Eliezer’s temper flares. “Would you drop everything if Yudi had been arrested for arson?” he asks, his words slow and threatening

The whispers fill the building, theories like sparks that touch every corner. There were fire trucks outside the school yesterday.

The menahel’s office is totally boarded off. Everything stinks like smoke. Hey, has anyone seen Yudi Stein today?

Eliezer hears the last question as he strides past boys in the hallway, heading toward the makeshift office they set up for him in one of the resource rooms. The boys glance at him, their eyes alight with curiosity.

He doesn’t respond. Very few people know exactly what happened, and the ones who were informed are all people Eliezer trusts to be discreet. This isn’t information he wants publicized.

Yesterday, the firefighters had found enough evidence to call the fire arson. No, Eliezer had said, his voice strong. It was an accident. A simple mistake—

He’d stopped. The firefighters had looked to the corner of the office, where Yudi was huddled behind Naftali. Their faces had been polite and unreadable. If that’s how you want to play this, Rabbi, one had said.

Nothing is solved by sparing Yudi, but nothing is solved by throwing him to the lions, either. Yudi is dangerous, just as Eliezer has always suspected, but he’s desperate for redemption now, desperate to be saved.

And Eliezer finds that he wants to save Yudi, as indulgent as the emotion feels. He wants Naftali to look at him more often as he had last night: eyes gleaming, pride and gratitude within them. A younger brother who sees his big brother as worthy of admiration.

He’d never quite grasped how important Naftali’s regard was to him until he’d been gifted with it last night.

Eliezer exhales and closes the door to his temporary new office securely. Now, he has to make the phone call that he’s been dreading. He’d only gotten the Steins’ voicemail yesterday — their time zones were out of sync — but his terse message hadn’t garnered a response even though he’d stressed the urgency.

He dials again, and this time, Mr. Stein picks up. “David Stein.”

“This is Eliezer Hartman.” He doesn’t wait for a pause, for the distracted way that David Stein tends to pick up the phone. Yudi did what? Heh, kids these days. I was the same when I was his age. How can we make it better? Always that offer, as though each offense can be easily swept under the rug. It isn’t that Yudi’s parents don’t care about him. It’s just that they don’t see school or his behavior there as a priority.

Eliezer speaks without preamble. “Yudi has been suspended indefinitely.” He elucidates the breadth of what Yudi had done the day before, careful not to let any defensiveness creep into his voice. “I did consider expulsion, but Yudi seems genuinely remorseful, and I’m willing to allow him back with some provisions.”