She sniffed her beaklike nose and shuffled a few papers before reaching for a cream cracker from a small plate on her desk. Marty watched as she shoved one into her mouth and started to chew sourly.

“I’ve seen many a boy like you go down a terrible path.”

As she talked, she scattered bits of dry cracker everywhere. Marty tried to push his chair back a little.

“This is how it starts. Trouble. Here and there. And before you know it, you’re on a slippery slope.”

She looked up at him through her hooded eyelids.

“Now, tell me, boy”—she’d stopped chewing now—“did Gerry do that to you?” She was pointing a long knobbly finger painted in a thick scarlet layer of nail polish toward his chin now. Marty contemplated this for a moment. Had the boy punched him? No. Had he been responsible for Marty falling. Well, sort of. Would Marty have fallen if he wasn’t there? No. Was he the one that threw the stick? Marty couldn’t be sure.

“Marty?” came her voice again.

Marty shook his head.

“No…”

She sat back for a moment. Drummed her long fingernails on the desk. Marty noticed she had three hairs growing out from under her chin. Each of them stiff and slightly curly. She looked at him again with narrowed eyes.

“Hmm, I am displeased. Disappointed. Annoyed. These things don’t reflect well on the school.”

Marty sat, awaiting his fate as she reached for another cracker, wishing the ordeal was over. The phone began to ring on her desk. Her eyes barely registered it as she sat chewing, squishy cracker gunk collecting in the corners of her mouth.

“Since this is the first time you’ve been in trouble,” she said in her slow, laborious voice, “and the incident happened outside of school, we’ll leave it with a good week of lunchtime detention, BUT…”—she leaned forward at this— “if anything else happens, and I mean anything, then we’ll have to get your mother in.”

Marty laughed involuntarily. Miss James’s eyebrows darted upward like two surprised caterpillars.

“What was that?”

“Nothing…”

“It wasn’t what I’d call ‘an attitude,’ was it?”

“No, miss.”

Marty doubted that anyone could actually get his mother out of the house, but looking at Miss James’s beady eyes, he was sure she’d give it a good try.

“Right, then, you’re dismissed.”

She waved her hand, and Marty got up, still aching all over. He listened as she snatched up the phone behind him and answered with an irritated:

“Yeeeeeeeessss?”