“I’d call it ‘creative thinking.’ I’d call it ‘roundabout thinking.’ I’d call it ‘making use of all of our talents,’ including ones we aren’t in control of. Velcro!” Jack laughed and I laughed. “An engineer was hunting in the Alps and noticed his clothes covered with cockleburs. He found they had tiny hooks that stick to the loops in fabric. Voilà! If you go straight for an answer, you get something you already know. If you go the crooked back way, you have a chance of getting something more interesting.”

“So what are we supposed to do?” Jack didn’t like being in the dark about anything.

“Well, what are you preoccupied with these days?” Miss Sedge was addressing both of us, but I got the feeling she was really talking to me. “What do you wake up thinking about? What’s important to you?”

Jack leaned forward, eager to speak.

“And don’t tell me what you think I want to hear.”

Now was my chance. I went upstairs, got my sketchbook, and handed it over without a word. Miss Sedge said nothing. First she held each page an arm’s length away, then she removed her glasses for a close-up. She examined the shirt, the incomplete versions of Cloud, and the drawings of myself in the oval mirror. Since Monday I had made five more drawings, some with hats, some without, and with different expressions from pouting to neutral to fierce. Jack was looking over her shoulder. He whistled and glanced swiftly up at me.

Miss Sedge put the pad down. She aimed a look straight into my eyes until I almost felt like the beggar in the temple about to be healed.

“These are good,” she said. “You know that, don’t you? What are you going to do with them?”

“Do with them?”

Miss Sedge was gazing through me now. “I’m getting an idea.” She woke up her laptop and typed something into Google. Scrolled down. Clicked on a YouTube clip. In a few seconds an image rolled into the black box. Jack and I leaned toward the screen so that our arms were not quite touching.

It started with waves on a shore. Water, sand, and sky were made out of charcoal lines that had been set in motion. The shore crackled in place; waves shuddered over it, withdrew, shuddered back in. A dog appeared. Two dogs. A cow. Children gathered; ran around; stroked the dogs; stroked the cow; ran away. The animals lay down. The shallow waves came and went around them. Birds winked on and off in the sky. The dogs and the cow melted away until all that was left was a light patch where they had been. No people, no children, no animals returned to the sand and no birds to the sky. The waves came and went, came and went, until everything froze and we were staring at the play triangle.