“Don’t you think I know that?” And so on. I just eat my bologna sandwich and pick at the carrot and cucumber sticks Granma put in a bowl on the table.

After lunch, we have more errands to run. Mom has to get her Texas driver’s license renewed. “It’ll be an outing,” she tells me. “It’ll be fun. Come on—let’s get out of the house. We can’t sit around here all day. We’ll go for a treat.”

So we borrow Granma’s Volvo and drive to some office building with a big parking lot around it. It’s really incredibly cold in the waiting room, but finally they call our number, and some guy at a desk takes Mom’s photo with a little camera; she puts on a big frozen smile and signs some papers. Afterward we go to Half Price Books (I think that’s the treat), which is around the corner, but for some reason you still have to get in the car. It feels like everywhere we go in Austin, we end up by the side of some busy road or highway. For a few seconds, when we walk outside, I warm up again, but every time we go inside I start shivering.

Half Price Books is more of a warehouse than a bookstore—the ceiling is made of big square panels. Some of them are missing, and others have been turned into overhead lights. You can hear the hum of the air-conditioning everywhere.

Mom wants to buy a present for Granma, to say thank you for having us. They have a lot of big art books, including a book of photographs about New York. I show it to her, to be funny, and she flips through the pages for a second but gives it back. “That’s not really what I had in mind,” she says. But she looks at me, too, like, Are you okay? After that, I just wander around—it’s a good place to play hide and seek, and I amuse myself trailing after Mom without her knowing it. Eventually I get bored and let her see me. “Oh, there you are,” she says, like she’s been looking for me, which she hasn’t. “Find anything good?” but I shake my head.

There’s a comic book section near the checkout, and Mom says, when we’re waiting in line, “You like comic books.”

A bunch of kids are standing around, laughing and reading one of the stories. They have long shorts and key chains coming out of their pockets and look about fifteen years old.

“What do you mean, I like comic books?” I have to talk quietly, so nobody can hear us, but I hate doing that, because then everybody knows I’m having this embarrassing conversation with my mother.

“You’re always asking for comic books.”

Sometimes parents get this idea of you, because of something you said like three years ago, which for some reason they keep bringing up. “Jake likes comic books. I think you’re thinking of Jake.”

“I know the difference between you and Jake.”