A promising life cut short

"I remember one time, I told him I wanted a hat, and he just took his hat off and gave it to me."

"One time I'm like, 'Jude, if I die, will you even come to my funeral?' And he said, 'You always come up with the craziest questions.' "

"He had a laugh! Everyone in the neighborhood could hear his laugh."

"You didn't want to go up against him. You always lost. And he always rubbed it in."

Jude arrived in 10th grade at Community Charter School of Cambridge nowhere near ready for what was expected of him: stellar behavior, nightly homework in every subject, passing grades of 70, detention for failing to meet standards.

He hated it. "He had tantrums here in that first year," says Paula Evans, head of the school.

But Jude was just the kind of kid for which the charter school exists. Have high expectations for a student and give him enough attention, its philosophy goes, and he will thrive. So teachers stood over Jude, gave him their mornings, nights, and weekends. They hooked him up with a tutor from MIT. They made it clear that failing meant he couldn't play basketball, and he loved nothing more than basketball.

"We forced him to do his work," Evans says. "We forced him to behave. He was surrounded." In his first year at the school they saw spectacular flashes in the funny, handsome, charismatic son of a single mother, a hotel worker from Haiti. He threw himself into a course on slavery, and relished the back and forth of student debates in his humanities class. When he wasn't animated by a subject, he sloughed off and earned detentions. But he always took his punishment without complaint, says Juma Crawford, head of the upper school. Eventually, Jude bought into the deal the school offered: They would always have his back, but he couldn't let them down either. By his senior year, he rarely needed standing over. He had bad decisions to make up for, and the toughest schedule in the school - five classes instead of four, including AP English. Co-captain of the basketball team, he called around every night to make sure all his players got their homework done.

Still, Jude seemed to believe further study wasn't an option until Crawford browbeat him into applying to Dean College in Franklin.

"I figured I would get my high school diploma and get a job, like so many other black males who I see every day," he wrote in his essay. "I have come a long way from the naïve kid who terrorized elementary school classrooms. I now feel like I have earned the title of scholar."

Jude got in. Crawford gave him the good news on the morning of May 18. The senior wanted to keep it quiet. Crawford guessed he wanted to avoid bragging.

Every school has its standouts. There are the students who soar highest, who go onto stellar colleges and big careers. And then there are those who travel farthest, kids who look like lost causes when they come through the door and end up as pillars of the school. That was Jude.

He gave his teachers at Community Charter School of Cambridge a precious gift: proof that what they are doing in that little school in Kendall Square is right and good. They looked forward to sending that proof into the world, certain Jude would make them even more proud out there.

They will not see what he would have become. A few nights after his college acceptance, just three weeks before graduation, Jude Odige's heart stopped. After a game of pick-up basketball - his greatest joy - his heart just stopped.

Yvonne Abraham is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at abraham@globe.com.