I couldn’t imagine any teacher taking a kid to a museum all by themselves, especially without telling anybody. Even if a teacher wanted to take the whole class, these days they’d have to get a stack of yellow envelopes filled with permission forms and bus forms and off-site safety forms.

But I kept listening, and the day kept being perfect, until the nice reader lady stuck some words together that hit me smack in the stomach. It felt like when you’re playing wallball and the ball comes back at you too fast and slams you in the guts. You can’t breathe, and it hurts.

I was incredulous. Then I started to cry. And not shiny-eye, sniffle-nose crying, when you’re trying not to let anyone notice you’re crying at school. I mean snot-nose, blubber-face, little-kid sobbing that gets stuck way, way down in your throat and doesn’t even let you catch your breath.

“Austin?”

I heard my mom before I saw her. “What happened?” she said.

I was crying too hard to answer.

She put the back of her hand on my forehead like maybe I had a fever or something.

I tried to tell her everything was good. I didn’t want her to worry. Everything was good. Everything was really good.

“Did something happen on the way home?” she asked.

I shook my head no.

“Is it about the lockdown they texted about?”

I shook my head no again. I tried to get my voice to work. I tried to get some of the words to come out.

“It’s not real,” I finally said. “It’s just a book.”

My mom looked at me like she was seeing me different, and I got worried that this was probably the last thing she needed today. She picked up Ms. G.’s book from my bed and flipped through the pages until she got to the picture of the two friends standing in the place with all those trees.

“Yeah,” she said. “This one’s sad.”

I didn’t know my mom had read that book. I tried to imagine her as a kid reading it. I wondered if it made her cry. And even though there were probably about a million other words for it, sad seemed like the right one.

My mom sat on the bed right next to me and held me like a sack of potatoes. She told me things were going to get easier. She told me things were going to get better.

I liked feeling her chin on my shoulder. I liked hearing her say those things. I hoped they could maybe be true.

19. Scream Green