Mrs. Billington passes photographs - Endangered South American Amphibians. Three arms, two tongues, no eyes, a blue toad with a horn in its mouth attached in reverse. Toads, she says, are not that different from humans. Roger makes a face like purple jelly in a jar, pointing to the vivarium, where Santa Claus, the class bullfrog, has died of boredom. Mrs. Billington explains Global Warming and says many of the things now living will soon be dead.
Bells shatter the classroom.
Time to fight Roger. At the end of a block a circle gathers. We stand two feet apart. They took her there, as if she were their grandchild, and the only one. When he let her drive the boat going past those thousand islands with their thousand houses, some with doors not fifty feet from channels deep enough for ocean-going ships, brumal currents dragged at them.