“Morning,” Mr. Swiss Family Robinson greeted Stuart from his doorway. Mr. Swiss Family Robinson was Stuart’s nickname for the tall, thin, auburn-haired gentleman who every morning stood at the door of the beautiful brick house on Kane Street, directly across from the schoolyard, wearing a crisply ironed shirt and looking nervous, as if he didn’t quite trust the school to take care of his children. Stuart couldn’t even remember where the name Swiss Family Robinson came from, but it seemed to fit. The house had a bright blue door with a brass door knocker, matching blue shutters, and immaculately curated seasonal flower boxes in every window. Even the sidewalk was cleaner in front of the Swiss Family Robinson house. It was possible that Ted had gone to preschool at Little Mushrooms in the basement of the local church with one of the Swiss Family Robinson children, but Stuart had never encountered any children or even a wife on these morning walks to school, and he had absolutely no idea what Mr. Swiss Family Robinson’s real name was.

Still, every morning, Stuart always said, “Hey.”

“Who’s that?” Ted asked, right on cue. He asked the same question every day.

“I don’t know,” Stuart said, as usual. Then he added, “But we see him every day, so it’s polite to say hey.”

Ted giggled at the rhyme, and Stuart felt his dour mood lighten. Ted was a quiet boy who hadn’t made any close friends yet, but he was a good kid, a really good kid.

Stuart picked up Ted’s skateboard and followed him inside the school entrance. The skinny, dark-haired boy headed up the school stairs to his classroom on the fourth floor, his army-green Herschel backpack banging against his butt.

“See you later, skater. After a while, chile. Be real cool, fool. Eat your food, dude,” Stuart called after him.

He tucked both of their skateboards under his arm and turned away from the stairs toward the dimly lit cafeteria. The school had been built in the 1950s, a mixture of old-fashioned flourishes and uninspired practicality. A sweeping marble staircase greeted visitors just inside the entrance, but the rest of the schoolrooms were prisonlike and drab, with dingy gray linoleum floors, low ceilings, barred windows, and terrible fluorescent lighting. Mothers and fathers in a variety of costumes—business, exercise, Birkenstocks and pajama bottoms, breast milk– or beer-stained T-shirts—straggled by and out the main door. Inside the cafeteria, a mom was crying into a Styrofoam cup of coffee while Miss Patty, the school’s sinewy, sleep-deprived, overly made-up assistant principal who commuted there from Staten Island, tried to comfort her.

On the far wall of the cafeteria was a closed door marked with a yellow sign that read NURSE. Stuart knocked twice, turned the knob, and opened the door.