
A Catholic high school near Boston in 1985. A time of suicides, gymnasium humiliations, smoking for beginners, asthma attacks, and incendiary teenage infatuations. Infatuations with a girl (Allison), with a band (The Smiths) and with an album, Meat is Murder, that was...

One morning as I was jogging my way past the bronze plaque commemorating the deaths of one student and one motorcyclist, Ray floored the brake pedal of his Dodge as he closed in on me. Fifty-mile-an-hour traffic came to a screeching, nearly murderous halt behind him. He leaned...