Mandy turned the corner, her sights already on the orange Full Plate truck with the nice driver, just pulling up in front of the house next door. Mandy had been enjoying Full Plate so much she’d even logged onto their site to write a five-star review: “I used to be scared to use the stove,” she wrote. “Your recipes are so easy and so, so good. The meal choices for next week look amazing too. Yum. Can’t wait to cook!”—Jodi, West Virginia

“They’re in the Bahamas!” she called to the driver. “I don’t know why they don’t just cancel.”

“Want it upstairs again?” he asked, like they were an old team and he knew the drill.

“Yes, please,” Mandy said. “You’re the best.”

Chapter 13

“This sucks,” Black Ryan complained. He leaned back against the bathroom door and gazed forlornly at the wet-toilet-paper-strewn floor. “It smells so bad.”

Liam had been hanging out with Black Ryan a lot recently. Both boys had pretty much the same take on what had happened in the schoolyard that night: Bruce was an asshole, and all of this was his fault. Bruce was the only one who really owed all those kids an apology, and he alone should be doing community service at the school to make up for it. But Bruce’s and Ryan’s parents had chipped in five thousand dollars apiece for repairs to the schoolyard so their sons wouldn’t have to clean toilets and could “choose their own” fake community service. Liam’s and Black Ryan’s parents weren’t about to cough up five thousand dollars. They wanted them to be punished. So here they were, cleaning the kindergarten boys’ bathroom.

“It smells like ass,” Liam said.

Black Ryan shook his head. “Not my ass.”

Liam turned off the hot-water tap and heaved the bucket of sudsy gray water out of the sink and onto the floor. He plunged the mop into the water and then thwacked it down on the tiles.

“Hey, you’re not going to mop without picking up all that paper, are you? That’s disgusting, man.”

Liam was sort of hoping that the toilet paper would just disintegrate into the water and disappear, but Black Ryan was already dutifully putting on a pair of blue rubber gloves. Liam dropped the mop and put on a pair too.

They began to scoop up the damp, dirty toilet paper and chuck it into the garbage.

“Oh, that’s nasty. That had streaks on it. Actual shit streaks,” Black Ryan moaned.

“Pigs,” Liam said. “Hey, I’ve been meaning to ask, do you mind when people call you Black Ryan? I mean, does it offend you?”

He’d been wondering this forever. Ever since he’d met Black Ryan in ninth grade homeroom and heard everyone, including Mr. Vonn, their homeroom teacher, call him Black Ryan.

“They call me that?”