Free All-Day Breakfast by Adam Lewis Schroeder

into the back seat. An Alice’s Flowersvan was parked across the street, and at first glance I thought the guy in the passenger seat was pointing a camera at our house. But then the van was squealing off down the street.
    I taped a garbage bag over the smashed window and headed to work.
    I didn’t see the lunchtime wiener massacre myself because I was back at home alone just then, standing at the kitchen counter to fry and eat a freshly bought pound of bacon, followed by an arduous session of flossing carcinogenic material out of my back teeth—drawing blood more than once—and that ate up time, so right before the second bell I was running, tie flapping, down the main hallway toward my classroom. Cam Vincent caught me by standing stock-still under the picture of Eisenhower, sporting the same rubber-lipped half-smile of our former president, arms folded with an identical stoicism, though with hairstyles from diametrically opposed ends of the animal kingdom .
    I thought those very words because, thanks to all that bacon, my brain was operating at the peak of lubrication.
    â€œPeter. So,” said Cam, “we had a cafeteria incident just now.”
    â€œInvolving who?” I asked, though I knew. I might’ve gone wobbly in the knees if the bacon hadn’t propped me up.
    â€œUm.” He gave me a look. “These were all kids from your Chemistry 11. I’ve got them in my office while Mrs. Abel tries to get the cops to come back.”
    â€œWhy, did somebody—?”
    â€œAnd I want the district counselors in here tomorrow, yeah. Amber Morton strolled in after C block, you see her?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œShe’s got one arm. Acts like it’s nothing—told me she’s always had one arm, and the way she walks around, no trauma, no tears, I believed it for a second. I can’t even think straight about it, I mean, how—”
    â€œI need to talk to those kids, can I?”
    He squared his shoulders as we passed the half-empty trophy case.
    â€œI’d appreciate it if you could tell me what to do with them.”
    We sidled into the office and Kathleen, in a yellow dress, paused in watering her fern to give me an apologetic smile. We stopped at Cam’s blue door, six inches ajar.
    â€œWho’s your class right now?” Cam asked. “I’ll go hang out with them.”
    â€œThe nines. Genetics quiz, multicolored hamsters and that.”
    â€œThey hear about that human ear somebody grew out of a mouse’s back?”
    â€œProbably not.”
    â€œKids love that freaky stuff.”
    He strode out into the hallway, more of a spring in his step now that I was apparently on the case, though I still hadn’t found out what had actually happened in the cafeteria. Kathleen turned the fan on beside her desk and started typing.
    â€œSeriously!” Grace was saying in Cam’s office. “You weren’t in gym with him?”
    â€œI was last year,” said Shawn quietly, “but I never saw anything like that.”
    How many were in there?
    â€œBut the size, I mean, it doesn’t really matter what size it is when it’s, like, soft.” Was that Megan Avery, seriously? “It can start out real small and get big, you know, after.”
    â€œReally, Megan, really ?” asked Amber.
    â€œThis whole thing is making me so turned on right now,” Clint said, stonily.
    â€œSure it’s true,” said Megan.
    I slid into the gap in the doorway. Grace and Amber were perched on Cam’s desk and the rest of them sat in a circle on the floor like a “Kumbaya” singalong. Amber wore a green T-shirt that showed a snarling bear. One short sleeve hung like a napkin, because apparently she still had no left arm.
    â€œKnow what, bitches?” Franny sat up on her knees, some godawful purple brooch on her shoulder. “If we want to know if it’s so big he passes out when it’s hard, all