His friends were “the jock group,” he’d tell me. His neck was so thick that it seemed to merge into his jawline, and he was planning to enter a military academy for college the following fall. At 18, he stood more than 6 feet tall, with broad shoulders and short-clipped hair. Cole would later describe himself to me as a “typical tall white athlete” guy, and that is exactly what I saw. It was totally unfair, a scarlet letter of personal bias. He was staring impassively ahead, both feet planted on the floor, hands resting loosely on his thighs. As I rushed down a hallway at the school, I noticed a boy sitting outside the library, waiting-it had to be him. The afternoon of our first interview, I was running late. I knew nothing about Cole before meeting him he was just a name on a list of boys at a private school outside Boston who had volunteered to talk with me (or perhaps had had their arm twisted a bit by a counselor).
