She’d almost given up being one, and she would have if it hadn’t been for her mom. Delia was in sixth grade when an “incident” she still didn’t know the details of occurred, and the principal found himself in need of a tutorial on the difference between “reply” and “reply all.” While explaining it to him in his office after school, a call came in from the mother of the twins—a boy and a girl—in her class. She had a flat tire and would be late. Delia said her dad, who was coming to pick her up, could drive them home.

The twins were waiting by the front entrance. As Delia headed down the hall, she heard them arguing about their separate birthday parties scheduled for the upcoming weekend.

“You take her,” the boy had said.

“No, you. It’s your turn. I took her last year,” the girl said.

“Dull Delia will ruin everything,” the boy said. “She’ll win all the points at the arcade with her stupid robot brain and everyone will be mad at me.”

The girl countered, “She’ll flinch every time the manicurist touches her toes, and besides, do you really want me to have to see her toes? Forget about the sundaes after.”

Delia’s shoulders rounded and her backpack, perched on one shoulder, fell to the ground. They heard. They turned. They saw her. She saw them. No one uttered a word.

And then her dad arrived, and they all drove home together. The only words spoken were by him. He told them of the new way he’d discovered to make a two-legged chair that would be so much lighter to move onstage and yet still could sustain the weight of three people.

At home, Delia sat on the floor in her dad’s workshop in the garage, smiling as he demonstrated the chair and put her, him, and Smudge in at once. And then she cried into her pillow until she fell asleep.

On Saturday morning, she feigned a stomachache and sequestered herself in her room, playing on her computer. But all the while the boy’s “stupid robot brain” looped through Delia’s mind. She shut her computer and unplugged the cords from the back.

Her mom found her in the closet, burying the monitor under the stuffed animals she no longer played with.

“Delia?” her mom had said. “I’m all for improvisation, but there’s not even an outlet in there.”

“I don’t need one,” she’d said. “I’m done with it. All of it.”

“If it no longer interests you, I’m all for finding something that does.” Her mom sat on the floor in front of the closet. “But first, I’d like to understand these.” She brushed her thumb across Delia’s face, drying her tears.