“Stu, you’re talking about our kid.”

“No, the boys who burned the schoolyard down. They came to talk to the classrooms this morning. To apologize. And Ted thought what they did sounded fun.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. Fucking monsters. All right. I’ll go get him. It’ll only be an hour earlier than normal by the time I get there.”

Mandy pulled a piece of crispy duck fat off the sizzling duck body and stuck it in her mouth. It was salty and delicious.

“It’s actually good you guys are coming home, because I made a duck.”

“Whoa. A duck? You’re amazing.”

“Thanks,” Mandy said. “I don’t know why, but I’m really into cooking now. Except there’s this funky little duck egg in the box, but I think the directions for it slipped out, because there’s no mention of it in the instructions.”

“The duck came in a box with instructions?”

Mandy clapped her hand over her mouth. Fucking weed. “You know, the recipe.” Time to change the subject. “Anyway, go get Teddy. The sooner you go, the sooner we can eat!”

“You want to keep your development options open, right?” Liam asked Ted.

“Yes,” Ted answered, hovering over the board with earnest concentration.

Liam felt bad that Ted was getting kicked out. He was a good kid, and of particular interest to Liam now that he knew Ted’s father was that semi-famous weed-smoking dude from the stoop the other night. So what if Ted had set something on fire? Stop putting candles and matches in a bathroom where there are little kids if you don’t want them to set stuff on fire. Stop smoking weed on your stoop in front of your kid.

Because his dad taught music to the younger grades, Liam got to attend private school for free. But his mom said if he wanted “a private school wardrobe and fancy private school tossed salads and wraps for lunch,” Liam had to get an after-school job. He’d been working at the Brooklyn Strategizer twice a week for the past year, picking up kids from the PS 919 schoolyard, walking them the five blocks to the store, and teaching them role-play and board games. He made them homemade sodas and popcorn and swept up and Lysoled the bathroom before the adult evening sessions. At first the place made him feel uncomfortable and unclean. The tables and chairs and floor and doorknobs were sticky, and the other guys who worked there were much older than he was and pretty weird. Danner wore black leather chaps with metal skulls dangling off them and had a tattoo of a frog on his nose. Billy identified as “a wizard” and had stringy purple-and-green hair that hung down to his kneecaps. But they were really nice. Liam made sixteen dollars an hour. It was a good job.