The Rat was the assistant headmaster at St. Mark's. His real name was Robert H. Rattinger, but everyone, I mean everyone called him the Rat. And the Rat was the meanest, the cruelest, and the most unfair son of a bitch in the history of the world. He'd been at St. Mark's for about a century and he was the ultimate enforcer. He enforced all the crap that made St. Mark's the shithole that it was. Besides enforcing the discipline system, and the piece of shit they call the Honor System, the Rat taught science courses like Biology and Physics. The Rat loved to dish out demerits and he dished them out silently, using his fingers. Then he took this little spiral notebook out of his top pocket and wrote down your name and the number of demerits, so he could later post them on the bulletin board. He chain-smoked Lucky Strikes and he smoked every fag down to where it was about a quarter of an inch long. I was always amazed, and disappointed that he didn't burn the crap out of his lips.