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punctured the outside wall, framing rectangles of a perfect September sky. The back door stood open to a cool morning breeze that huffed through the screen and whorled with the smell of hot coffee.
    Thad chomped his toast, gulped his milk. Peering at him over the front section of the paper, I asked, “ What bites?”
    Thad cast a sympathetic glance toward Neil, telling me, “Shopping on Saturday.” Thad shuddered at the thought of the crowded supermarket, the wasted weekend morning. “Hazel always shopped during the week.”
    I reminded him, “Hazel’s somewhere in Florida.” We were speaking of Hazel Healy, the unlikely name of the Quatrain family’s longtime housekeeper, now retired. All of us were still busy adjusting to our new life together in the house on Prairie Street, so we’d put off the search for live-in help. The prospect of bringing a stranger into our home had little appeal for any of us, though we all recognized the logistical advantages that would be reaped from finding Hazel’s successor.
    “I don’t mind,” Neil told us, referring to the shopping. “Really.” He was gracious if not sincere—the thought of slogging through those crammed aisles with a clattering, banged-up wire cart was enough to knot my stomach.
    Changing the subject, I asked Thad, “Two weeks into it, how does it feel to be an upperclassman?” He had just started his junior year.
    “Okay, I guess. I like most of my classes, but chemistry’s a drag.”
    Neil winced, remembering something painful. “I never got the hang of chemistry either. I kept telling myself that it was something like cooking—that the chemical equations were just ‘recipes’—but one afternoon during lab, my experimental dash of ammonia in Clorox turned the brew in my beaker sufficiently toxic to evacuate an entire wing of the school. The mixture had produced chloramine gas, a particularly noxious agent.” He laughed lamely.
    Thad’s laughter was hearty. “So then what happened?”
    “My counselor finally bought my argument that chemistry was of no use to an aspiring architect, and he let me transfer directly into physics. The lab sessions were considerably less hazardous, but it was still no fun.”
    Thad thought for a moment. “Neil? What did you do for fun?”
    Neil glanced at me. The night before, in bed, we’d aired our concern that while Thad seemed committed enough to his classes, he had no apparent outside interests. Sports did nothing for him, in spite of our gentle prodding to make a runner out of him, an activity that both Neil and I still enjoyed together; we’d have happily included him. The dating bug had not yet bitten, though it was surely only a matter of time. As for clubs or band or whatever, he just wasn’t involved. And though he never spoke of it, we assumed he was still in repressed mourning over the loss of his mother. Neil and I agreed that it was important for Thad to find something, or his boredom might lead to trouble.
    So Neil answered, “I ran cross-country. And I got into extracurricular art projects—set-decorating for school plays. I was even in a play or two.” He could also have mentioned chairing the decorating committee for his prom, but he must have decided Thad would judge his experience with tinsel and chicken wire a tad fruity.
    Thad’s face wrinkled in thought as he wiped peanut butter from the corner of his mouth. He asked me, “How ’bout you, Mark? What’d you do in school—I mean, besides ‘school.’”
    I set the newspaper on the table and folded it. “Well, I ran cross-country and track. And I worked on the yearbook and the school paper.”
    Thad nodded, thinking. Then, turning again to Neil, he said, “There’s going to be a play at school. But first you need to know about acting and stuff, right?”
    “ No, ” Neil and I said in unison, leaning toward the boy.
    Neil told him, “You have to start somewhere, and that’s what school is for.”
    I added, “It’s worth a try.