Rick Soto.

Who he is.

Rick teaches Algebra II and precalc, good at it the way David is good at history: not brilliant, not innovative, but present and reliable, the kind of teacher who shows up every day, knows every kid’s name, runs the fantasy-football league and the faculty softball game. Twice divorced and cheerful about both. He is always talking, which is his best quality or his worst depending on whether you need silence or company; his generosity is his organizing principle, and the fact that his generosity sometimes includes things that are bad for you is not something he will ever recognize.

The parking lot.

Rick is the one who hands David the thing that ruins him, not maliciously, but the way he shares everything. In the school lot one afternoon he says the number that starts it: Fifty-eight percent. That’s the hit rate. You know what 58% means with consistent bet sizing? He recommends the app, ActionLine. His own model has three statistical errors in the first ten columns, errors David sees over lunch, because Rick bets on instinct dressed as analysis and David, fatally, can do the math properly. Rick is the spark; David’s competence is the fuel.

The thing he doesn’t do.

Rick tries once, at 3 a.m., to reach his friend, and David lies to him, and the lie lets Rick off a hook he is glad to be off. Later, when principal Karen Silvestri corners him by the laminator, a man with nothing to hide stops what he’s doing when his principal asks a real question; Rick does not stop, he keeps feeding the poster through the rollers and says only He’s got a lot on. His mom. He knows the name of the thing hollowing out his friend, the app, the check mark, the fifty-eight percent, knows his own hands are on it. To tell Karen would be to say a sentence with I in it, and he can’t. So Karen has half the truth and Rick has the half that explains it, and the two halves never reach the same desk.