"He thinks I did it," he said. "That I broke it."
"He says he has to ask."
"I didn't touch it. Mama. I didn't touch anything. I had my hands in my pocket the whole time. I didn't even eat the apples."
"I know, baby."
"You told me not to touch anything and I didn't touch anything and then I said one thing—" His voice broke on thing, a high crack he hated, and he stood up so fast the chair scraped. "I should've stayed in the chair. I should've just stayed in the chair and let them buy a battery."
"Ezra."
"That's what he wanted. He wanted me to be invisible. You wanted me to be invisible. Everybody's mad because I wasn't invisible enough."
He grabbed his backpack and went out the side door, and she heard the screen door bang and his sneakers on the gravel, and she let him go because the bus would be at the corner in four minutes and because she did not, at that moment, have one single true thing to say to him that would help.
At the table, Pop had put down his pencil. He was looking at her the way he used to look at engines that were making a sound he didn't like yet.
"Don't," she said. "Daddy, don't. I know."
He held up his good hand, palm out. Then he pointed at the workbook. On the page, in the shaky block letters the therapist had him practice, he'd been copying words. Under the printed word LISTEN he'd written it three times, crooked, each one a little better.
He tapped it. Then he pointed out the window at the green cinderblock shop.
"I can't, Daddy," she said. "I don't know what that means."