He would not love that I used this picture

I go into the training room to learn yet again how not to be attacked by my students -- what is colloquially known as "Hug a Thug Training." One of the trainers asks after my family -- nothing to report there -- and then tells me that people are singing my praises for building relationships with some of the more challenging residents.

I don't know who he means. I don't particularly get along with most of the problematic kids. I can work with them, and they mostly like me, I'm sure, but I also partially look forward to forgetting that we've ever met. I have mastered finding a reason to like children that the world finds abhorrent or behaving as though I have. For the duration of our contact, I do not need to agree with the majority that they should be kept forever in a box.

I mention the only student with whom I have an unusually warm relationship, my favorite student. The worst I could say of him is that he makes joking violent gestures and makes inappropriate remarks in the same vein, but I have recently discovered he does them only to me. (I have always taken these as affection that he has no better way to phrase, as he spent fifteen years being traumatized by the people who should have loved him; he does not understand or trust genuine love yet.) He can be surly, but it is never serious, and he is a sixteen-year-old boy. It would be unusual if he were not moody.

This student is precisely who he means. "He doesn't attach easily," the trainer says. "I'm glad you came here."

Incandescent with the approbation, though still confused by how my favorite boy has been labeled, I tell him that I am glad as well and that I appreciate hearing this. "If I could take him home and raise him for a couple of years until college, I would," I joke.

I cannot, however. In fifteen months, give or take, he will leave the facility. I hope it will be to a residential treatment program or group home. In the best of all worlds, he moves immediately into a college dorm and never looks back. In short, that he will go somewhere emotionally and physically safer than returning to his family. It is a hard sell to have to express my appreciation for this boy by getting him ready never to see me again.

Teachers are mandated reporters, required by law to report signs of child abuse. I have called in potential child abuse myself. I do not see how anyone could have done the right thing if my student. It is beyond question how brutally he was abused. His body is more scarred than any I have ever seen outside a burn victim. By his recollections -- which I trust -- he ran away from home at least six times, ending up at a police station for most of these. He told clinicians and therapists what had been done to him. That he was returned repeatedly to people who threatened to murder him is a glaring failure of the system. It is a miracle that he has, to this point, survived how much he has been failed. I can enumerate times that he nearly didn't.

Right now, locked behind razor wire, he is the safest and happiest he has ever been. A few people have told me that I am the best thing that ever happened to this kid. I want to demur, to say that I couldn't possibly be, but I must concede the possibility.

No matter how he is attached to me, our relationship ends when he steps through the facility doors for the last time. He can call here, and I've insisted he does so with his successes, but I can make no contact after he leaves. I have never found reason to doubt this policy because I have never met a child whom I felt more needed me. In my years teaching Summer Scholar Institute for the Gifted, I encountered shockingly intelligent and talented children. In my tenure at Maplebrook, I discovered how to care for students with various low-grade learning disabilities. In substituting in inner-city schools and my near-decade at my prior facility, I nurtured those so damaged by the world that they committed felonies. My favorite boy is all of these. He is the culmination of my career to this point. He could be my masterpiece. It is as though everything I've experienced is to save this boy. But no matter how badly I wish this child had a better past, I am not his future or father. I am not his family or even friend, but simply his teacher (and I cannot deny being his mentor). All I can do is let him know that I care about him and want to be part of him having the life he deserves. Though I do not think I can overestimate my potential impact on a boy this clever who has been so abused, my role in his life will be brief and limited. That is the point of it. Beyond that is my selfishness.

last watched: Brooklyn Nine-Nine
reading: Guns, Germs, and Steel