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part-time, though. I won’t finish high school until I’m thirty!” Julio said.
“Take it or leave it,” Wirtz said, hunching his thin shoulders. “It is the only thing this school administration is willing to offer you, short of being expelled.”
The kids exchanged looks.
“Of course we're going to take it,” Amber spoke for the others.
“I thought you might.” Wirtz smiled. “You will be notified when a suitable teacher has been found.”
“How long will that be?”
“Hard to say,” Wirtz stood up, rolling down his shirtsleeves. “With your reputations and special needs, it could take weeks.”
“What do you mean by that?” Julio asked.
“Come now, Mr. Ramirez. Look in the mirror. You’re almost twenty and if you still can’t help yourself, how can you expect someone else to?”
“That’s a cheap shot, Mr. Wirtz.”
“That’s my honest assessment as an educator. Meanwhile, until a teacher is found, enjoy your little criminal activities in the woods.”
    As the kids moped out of the office, they passed a stranger in the hallway, a gaunt man with kind eyes. He was five feet eight, wearing a Colorado Rockies baseball jacket and cap and studying a school bulletin board. None of the kids noticed him.
    Mr. Wirtz locked his office door nearby and approached the man. “The school’s closed,” Wirtz said. “Are you waiting for someone?”
    John Battle pointed at the bulletin board. “This announcement,” he said. “Just posted today?”
Mr. Wirtz leaned in and studied the page. “Why, yes. Perhaps you’re interested in applying for the position here at Garfield?”
“Perhaps.”
Wirtz pulled down the announcement and handed it to Battle. “By all means, be my guest. I can put up another.”
“What does the job involve, anyway?”
Mr. Wirtz pointed at the Tadpoles pushing and shoving each other out the front door.
“Survival tactics, mostly,” Wirtz said. “For the teacher, not the students.”
“Then maybe I’m the guy,” Battle said.
    Back at Shooks Run, the ancient Cottonwood swayed and creaked in the crisp autumn wind above the teenagers. The big tree would be the last along the creek to lose its foliage. Night was descending all around in a cloak of gray.
    “Weird tree,” Amber shivered. “It seems to swing back and forth like it’s looking for something.”
“I’ll bet trees get bored sitting in one place,” Marie said.
The teenagers sat on their log, smoking cigarettes and drinking the rest of Julio’s stolen beer.
“Beer always tastes good after a hard day of school,” Julio said. He took in the line of long faces. Better change the subject. “Hey, look at the bright side! The school’s treating us like we’re special for a change.”
“We are special. Special Ed,” Toby moaned.
“Special Ed is for retards,” Marie said.
“I say we steal a car, drive it to Miami and sell it.” Julio loved cars.
Marie said, “I say we just sit right here frozen stiff and get high for a month.”
“Mr. Wirtz is right,” Toby shrugged. “We don't fit nowhere, man.”
“You’re bumming me out,” Amber frowned.
“Just saying it like it really is.”
Julio chugged down a beer, then violently crushed the empty aluminum can on his head. Everyone looked at him but no one congratulated him.
“Big fat fool,” Amber said. “Hope you get brain damage.”
“Say what?”
“You heard me.” She stared up at the branches of the tree. “Winter's coming.”
“Just like every year, you dumb little bitch,” Julio said. “Is that all you think about is trees and cold?”
“Big fat fool.”
Julio stood up, puffed out his chest and danced around like a boxer. “You want some of this?”
“I don't eat pork.”
The other kids laughed. Julio laughed too. That made Amber laugh.
“Sometimes I wish I was a tree,” she said.
“Why?” Julio asked, seriously, as he sat back on the log.
“I'd have a place of my own, you know? Roots.”
Everyone looked up at the big old tree now. It seemed to