Sex, Lies and Phys Ed

Ms. Tapp's eyes went wide. "Well, I can't give you my phone number," she told him, as the detention kids pretended not to listen. "But there's something called 411."

Jason shot home after practice that day, in such a hurry that he was still wearing his book bag while he dialed the telephone.

She didn't even say hello, he recalls. "Looks like you did your homework," Ms. Tapp said.

For the next week, Jason and Ms. Tapp spent hours on the phone, with Jason downstairs in the kitchen whispering into the receiver while his parents slept. He felt he was speaking not to a teacher but to his soulmate. He read her some of his poetry, making them both cry. He told her about his volatile father, John, a former crane operator, who was now bedridden due to multiple sclerosis. Mornings before school, it was Jason's responsibility to haul John into the shower and on and off the toilet — tasks he performed without complaint but which only stoked his father's fury. Jason told Ms. Tapp about his mother, Tina, struggling to stretch her hospice-nurse's salary to support her ailing husband and three kids. Jason's parents had never gotten along, but now, on the cusp of divorce, their yelling had made Jason's home life unbearable.

School had become his escape. Cheerful and outgoing, Jason reveled in his friends and in the release of football and wrestling. Sports meant everything to him: It gave him a second family, complete with coaches who were part buddies, part father figures. Sports had also made Jason a star, not only in the halls of Hammonton High (where the principal would holler "You're the future!" at him) but also within the close-knit farming town of Hammonton, New Jersey ("The Blueberry Capital of the World"), a place where Jason's photo often graced the local paper and everyone came to Blue Devils football games yelling "Ike!" — short for Eickmeyer. But there was a practical reason for Jason's athletic drive, which he confided to Ms. Tapp: No way could he afford college, and with his C average, an athletic scholarship was his only shot at a decent school.

Then one Friday night, a week after he asked for her number, Jason and Ms. Tapp were on the phone as they were almost every evening, gossiping about the kids at Hammonton High, throwing in a suggestive comment here and there. (Tapp, who denies having been sexually involved with her students, declined repeated requests for an interview.) By that point, according to Jason, Ms. Tapp called him "my little boyfriend" and would tell him what a great body he had; she'd also volunteered that she slept naked. "That's it, I'm coming over," Jason would always threaten. To which Ms. Tapp would squeal, "No, you can't! You can't!"

Except tonight, she said, "OK."

Jason wasn't expecting that one. "OK?"

"Yeah."