The key only works on the front door, so Alex opens that one and then opens the back door from the inside and then goes in the back seat and locks both doors and stuffs the key in the seam between the seats so he won’t lose it. He lets the balls out of his shirt and they roll around on the back seat and then he lines them all up in a row. Nine balls! He picks out his favorite, which is the newest, brightest one, and he wipes it off with his T-shirt and some spit. There are a lot of people coming by now, tall boys in shirts that say ASU with pretty girls in tank tops and lots of grandmas and grandpas and some other kids and their dads, too. A girl sees Alex in the window and waves and he waves back, but then he wiggles into the space between the front and back seats. He doesn’t want people to see him, because then they’ll ask what he’s doing by himself and where’s his ticket and where’s his momma and where does he live and he’ll have to tell them I don’t know. He’s a kind of scared but also happy, because he has his new favorite baseball and he’s almost totally invisible. He lies there in the dimness, rubbing the ball’s leather, hoping Momma won’t be too mad at him for leaving his seat. Alex counts the red stitches under his thumb but then he loses count and starts again, ticking them off like they were seconds on a clock.

He can see the tops of the people’s heads walking by. Then the stream slows and he can hear the national anthem sounding tinny, like it’s being played on a kazoo. After that only a few people pass, someone talking on their phone, a man whistling, a couple who are quiet. And then it’s just the bright blue sky out the window. It’s getting warm, so Alex scrambles to the front seat and puts the key in the ignition and starts the AC. Hot air blows on his face and he waits for it to cool off. Alex knows sometimes it takes a long time. It’s still blowing hot and not getting colder so he turns off the car. He’ll try again in a little bit; that’s what Michelle did when the blue car was her car and sometimes the air would blow cold the second time. Sometimes the third.

Something good happens because the crowd cheers and the car’s windows rattle. There’s a new hula girl on the blue car’s dashboard, which looks like the old hula girl on the old car’s dashboard, and she shakes her hips. Alex watches her sway for a minute and tries the air-conditioning again. Still hot. He climbs back into the space between the seats, reaches for his favorite ball, and starts counting its stitches again. He wonders some more about where Momma went, but he knows she’ll be back soon.