In the chap­ter, the nar­ra­tor spends Mon­day morn­ings in a large house with a group of ener­getic chil­dren, over­seen by Cora. Despite being there to teach music fun­da­men­tals, the nar­ra­tor real­izes that the true aim is to pro­vide a dis­trac­tion for these demand­ing chil­dren, many of whom rate high on the Fer­al Com­port­ment Con­tin­u­um. The nar­ra­tor amus­ing­ly recounts their past, men­tion­ing that until the age of ten, they believed their grand­fa­ther was a Kodi­ak bear, which par­al­lels the chaot­ic ener­gy of the chil­dren.

One day, Tonio, a “high eight” on the behav­ioral scale, appears unusu­al­ly with­drawn. Nor­mal­ly exu­ber­ant, he sim­ply sits alone while the oth­ers bel­low requests for songs. The nar­ra­tor recalls Tonio’s unique demeanor; he usu­al­ly does­n’t speak but seems to have his own inter­nal world. Try­ing to recon­nect with the chil­dren, the nar­ra­tor shares vibrant sto­ries of leg­endary musi­cians, but they remain rest­less, throw­ing snacks at Tonio, who cow­ers for pro­tec­tion.

In an attempt to shift the atmos­phere, the nar­ra­tor plays music and encour­ages par­tic­i­pa­tion. How­ev­er, as chaos esca­lates and snacks fly, Tonio finds him­self tar­get­ed. The nar­ra­tor’s atten­tion shifts to the pow­er dynam­ics at play; Cora not only fails to pro­tect Tonio but appears to incite the chil­dren’s mean­ness. This obser­va­tion stirs anger with­in the nar­ra­tor, lead­ing to a vis­cer­al response that intim­i­dates the chil­dren tem­porar­i­ly.

After the hour con­cludes, Tonio stum­bles out, fol­lowed by a pack of class­mates who shove him down. As Tonio scram­bles for safe­ty, the nar­ra­tor feels com­pelled to offer pro­tec­tion, pro­claim­ing a bond of friend­ship. How­ev­er, the sin­cer­i­ty behind this promise unrav­els as the nar­ra­tor reflects on the com­plex­i­ty of such vows: pro­tec­tion is a frag­ile assur­ance that often can­not with­stand real­i­ty.

This chap­ter cap­tures the tumul­tuous inter­ac­tion between the nar­ra­tor, the chil­dren, and their behav­ioral strug­gles, high­light­ing themes of inno­cence, safe­ty, and the nature of promis­es under­stood with­in the frag­ile realm of child­hood.