The day before Thanksgiving break had its own specific atmosphere — the particular, slightly loosened quality of a school that knows it is hours from a week of not being a school and has begun, at every level, to let go of its weekday tension in increments. The students moved through the corridors with the energy of people completing a formality. The teachers maintained their professionalism with the slightly effortful quality of people who were also, privately, counting down.
Nathan taught his morning classes with the focused competence of a man who had decided, somewhere around the third week of term, that he was going to do his job properly regardless of whatever else was happening around it or inside it. This had served him well. He taught. He asked the right questions and waited the
