky side. Everyone had their own preferences, and Alan could not think to imagine what would happen if he said he liked a food that his conversational partner abhorred. But all of these paled in comparison to the big four that he was supposed to avoid: religion, abortion, politics, and economics—Alan personally chose to use those as an acronym to remember a fifth topic to avoid, which made Beth's jaw drop when he shared his mnemonic with a casual, clever grin. Religion was easy to avoid, as Alan did not practice; when reading texts out loud in English, he never read "God," "Jesus," "Allah," "Zeus," "Osiris," or anything that could potentially offend. Alan was unfamiliar with the exact mechanics of abortions until Mr. T explained in class the panoply of birth control options available; it would be easy to avoid those in polite conversation. Alan was able to maintain his commitment to avoiding politics all of last semester until his history teacher, quite directly, asked him to please comment on that day's activity. Economics was rather simple, and he did not see why it was even controversial at all: if they only printed more money, everyone would be wealthier!

Tom disagreed with Alan's approach on almost every count, considering it insipid, boring, and cowardly. His father had always told him oratory was a tradition invented by the Greeks that had been passed down through the ages, and it was every man's duty to maintain it. Tom had asked once when he was younger and knew little how people functioned then.

"I don't know, Tom, maybe they threw rocks at each other? Or maybe they just beat their chests and howled loudly. Why does it matter? We have civilization now," Mr. Langley responded with a sigh. "I'm busy. Go do your homework."

Tom believed every conversation was a transaction: you were always trying to get something out of the other person, who was always trying to do the same. Naturally, one could never admit they were aware of this core philosophy. That wasn't what civilized people did. Any venue could, in the blink of an eye, become an auditorium. There, Tom and his opponent would walk up to their podiums in suits and ties, and wave politely to the cheering audience. The referee would call foul as appropriate, and at the end of the day, the winner would get a trophy in the form of eternal love, respect, and devotion. Tom had not watched many debates, but nevertheless, he considered himself an expert. One of his favorite venues for casual conversation was English class. This was mainly because Ted was there, who had the gumption to not let Tom sit on the throne and revel in his glory forever. Ted would never admit it, but he thought Tom was a wee bit too big for his britches, and his time as the biggest rooster in the henhouse needed to end eventually.

Ted and Tom's sporting rivalry manifested itself in many ways. During PE, each vied to be the fastest; Ted generally won these contests. In math class, each vied to finish not only most quickly, but most precisely; this was generally tolerated by their teacher, as it turned out that finishing quickly and precisely required quiet focus. This did not extend to English class, where any activities with the semblance of discussion involved increasingly grandiloquent speeches juxtaposed with attempts at increasingly thrifty epigrams. Tom once read that brevity was the soul of wit, and as he desired to be witty, brevity proved essential; however, this ran at odds with his natural tendency to pack on layers of interlocking points and a preacher's delivery, resulting in something altogether verbose. Ted attempted to match this with a relatively sensible pattern of speech, always aiming to speak immediately after Tom and dismantle his points, an almost Socratic style of interlocution. This then demanded more refutation from Tom, delivered in an even more garrulous manner as he sought to win over the affections of the rest of the class, which at this point was either taking meticulous notes or staring into the gray void of the whiteboard. Ms. Baldwin generally stepped in once the arguments were clearly becoming too intricate and opened up the floor to other insights. She was torn: the quality of discourse was admirable, but two people were running the show instead of thirty. Granted, other strong voices in the class stepped in on occasion, and the two stars took these moments to recoup and prepare their next verbal landmines, but the net result was still cacophonous. Private conversations did little to dissuade this behavior, as she had to phrase her words carefully so as not to silence the two entirely, so all she could do was wait and hope they would exhaust their seemingly endless reserves of rhetoric.

John was tired and not in the best condition for watching that day's verbal ping-pong match. John's droopy eyes, which did not wander nearly as much as they used to, caught Regina's attention, as they frequently did.

"You need coffee. I'll bring you some tomorrow." John shook his head to indicate it wasn't needed, but Regina was unfazed, asking if he wanted cream or sugar. It was the first time John had ever had to think about that. His parents drank their coffee black, and when John took a sip out of curiosity, he spat it out into the sink. That was many years ago, and now he knew he could handle it plain. The next day, John hoped Regina would have forgotten her promise, but today she carried four cups instead of three. John tried again to drink, this time thinking it pleasant.

"You know, John, it's very mature of you to drink black coffee. It's far too bitter for me," Juliet suggested as she sipped her green tea iced latte, pushing it toward him in case he wanted to try some. She searched his face for any hidden expressions of displeasure, but could find nothing. John occasionally looked down at his coffee cup as if he had forgotten what he was drinking. There was something so strange about seeing Regina's name on the side in black Sharpie. Technically no drinks besides water were permitted in class without teacher permission; Ms. Baldwin did not care to break up the happy moment, which she hoped would be to John what the madeleine was to Proust, and so she allowed it. Later, John thought of the coffee again, thinking it filled some void in his personality, and on a whim asked Frank what he thought.

"I drink tea," Frank curtly responded.

"But when you do drink coffee, how do you drink it?" Frank felt like this was a test of his intellectual stature or something that he wasn't quite comprehending.

"I'm not picky. There's this great café downtown that has brilliant Vietnamese coffee. My parents and I get banh mis and coffee there all the time."

John paused a few seconds to determine if he had received a sufficiently clarifying answer, but was still confused. He had no idea what either of those foods were; he could ask Regina, but then she would think he was inviting her, and that would do nothing to help his position. Over winter break, John turned Regina's confession into an anguished appeal for friendship. She was alone, he thought. She felt lost, just like he did. It was his obligation as an ethical person, a good person, to ask her how she felt, to smile and show interest in what she said, and to return her warmth with something better than a chill wind. John's happy place, entirely imagined, was a cabin in the snow. The door opened inside and led down the hallway to a fireplace that was always going, always warm, always reliably itself. Sometimes he had nightmares that he left the door open, and one gust of wind would blow and echo all the way down until it extinguished the fire and left his house cold, lifeless, and spooky. Strange things moved in the dark—John knew that as a fact. In some other nightmares with the same setting, John woke up in what for the moment was his bed, even if the room was decorated differently, unable to move. Something was in the house, something that made the floors creak and the shadows wander. His heart pounded without reprieve, and just when his door opened and that beast was about to enter, he woke up, safe and happy.

One time, John had asked his parents if everyone had those sorts of nightmares. They looked at him with great sadness and said that they never worried, at least not anymore: they had their friends and family, who were beacons of light in the darkness that could repel any monster. Empathy, that peculiar warmth and care John had always struggled with, was the solution! He vowed to immediately set about acquiring some. He practiced on his classmates, always being sure to say thank you when they did him mild favors, and on his teachers, who appreciated the help. All of this circled around to his current pet project, Regina. All she needed was a kind and caring shoulder when needed. Not in the literal sense, though—he had made that mistake once, and felt like he needed to wash off her aroma in the shower that night.

This extended to others, too; how was Beth? She always seemed nice, and had a mental alacrity that to be frank, Regina did not always maintain. John did not know who she was, at least compared to Regina; but did he know Regina? After Mrs. Huang had shuffled the seating arrangements yet again, still with John and Beth sitting in inconvenient seats, Beth was forced out of some necessity to talk with John. Spontaneous conversation was a part of any language-learning curriculum, although as they were still in the elementary class, it wasn't riveting.

"Who is this person?" John asked Beth, drawing out the syllables needlessly.

"This is my older sister, this is my mother, and this is my father," Beth responded with more natural intonation. For class that day, they had to bring in family photos, which weren't terribly exciting.

"Your father is taller than your mother," John remarked sagely.

"Your shirt is blue," she replied offhandedly, then looked at her paper and realized she had a problem. "How do you write 'blue' again?"

So that's what that word meant, John thought. He looked at his own note sheet and sketched out 蓝色, and Beth tried her hardest to copy all the strokes correctly. They made an excellent pair: John had an excellent memory for Chinese characters, imagining many as deformed stick figures engaging in activities, and Beth spoke with excellent pronunciation and vocabulary, using whatever she remembered from her mother's phone conversations. What they had in common was that neither of them enjoyed their mandated chats. Both were listeners: they all understood Mrs. Huang's classroom commands, even if they did not respond in turn. The speakers in the class disguised their sketchy grasp of the fundamentals by speaking with confidence, and in their minds, these students were charlatans. This was why Mrs. Huang put James and Beth, as she knew them, in nearby seats all the time. As far as she could tell, James and Beth were independent learners who knew how to solve their problems without her assistance, behavior she had no qualms with encouraging. This wasn't entirely true: after spending about half an hour working through a weekly homework set that seemed to keep going on and on, Beth found Frank reading his newspaper outside and asked him for help.

"Why ask me? I barely know anything, only the fundamentals."

"You said that tongue-twister perfectly on the first try, I've seen you talking to Mrs. Huang before school, and that newspaper's not in English." Frank looked down and admitted Beth was right, he did know a little more than "barely anything." Today was a poor day to feign ignorance. Frank did not think he lied, however; he was by no means fluent, even if he could get by passably with little embarrassment. He tried his best to take opportunities whenever he could to improve, and when he learned that he could get newspapers in Chinese downtown, he resolved to read one a week. This did mean that by the time he finished reading, his current events knowledge was dated.

"You got me. What do you need help with?" He put his newspaper away, and they spent the remainder of the lunch period working through the homework. Initially, Beth was surprised at Frank's generosity, but it was not out of character for him to help her or any others. Frank often spent his lunch periods sitting down at a lunch table with struggling students, some his friends but more often random classmates, and together they worked through algebra problems or discussed essays. He was never one to say no, seeing this altruism as an easy way to make friends, and he discovered he had a name recognition among his class at large that belied his "nerdy" reputation. In contrast, Jason bristled at inquiries for help, lacking the seemingly endless reserve of patience and discipline Frank possessed; to him, there was such a thing as a stupid question, and his classmates provided them in abundance. Despite this, Frank always knew that Jason was the person to ask for the questions he struggled with, and at least from his perspective Jason was always forthcoming. The school's reticence to accept Jason as the true academic master baffled him, and when he told his charges that if they ever needed more help, Jason would be the best, they laughed and politely refused. One possible reason for this was a lack of intelligence, but no, that couldn't possibly be it: if they were too unintelligent to seek qualified help, then they would not talk to him. Temperament was a second option, but one limited by Frank's narrow perspective. Frank certainly did not see himself as a man of the people, as beyond the occasional bouts of witty banter and quick tutoring sessions, which generally took the form of spot checks rather than intensive lessons, he really did not interact with those he helped. It was a true work-life balance. A third possibility was that Frank was simply wrong, that in reality he was the smartest in the class, but people like Ernest, Jason, and Madeline certainly performed better on average academically, and as for brightness? Brightness was necessary, Frank thought, to learn; and if the three academic titans were truly titans, then they must be bright. The hours people like Madeline spent reviewing their notes were also then indications of "brightness," which was rapidly proving to be a convenient handwave of any difficult questions. Being unable to come to a conclusion, and certainly not wanting to ask Jason to spill his secrets, Frank kept calm and carried on.

Beth and Behrooz sat at the same table in health class, and rapidly bonded over a shared wariness of Alan and a growing appreciation of what they had assumed would be the worst part of their day. As befitting his original promise, Mr. T made health class interesting by telling stories. He told them about one of the Christmas parties at his previous place of employment, where one vice president got so drunk off champagne that he pulled down his pants and urinated on a dare. He told of one night in Hong Kong, when he and a few others were negotiating some sort of deal, and how he woke up to the smell of marijuana drifting down the hall and the sound of unfamiliar morning laughter. He told of how one of his best friends at work discovered some quaint little white crystals that gave him so much energy, so much that he ran with excitement out of work one day and was hit by a car. Mr. T paused to think a moment, as if in remembrance, and his face had the accumulated pain of telling that story too many times. He quoted once how life was but a walking shadow, that those whom he considered his friends turned into ghosts of their past selves. Mr. T did not say as much, but many assumed he decided one day he needed to get out, and thus whoever he was before became their intrepid teacher.

There was comedy too along with the tragedy: for the condom demonstrations, Mr. T took out a bunch of bananas and a box of cucumbers from one of his cabinets and offered the brave student volunteers a choice; at the end of the period, he cut up the cucumbers along with some tomatoes, feta, and olives, mixed some vinaigrette from olive oil and balsamic vinegar that for some reason he had handy, and offered everyone Greek salad. Mr. T had the class watch 9 to 5 to teach them about sexual harassment and spark a discussion on changing gender roles, warning them that every comic moment was rooted in reality.

Ernest accepted his bowl of salad with some confusion. If Frank were not so cryptic, Ernest would think he had deceived him. This was not how class was supposed to be, a fact he lamented to Frank during Chinese class one day:

"Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?" Ernest asked Frank, eyes wide with intensity.

"On a plane, bloody, dead, and cold."

"What do you mean?" Even by Frank's standards, this seemed a non sequitur, but by now Ernest was used to it.

"What do you mean if not that? You didn't read Catch-22 last year?"

"I forgot you didn't go to the same school we did. Mr. Snowden was an English teacher we had in eighth grade, who was kind, intelligent, and most of all, sane."

"What makes our teachers insane?"

"Yesterday, I ate Greek salad made from cucumbers that touched condoms. Mrs. Huang thinks her microwave is spying on her. Mr. Galantine spent half of the class talking in a British accent. You have to agree with me here: there's something clearly wrong with this school."

"Well, nobody forced you to eat the salad. But consider this: if you think everyone is insane besides yourself, maybe you're the insane one and we're all sane. How do you like them apples?"

Ernest groaned. "I know I'm not insane. There is nothing you can do to make me think I'm insane. You're being illogical, and I really expected more from you. Why do you think this is normal? You spend all day playing into their antics. We're better than that."

Frank looked disappointed. "I will admit that when Mrs. Huang asked for examples of inspirational leaders, I shouldn't have said Mao Zedong."

"You shouldn't have, and Mrs. Huang shouldn't have agreed with you! Finally, you're getting what I'm trying to say. If you consider yourself an ethical person, you shouldn't be indulging others' sick fantasies."

"That's exactly right. I should be indulging my own instead—who gives a damn about them?"

"I do. With great power comes great responsibility. Let me pose a little dilemma to you: you're walking along the street, and you hear cries for help from an alleyway. Being the good person you are, you rush to help. You see some hooded scoundrel brandishing a knife. What do you do? Do you stay and fight, or do you flee?"

"I take out my gun and shoot him. Everyone knows you never bring a knife to a gunfight."

"Seriously, Frank."

"You aren't seeing my point here. What matters at the end of the day is that the criminal is dead and justice is served. That's the brighter world you say we are supposed to fight for. I agree—this world is a nice place. So we have two choices: the fast solution and the slow solution. Now, if our goal is truly making the world a better place, why should we twiddle our thumbs and sabotage ourselves? Why torture ourselves by living in a gray world of misery, one where people walk with their head down and talk in bitter invective? It is the ethical person's responsibility to hasten the inexorable tide of progress. I'm no coward: I'm not going to flee."

"That's a very clever solution, Frank, but I don't see how you can say with a serious face that your visionary outlook is applicable in practice."

"Is that a challenge?"

"I give up, Frank. You win. Happy now?" Ernest sighed. Frank ignored his temptation to get the last word in and turned back to his work.

Discussion Questions:

In general, how have characters changed from our first impressions at the beginning? Are there any who seemingly haven't changed?

What does it mean to be successful at Heller, and which characters embody this?

Consider the ending conversation between Ernest and Frank; why are their names, Frank and E(a)rnest, synonyms? Who won the argument?