The boy I’d fantasized about in a variety of ways since that May morning in 1980 was the boy who turned out to be Robert. And on that first day of school we didn’t know anything about how his mother really died, or the rape of his stepsister, the suicide attempt, or Robert Mallory’s stint, during what should have been the last term of his junior year at Roycemore, in a mental institution outside Jacksonville, Illinois.
