“But what do you mean, exactly?” says Diana. “Like, nuclear war or something?”
Troy shakes his head.
“Climate anxiety,” he says.
“So, like, you’re afraid of the weather?” says Will.
Troy sighs.
“Well, yeah,” he says. “Weather’s a part of it. There’s the heat waves, and storms, and droughts, and floods, and wildfires. But then there’s the dying oceans, the millions of animals facing extinction, the refugee crisis. And how, if we don’t do anything, it’s all going to be irreversible in five years.”
Will doesn’t respond. Nobody says anything, in fact, for a few seconds. And this time the pause doesn’t bother you so much, since you’re still trying to add up all the things he just said.
“Sorry, I’m not supposed to do that,” says Troy.
“Do what?” says Fran.
“Obsess about the doomsday stuff. That’s what got me in trouble in the first place.”
He reaches out a stick and pokes at the fire.
“What do you mean bytrouble?” says Diana.
“I got expelled,” he says. “I’m homeschooled now. It’s also why I’m here with you guys, I guess.”
The smoke blows toward him, and he turns to cough, rubbing at his left eye under his glasses.
“You got expelled?” says Fran. “That ishardcore, my friend. Why?”
When he speaks next, it’s a little on the quiet side and the wind kicks up at the same time so no one can quite hear him. But everyone inches nearer. Will puts a hand to his ear in the universal sign for louder. Troy clears his throat.
“I set a classroom on fire,” he says.
“WHAT?” says Will.
Suddenly, the cold isn’t bothering you so much. And the undersize fire is far from your mind. Everyone stares at Troy.
“It’s kind of a complicated story,” he says.
No one stops staring.
“We don’t care,” says Fran. “Please tell us how you set the school on fire!”
Troy pokes at the fire with a stick.
“Right,” he says. “Okay. Well. I guess there was this biology teacher, Mr. Shiftler. That’s probably the first thing you need to know. He’s this old white dude with big bushy caterpillar eyebrows and a Colonel Sanders mustache. He wore the same polo shirt in five different colors, one for each day of the week, and he used the same worksheets every year, so people just copied them and handed them down to the next class.
“His class was, like, the most useless hour of my life. Usually, I just put an earbud in and listened to podcasts while I copied down the formula for photosynthesis, and it was all good. I had some other teachers who were all right, so one bad one wasn’t the end of the world. And I think I would have just finished out the year like that, just zoning in sixth period, but then there was this cyclone that hit.”
“What cyclone?” asks Diana.
“Idai. You probably didn’t hear about it, because it was in southern Africa. I didn’t even pay attention at first. But it hit Malawi and Mozambique and Zimbabwe. It destroyed people’s homes and crops, and killed a thousand people right away.”
“You set someone’s class on fire because of a cyclone in Africa?” says Will.
“Let him finish!” says Fran.
Troy takes a breath.
