Her grandmother was writing furiously in a notebook. Some people were sketching. Electronics didn’t work within one hundred feet of the door. One of the scientists started to put on a special suit that was bright yellow and baggy. Ayanna felt sure she had seen this place before, drawn it too. She was in an art phase; both of her bedrooms were miniature art galleries. Walls were covered in her scribbles and landscapes and puppy approximations. All the blue crayons were worn to nubs. The silver markers that she used to draw what her parents called v’s were drying out and patchy.

Just like at the museum, Ayanna also made her own placards. This looked like God Teeth and Puppy Dog and maybe—she squinted as if it would somehow improve her vision—Cotton Candy in the Sky.

The pink thing blobbed closer to the door. Almost everyone around Ayanna moved or reacted in some way, but Ayanna took a small step forward. It was a little cloud, sometimes resembling a fuzzy dog, sometimes a face. I love it, I love it, she thought. It was talking in a high-pitched voice like a girl in an anime. “Can any of you understand me?”

“Yes,” Ayanna said, “of course.”

Her grandmother paused in her frantic writing to look at Ayanna.

“Who are you talking to?”

“Her.”

Ayanna pointed to the cloud talking so quickly that she could barely understand it. It spoke of a daughter it wanted to apologize to, something about oranges, something about crossing over, silver, knocking on the wrong door.

Other people said they couldn’t hear a voice, they heard what sounded like maybe a loud air purifier. Whir, whir, whir.

One teenage boy said he heard the words paintbrush, melody, miss.

“This is the first day of silver,” Ayanna’s grandmother said in her most officious voice. “Thank you, we are here to listen.”

Most of the people gathered said it back to her like they did at regular services.

“Help me,” the cloud said.

“How do I help it?” Ayanna asked everyone present.

“You don’t have to worry about that,” a woman said. “You’re a baby. You don’t have to worry about helping anyone but yourself.”

Ayanna was offended by the idea that she was a baby, even when the word was said in a sweet, soft way like the woman said it.

The door closed with a slam.

The weeks after were filled with arguments and theorizing and extended services for the adults. For Ayanna, the weeks after were filled with blue dreams. Sometimes, mundane things like riding in the car or taking a spelling test or eating a popsicle, dreams in which everything but her was cerulean. Sometimes, she would sit up in bed and think of the fluctuating cloud and try to remember everything it had said to her. For the first time in her life, Ayanna felt true discontentment. It aged her in an abrupt way.