I wasn’t trying to “control the narrative” by taking that douche journalist from Esquire to the Station. Sure, the kids in this town love the deli because it’s a dive; they show up after lacrosse practice, or late night, six-to-a-Beemer, and chat up the counter guys like they’re just regular kids. The thing is, I like these kids. For all their privilege, they’re mostly unspoiled. It’s a town of Nice Kids, really, just a couple of sniveling “My dad is a lawyer and blah blah blah” pains in the ass here and there. But none of that has anything to do with why I suggested we meet at the Station for the interview. It’s just my usual place. I’m a teacher. Where else in this town am I supposed to go for a two-buck egg sandwich?

So, no, I wasn’t trying to “control the narrative.” But there are things I didn’t tell him. Things I didn’t trust some sleek journalist with. (Horn-rimmed glasses and a tweed blazer, and I’m the one trying to manipulate the optics? Please.) Things it wouldn’t have done anybody any good to see in print.

I didn’t tell him about her essays. Alison always developed these wildly contrarian thesis statements. Macbeth can best be understood as a feminist work in which Lady Macbeth is the true hero. Catch-22 glamorizes war. Or my favorite: While it might seem to depict human nature as savage and anarchic, Lord of the Flies ultimately works against the author’s own intentions and conveys the endurance of civilization and order. She was one hell of a writer, and she did crazy acrobatics in the essays to defend what were, basically, incorrect readings of the texts. Intentionally incorrect. She seemed to be under the impression that the best essay is the one that gets people to believe whatever it wants them to believe, even if that thing can’t possibly be true. I always wanted to tell her in my comments that just because you win an argument doesn’t make you right. But I always felt a bit nervous critiquing her, to be honest. She was smarter than me, I have no qualms about admitting it. She knew it and I knew it. I wanted to tell her that just because you’re smarter than someone doesn’t mean they don’t have things to teach you, but I didn’t tell her that, either. I gave her her A’s and figured somewhere down the line of her education she’d figure out how to apply her talents in a way that went beyond hot-dogging.

I didn’t tell the journalist about the time I closed the classroom door on that poor chubby kid when he was late on test day, and Alison got in a confrontation with me about it, which was entirely inappropriate. The longer the argument went on, the clearer it became that she had the whole class on her side and I was at real risk of losing their good faith in an all-out mutiny that would screw up the classroom dynamic for the rest of the school year. I’ve always been a really popular teacher, too. Everybody wants to be in Conti’s class. That’s the sway she had with her classmates.

I didn’t tell him about the way she rolled her eyes at these same classmates when they made a comment in class that she found obvious or dumb.

I didn’t tell him about the time I went to the Station for a late-night grading session and she was there, alone at a table in the back, eating cheese fries. She must have come from dance rehearsal—she wore leggings and a sweatshirt unzipped over a black leotard.

“Care to join me, Mr. Conti?”

Fool that I am, I sat.

“Fry?”

I ate.

I asked her how college applications were going.

“Fine,” she sighed, as if she hardly cared, which I knew couldn’t be true, not a smart, ambitious kid like her. “Can I ask you something, Mr. Conti?” she said.

I told her she could.

“Doesn’t it bother you, spending your existence with a bunch of high schoolers?”

I said if it did, would I have become a high school teacher? I felt pretty smart about that response.

“It would make me crazy.” She stared right at me as she said that. Under the table, she brushed her foot against my leg.

I told her I had to get going. She smirked, like she thought I was a wuss or something. I was totally freaked out to see her in my class the next day, but she acted completely normal, as if nothing had happened. After a few days, it started to feel that way.

After she died, the last thing she said to me that night kept coming back to me. It would make me crazy. What was her game with that, exactly? She was not admiring my capacity for working with young people, that’s for sure. No, she was telling me she could never do what I did because she was different from me. Better.

The thing is, from then on teaching did start to drive me crazy. Before, I’d spend hours writing comments on my students’ essays, and then I’d see the kids flip straight to the back, look at the grade, and chuck the papers in the trash, and I’d shrug it off. After, stuff like that enraged me. I started to see very clearly the way my life’s work was just “second period” to the kids. I started seeing it the way she saw it, I started seeing me the way she saw me, and the foundational satisfaction of my life was chipped away at. Not completely, but some.

This is a town of Nice Kids, but Alison Thomas was not one of them. She had talent to burn. She could be very passionate. She had a personal power that she often used as a force for good. But she was not Nice.