I stared at that boy, drowning in his field. I stared, and closed my eyes as I felt a sob rising in my throat. Then I swallowed the sob, opened my eyes, and climbed down off the chair.

There was only one person who could have painted this field. But Dad didn’t paint anymore, ever. In fact, he didn’t do much of anything but sit and stare at his phone. Part of me wanted to run inside and knock on my parents’ door, pull my father out of his room and the chilly house, into the hot garage, to tell me what this was on the ceiling. But I didn’t. If he wanted anyone to know about this, then he wouldn’t have been doing it in secret in the garage without telling us. And if he didn’t want to talk to me, I wasn’t going to ask him. He could keep his secret. I had my own.

I quickly returned the extension cord to the wall, put the chair back where I’d found it, and swept the dead moths and dust from the blue tarp. Then I turned off the light, closed the door behind me as quietly as I could, and ran to Jasper’s, the cooler bumping against my legs. I’m not sure why, but suddenly, I was in a hurry. I felt like I was racing something, although I wasn’t sure what. My sandals thwacked the street all the way there, and by the time I was cutting up along the creek, my blood was racing in my ears, and I was out of breath.

It felt good to run. Away.

When I pulled myself up the hill of kudzu and popped through into the secret green world, I saw Jasper right away, sitting on the stoop in front of the house. And my hurry disappeared. My breath slowed and the day all around me softened, relaxed. I raised the cooler and waved it at her. “Look!” I said. “I brought you a present.”

She was swigging out of a root beer bottle. When she saw me, she waved back. “Hey!”

I walked over. “Root beer for breakfast?”

“No, silly!” she said. “I refilled it with water.”

“Ah, okay,” I said, walking up the steps and sitting down on the step beneath her. Then I added, “I brought you a cooler!”

“Perfect.” She laughed. “Now we just need an ice maker.”

“Yeah, well, one thing at a time.”