Miss Slattery the school counselor says it could be sensory processing disorder or attention deficit disorder or hyperactivity disorder or some combination thereof. The boy is too young for her to know for sure. And she’s not a diagnostician. But his screaming frightened the other children and Principal Jenkins has suspended Seymour for Friday and Bunny should make an appointment with an occupational therapist as soon as possible.

Bunny pinches the bridge of her nose. “Is that, like, included?”

Manager Steve at the Wagon Wheel says, you bet, Bunny, bring your kid to work, so long as you want to get fired, so on Friday morning she plucks the knobs off the stove burners, sets a box of Cheerios on the counter, and puts the Starboy DVD on repeat.

“Possum?”

On the Magnavox Starboy drops from the night in his bright-shining suit.

“Touch your ears if you’re listening.”

Starboy finds a family of armadillos trapped in a net. Seymour touches his ears.

“When the microwave timer says zero zero zero, I’ll be home to check on you. All right?”

Starboy needs help. Time to call Trustyfriend.

“You’ll sit tight?”

He nods; the Pontiac rattles down Arcady Lane. Trustyfriend the Owl soars out of the cartoon night. Starboy lights the way while Trustyfriend tears through the net with his bill. The armadillos squirm free; Trustyfriend announces that friends who help friends are the best friends of all. Then something that sounds like a giant scorpion starts scratching on the roof of the double-wide.

Seymour listens in his room. He listens at the front door. At the sliding door off the kitchen. The sound goes: tap scratch scratch.

On the Magnavox a big yellow sun is coming up. Time for Trustyfriend to fly back to his roost. Time for Starboy to fly back to the Firmament. Best friends best friends, Starboy sings,

We’re never apart,

I’m in the sky,

And you’re in my heart.

When Seymour opens the sliding door, a magpie sails off the roof and lands on an egg-shaped boulder in the backyard. It dips its tail and calls wock wock wock.

A bird. Not a scorpion at all.

An overnight storm has cleared the smoke and the morning is bright. The thistles nod their purple crowns and tiny insects sail everywhere. The thousands of pines stacked against the back of the property, rising toward a ridge, seem to breathe as they sway. In out in out. It’s nineteen paces through waist-high weeds to the egg-shaped boulder and by the time Seymour climbs on top, the magpie has flapped to a branch at the edge of the forest. Splotches of lichen—pink, olive, flame orange—decorate the boulder. It’s amazing out here. Big. Alive. Ongoing.