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up the aisle, on the wall behind my lunch table, three feet below the ceiling. With just enough room to picture my clock.
    4:32 , the clock called out each time.
    That’s so weird , said the threads.
    The day Saskia returned, I walked up the middle of the aisle, eyes locked on the red clock. Still, I could see a girl, sitting at my table. Directly in my line of sight. Her head immediately below the spot on the wall at which I stare every time. So I looked at her.
    Things happen for a reason. No they don’t.
    Saskia.
    The last time I saw her, it was ten years ago. On that day, she did especially well, was extra attentive, and earned six stickers, enough for a Fun Break. She sat with her interventionist and wrote a poem, while I fumbled to get my coat on as my father waited to take me for ice cream. She shouted out each line as she wrote it.
    â€œONCE upon a very merry time,” she said loudly as she wrote the words. “Once. Once upon a VERY! MERRY! TIME!” and she wrote some more.
    I never saw Saskia again.
    A decade later, here she was, at lunch hour, sitting at the seventh table in the third row. My table.
    That’s when I noticed the others at the table. She wasn’t alone. The metal shop boys with greasy fingernails and scuffed boots were there, clustered beside her. She was leaning slightly away from them. I don’t think she welcomed their presence.
    No one ever sat at this table except me, which was why I chose it in the first place. The door to the janitors’ lunchroom was only a few feet away, always open, with janitors inside, having lunch, talking or playing cards. So no one sat here. I think people don’t like to be this close because janitors are not people. Janitors should not have lunchrooms. Janitors are not supposed to eat lunches.
    They are supposed to mop .
    I approached my table, then stopped. There was Saskia. There also sat the three loud boys from shop class, and they laughed loudly, talked loudly, and threw Tater Tots at each other. Loudly.
    One of the boys leaned over to look at Saskia’s sketch pad. He was tall, with a wide frame and closely cropped red hair. “Whatcha drawing?” he asked and moved closer to her along the bench. She didn’t acknowledge him. She didn’t answer. She adjusted her headphones instead.
    All the better to hear you with. Or not.
    â€œLeave her alone, she’s busy,” said the boy with a gold earring in his left ear and shoulder-length blond hair. I knew him. His name was Danny Hardwick, and we shared the same homeroom class. He bounced a Tater Tot at his friend; the chunk of potato hit Saskia in the shoulder and fell to her lap. All three boys laughed. Saskia did not.
    â€œWhoops,” Danny said. “Sorry.”
    I don’t think he meant it.
    Saskia wiped the Tater Tot to the floor. It rolled to the lip of the janitors’ lunchroom. Inside, Mr. Earle and Mr. Bryce argued baseball, unconcerned with the Tater Tot. I was suddenly annoyed at them. They weren’t supposed to be having lunch. Janitors are supposed to clean up floors and bathrooms; they are not supposed to eat. In particular, they shouldn’t eat sandwiches, because they eat sandwiches with their hands. Although they may wash their hands, I can’t be certain that they actually do . Not all of them. Not all of the time. By the law of averages, janitors periodically eat sandwiches with the same unwashed hands that just scrubbed a toilet.
    A toilet .
    â€”
    Listen : On December 18, 2010, I read a study by Dr. Charles Gerba that found that a flushing toilet sends a plume of aerosols into the air. These aerosols, contaminated with fecal matter, bacteria, and viruses, can dissipate about the room for hours, settling on everything exposed: doorknobs, sink fixtures, and any person who walks into the bathroom.
    I told my father about the aerosols. It was the first thing at the top of my mental stack when he asked me to tell him