Liam glanced at his mom and then at Mrs. Watson and then down at the rug again. Ted and his classmates wiggled impatiently in their chairs. Half of them had food on their shirts and untied shoelaces. The room smelled like farts.

“Yeah. So.” Liam looked up at the classroom full of boys and girls. He knew three out of every ten boys in every classroom in the school from his after-school job at the Brooklyn Strategizer, which made this even more humiliating. “Um.”

It occurred to Stuart that the son had inherited none of his mother’s cuteness. He was awkward and gawky like his dad.

“So, me and my friends—” Liam glanced at the other three boys, who looked away. “We were hanging out in the schoolyard. At night, when it was dark outside. And we found a bottle of vodka that someone had left under the slide. And vodka is mostly alcohol, which is flammable, so that gave us an idea.”

He hadn’t gone into such detail in the other classrooms, but the morning had worn him thin. He hesitated. Was he teaching these kids bad things? Oh God, what an idiot.

“Um, one of you guys want to take it from here?”

Black Ryan cleared his throat. “We weren’t doing anything bad at first, just hanging out. But then we decided it’d be cool to make a video of flames pouring down the slide. So we—”

“I did it. It was all my idea.” Bruce stepped forward with his hands in his jeans pockets, his weird eyes bulging. It sounded like he was bragging. “I poured the vodka down the slide and lit it on fire.”

Ryan kicked at the rug with the toe of his Converse sneaker. “And I took a video. We were going to put it on YouTube. But then the leaves started to burn, and the rubber mats on the ground melted, and the little tree caught fire, and—”

“And we’re sorry,” Bruce interrupted him impatiently.

“We’re so sorry,” Black Ryan said.

“Yeah, we are,” Ryan said.

“I’m really, really sorry,” Liam muttered, glad that it was almost over.

“Thanks, guys,” Peaches interrupted them. “It’s always hard to admit when you did something wrong.” She turned to the class again. “These guys will be helping out in school a few days a week until the holidays, so you’ll be seeing them around.”

The class applauded for no apparent reason—almost every class had applauded—and then everyone began talking at once. Except for Ted, who raised his hand.

“Ticktock!” Mrs. Watson shouted.

“Applesauce!” the class shouted back and then sat silently in their chairs.

“Ted has a question,” the teacher said. “Go ahead, Ted.”

Stuart stared at his son. This hadn’t happened in any of the other classes.