“After his dad stabbed him with scissors?”

Dice let go of my elbow. “Bay,” he said, “was trying, incorrectly, to build a bomb for me.” This wasn’t what Bay had said, but I had the feeling they were colluding; there was some intention behind these conflicting stories. “He got a thousand pieces of glass in his face.”

“A bomb?” I said.

“Sometimes you have to fight violence with violence,” Dice said. “Do we prefer violence? No. But consider what’s at stake.” I blundered after him. Would I bomb mining machinery? Would I bomb a house if there was no one in it? I would not bomb a house if there was someone in it.

“I used to work in a power plant,” said Dice. “Did you know you pulverize the coal into fairy dust before you burn it, so it’s hotter? I used to clean the fly ash out of hoppers. It’s as soft as water. It clogs in your mask. It’s what’s left of the ferns in the wet forests and it’s radioactive, no one knows that coal plants are a hundred times worse than nuclear. No one knows it because everything you read about climate change is so boring. Why is it all so boring?”

I shook my head. It didn’t bore me; it made me sad.

“It’s because climate change is so big—so extra-human in scope, Beryl,” he said. “And the solutions are so mundane. Change your lightbulbs. Bike. Recycle.”

“I wish nature could beat people up,” I said.

He smiled. “Exactly, exactly,” he said. “And let me tell you something true. This is the best conversation I’ve ever had about our rules.”

I flushed. My mother told me the right response to a compliment isn’t to try to deny it. Just to say thank you. But I couldn’t even say that to Dice, I was too excited. “Really, the best?” I managed.

“If you stay on here you will find another solution,” he said. He nodded. “A real solution.” We passed the hickory and stepped through the yellow leaves. Dice said, “In school they teach you that natural selection is all competition, but cooperation, cooperation is equally strong. Cooperation determines which animals live and which die, and what form they take. This is dangerous knowledge.” He paused. I wasn’t used to so much thoughtfulness. Emotion was easy and planning was hard, and most people, activists or otherwise, never moved from one to the next. The more knowledge is inherent in a thing, the greater the love, Bay had said at the bus stop.