The following Tuesday, eight kids show up. Seymour stands in front of the desks and reads from a crumpled sheet of notebook paper. “Movies make you think civilization will end fast, like with aliens and explosions, but really it’ll end slow. Ours is already ending, it’s just ending too slow for people to notice. We’ve already killed most of the animals, and heated up the oceans, and brought carbon levels in the atmosphere to the highest point in eight hundred thousand years. Even if we stopped everything right now, like we all die today at lunch—no more cars, no more militaries, no more burgers—it’ll keep getting hotter for centuries. By the time we’re twenty-five? The amount of carbon in the air will have doubled again, which means hotter fires, bigger storms, worse floods. Corn, for example, won’t grow as well ten years from now. Ninety-five percent of what cows and chickens eat is guess what? Corn. So meat will be more expensive. Also when there’s more carbon in the air? Humans can’t think as clearly. So when we’re twenty-five, there will be way more hungry, scared, confused people stuck in traffic fleeing flooded or burning cities. Do you think we’re gonna sit in our cars solving climate problems then? Or are we gonna fist-fight and rape and eat each other?”

A junior girl says, “Did you just say rape and eat each other?”

A senior boy holds up a sheet of paper that says See-More Stool-Guy. Ha ha hilarity everywhere.

From the back Mrs. Tweedy says, “Those are some alarming predictions, Seymour, but maybe we could discuss a few steps we could take toward living more sustainably? Some actionable items within reach of a high school club?”

A sophomore named Janet wonders if they couldn’t ban plastic straws from the cafeteria and also give away reusable water bottles with the Lakeport Lion on them? They could also put, like, better posters over the recycling bins? Janet has frog patches sewn on her jean jacket and shiny black raven eyes and the ghost of a mustache on her upper lip and Seymour stands in front of the blackboard with his scrunched-up paper and the bell rings and Mrs. Tweedy says, “Next Tuesday, everybody, we’ll brainstorm more ideas,” and Seymour heads to biology.

He’s walking home from school later that day when a green Audi pulls up beside him and Janet rolls down the window. Her braces are pink and her eyes are a mix of blue and black and she has been to Seattle, Sacramento, and Park City, Utah, which was wild, they went river rafting and rock climbing and saw a porcupine climb a tree, has Seymour ever seen a porcupine?