“I hate it here!” Wes yells as soon as I walk into the classroom where he has been detained after the incident. “Tell her I am not going here anymore! You can homeschool me, just like you did Ender!”

I ignore him and go to where the teacher is seated behind her desk, looking like a reluctant jailer. “Hello, my name is Sylvie Pinnock,” I say, holding out my hand for a shake.

“Hi, Sylvie. I’m Ms. Garcia, Wes’s teacher,” the frazzled woman answers, clasping my hand.

“So very nice to meet you,” I say with a gentle smile, thinking of the afternoon drinks I ordered for the Ixtapa Kinder Club staff after Wes trashed the art room.

“I wish it was under better circumstances,” she answers, throwing Wes a doleful look.

“It’s your own stupid fault,” Wes spits from his desk. “You shouldn’t have put me next to Dale! He’s stupid, and he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. And if I have to stay in this school, I’m going to kill him.” He turns his angry stare toward me. “Tell them I’m not going here anymore!”

“Do you mind if I speak with Wes alone?” I ask the teacher.

“Not at all,” the teacher answers, grabbing her purse and rushing from the classroom like a released prisoner.

After she leaves, I tilt my head and say, “Hello, Wes.”

“Tell her I’m not coming back here!” Wes screams in response.

“Hello, Wes,” I repeat. Then I level him with my Jamaican mom eyes until he finally mumbles, “Hi.”

“It’s good to see you,” I say, sitting down at the little desk directly across from his. There is a laminated green name card on it that says Dale Milano. I am guessing this desk belongs to the same Dale who asked me the other day if Wes really has his own videogame room and if so, could they have a playdate. And perhaps Dale really is the reason Wes has his hands crossed over his chest and his face puffy from crying.

“How was your day?” I ask him.

“How do you think it was?” he answers, voice snotty as I have ever heard it.

“Wes, my friend, you need to revisit your tone and try that again,” I answer, my voice still deliberately calm.

“Bad!” he spits out. “My day was bad. Because of her…and Dale.”

“Tell me more about this Dale. Is he a friend?”

“No! He acted like he was going to be my friend, but then he called me a crybaby.”

“He said you were a crybaby? Why would he say this? Did something happen?”

“Kinda,” Wes mumbles. “These kids were playing soccer and I kept on getting the ball but every time I kicked it, the goalie would block it or catch it. The other boys stopped passing it to me because they said I couldn’t kick.”

“And you became frustrated, is that right?”

Wes nods miserably. “I haven’t cried once since coming here. But now all the boys are saying I’m a crybaby. And Dale says he doesn’t want to be my friend anymore.”

“No, mon! Did he really say this to you?”

Wes nods again. “Then he asked Miss Garcia if he could change desks because he said he doesn’t want to sit next to a crybaby.”

“You are not serious.”

“Yeah, he said that! He said it in front of the whole class!” Wes answers, his face crumpling with remembered pain.

I give the situation some consideration and then say, “Oh my goodness, Wes! How lucky! This is the best thing that could have happened to you.”

“What?” Wes says, looking at me like I have gone crazy. “No, it isn’t!”

“Oh, but yes, it is. Dale acted like he was going to be a true friend to you, but you put that boy to the real test, didn’t you now? Made him show his true colors before you invited him to your home. As my good friend Prin would say, ‘now you know he ain’t shit.’”

The unexpected curse word widens Wes’s eyes. Then he giggles. “Yeah, he ain’t shit,” he confirms, voice stronger now.

I hit him with a stern look. “But that is the last time you will say that word out loud, right? I can’t have you out here cussing up this nice school.”

Another giggle from Wes. “Okay, I won’t say it again,” he whispers as if we are co-conspirators in a plot.

“Good, now tell me everything this teacher of yours has done to you.”

“I told you. She sat me next to Dale!”

“And when Dale showed his true colors, what did she do?”

Wes doesn’t respond so I prompt him again, “Wes, what did Mrs. Garcia do?”

“She was about to send him to the principal’s office but when he got up, I shoved him.”

“Ah…” I say with a nod. “So now, Dale is at home watching Netflix while you are looking at a two-day suspension because you didn’t like the results of your true friend test.”

“It’s not my fault!” Wes shouts in that aggrieved way of his. As if everyone and everything in the world has been placed here to set him off.

“Wes, I am not here to talk about fault,” I answer with a sharp shake of my head. “I am here to discuss how we are going to get you out of this two day suspension, my friend.”

“We’re not,” he replies. “You’re going to homeschool me like you did Ender.”

It takes all I have not to roll my eyes. “First of all, Barron homeschooled himself. I only paid for the books and the testing. Second of all, that option is not on the table, my friend, because I am not anybody’s teacher. So, we are going to have to come up with another way to get Mrs. Garcia back on your side. Come, do you have any thoughts about how we can do this?”

“I don’t know,” Wes huffs at first. But then after a moment of thought, he says, “Maybe I could say sorry.”

“Maybe,” I agree, my voice considering. “But this could be the kind of situation that will require a very sincere apology and I don’t know if you’re up to that yet. I mean, look how smart Barron is and he has still not unlocked his sincere apology skill!”

I let that little challenge float between us like a life preserver tossed into the conversation. Then I hold my breath and wait to see if he will take the bait.

“Hey, mon,” Wes says, clasping Barron by the hand and pulling him in for a chest bump after we leave the school and walk to where Barron waits on the concrete steps.

“Did Vee really never home school you?” Wes asks as we start walking back to the gated community where Holt’s estate sits.

Wow, I think to myself. That was his biggest takeaway from my very intense afterschool special-level intervention?

“I mean, she paid for the tests and I am thankful for that,” Barron answers with that Jamaican kid flair for answering difficult questions in a way that won’t get him in trouble. “Why? Do you want to be homeschooled now, mon?”

Wes shrugs. “I guess not. The teacher was mad at me, but I apologized and promised to bring apples in for the whole class tomorrow, so she said I could come back to school.”

“Nice!” Barron says. “I still have a hard time saying sorry.”

To his credit, Wes doesn’t rub it in though technically speaking, this is the one talent he can easily lord over Barron. Instead he says, “Hey, you wanna play Viking Shifters in my game room when we get back to the house?”

“After you do your homework and write a note of apology,” I remind Wes.

Wes rolls his eyes. “After all that stuff?” he edits.

“Yeah!” Barron says. And just like that, a bad day has turned around.

However, guilt twists my heart as I realize how true my words to Wes were. Barron had seen Wes at his worst. That very first day in Ixtapa he had waited patiently for me to defuse the raging eight-year-old before asking if Wes wanted to try out his bioHelmet, as if the younger boy hadn’t just trashed an entire art room. And now here they were, months later, and still the best of friends. Barron had even waited outside the school without protest while I handled the fallout from Wes’s latest blow up.

Barron doesn’t seem to care that Wes occasionally sobs like a child half his age and flies into fits of rage. And Wes doesn’t seem to care that Barron is a 40-year-old genius trapped in a child’s body. They get each other and accept each other just the way they are. Without judgment.

There aren’t many adult relationships I could say that about.

But thanks to me, they will soon be torn apart.