Content Warning: This section of the guide contains a description of death, a traumatic work accident, and two fights.

Rebecca, a classmate of the narrators, chases them around the school playground, trying to touch them and infect them with the cooties they have declared she carries. The boys run into their beloved, pink-haired teacher, Maggie.

Topher interrupts the narrative to give a breakdown of his six categories of teachers: Zombies (older teachers), Caff-Adds (caffeine addicts), Dungeon Masters (authoritarians), Spielbergs (like to show movies in class), Noobs (overachievers), and the Good Ones: “They’re the teachers you actually want to go back and say hi to the next year. The ones you don’t want to disappoint” (7). He identifies Maggie as a Good One. Topher describes first meeting Maggie two years before when his family went to the circus. Maggie worked as a juggler, one of the local talents the circus hired. Topher’s mother, Linda, knew Maggie from the PTA. Maggie already knew Topher’s name.

Maggie listens to the boys and Rebecca and calms the situation, explaining that scientists eradicated all cooties in 1994. She makes the boys apologize to Rebecca and sends the boys into the restroom to wash their hands.