He leaned over the game. “Then don’t start so close to the corners. Start toward the middle. Okay, I’m going to trade you my bricks for your three sheep.”

“No way.”

Settlers of Catan was Liam’s favorite game. You got to build settlements and trade resources, and it was a sort of race to see who could take up the most geographic space on the board. He liked how simple the game was; it was easy to teach. Ted was pretty dumb at Catan though. He became too attached to the materials.

“I like my farm how it is,” he insisted. “I’m keeping my sheep.”

“That’s not how the game works. You have to build and expand. It’s progress, dude.”

Ted sat back, suddenly losing interest. “You know when you started the fire in the schoolyard? Were you guys smoking weed?”

Liam felt his face turn bright red. This kid, holy shit. Still, he didn’t want to lie.

“Actually yeah, some of the other guys were before we got there. I wasn’t though. I’m not really into that.” Unlike my mom and both of your parents, he added silently. Except for that one time with Shy.

“Have you ever smoked weed?” Ted persisted.

Stuart pushed open the glass door. The Brooklyn Strategizer was so nerdy it almost gave him hives, but he knew he would have dug it as a kid. “Let’s go, buddy. I heard you did something bad.”

Ted looked down at the floor and shrugged his shoulders.

Liam stood up while Ted collected the game pieces and put them in the box with the game board. Strategizer protocol dictated that each player had to clean up and put away his game neatly. “Yeah, Billy had to take off, but he said he called you. Ted can’t come back. At least, not this year.”

Stuart glared at him. “Pretty harsh, but I get it.”

“It’s stupid,” Liam said. His lower lip trembled, and for a moment he thought he might cry. Ted’s dad so obviously hated him. And Liam hated that he was now part of the asshole group who’d set fire to the little kids’ schoolyard.

Stuart continued to glare at him while Ted found his backpack and coat.

Liam held out his fist for Ted to bump.

Stuart felt like a dick. Peaches’ kid seemed pretty decent.

“Your mom is cool,” he said before they left, because he wanted to be nice.

Chapter 12

“What would happen if I drank all the vanilla extract?”

“You’d feel ill. And probably a little drunk,” her mother said. “Remember when you used to call it vanilla ‘abstract’?”

Shy was making Toll House cookies. Wendy had taught her and her sisters when they were little. No one in England knew what a Toll House cookie was. They had to go to Tesco in Kensington to get the right chips.