Because she had an advantage, I chose really weird things for her, like a geode, and a Pisher Plastic replacement kneecap. She chose normal household things for me, because the only thing I knew by touch was my bathroom light switch in the middle of the night. And even then I turned on the fan half the time by mistake.

As soon as the Schwa showed up to walk the dogs, Lexie invited him to play, too. I didn’t move to give him a place to sit, but he made room anyway, so I glared at him.

“Why the dirty look, Antsy?”

He knew why. He had only said it to inform Lexie I was mad-dogging him.

“Come on,” said Lexie, “we’re all friends.”

I put my blindfold on, and the game quickly became an exercise in embarrassment. I had just mistaken a corkscrew for a Swiss Army knife when I heard Crawley roll by. I peeked out from under my blindfold to catch him sizing me up in his own disapproving way. “The boy cannot correctly identify a corkscrew,” he said. “Don’t let this moron dull your intelligence, Lexis.”

I grinned at him and said, “Send in the clowns!”

Old Chuckles was not amused.

After Crawley rolled away and I had handed Lexie her next mystery object, she whispered so her eagle-eared grandfather couldn’t hear. “Sometimes I think my grandfather died long before I was born.”

“Huh?” I said. It was such a weird thing to say.

“You want me to think this is a quarter,” Lexie said of the object in her hand, “but it’s a Sacagawea dollar.” She was, of course, right.

Once we heard the door to the old man’s bedroom close, Lexie said, “The way he lives in this stuffy cave. It’s not really living, is it? That’s why I come to stay with him. My parents would much rather I stay somewhere else when they go out of the country, but I want to come here. I’m still working on changing him.”

While the Schwa pondered his object, I pondered what she had said. I didn’t think Crawley could be changed. My dad once told me that people don’t change when they get older, they just get more so. I imagine that when Crawley was younger, he was the kind of kid who always saw the glass half empty instead of half full, and had a better relationship with his dog than with the neighborhood kids. In seventy-five years of living, half empty became bone-dry, solitary became isolated, and one dog became fourteen.

“Saltshaker!” said the Schwa.

“Wrong. It’s the queen from a chessboard,” said Lexie.

“Your grandfather is who he is,” I told her. “You should just live your own life, and let him live his. Or not live his, I guess.”

“I disagree,” said the Schwa. “I think people can be changed—but usually it takes a traumatic experience.”