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Adam—"
    "Sam," Anastasia said, "could you be quiet, please?"
    "That's what my teacher said," Sam told her, "when it was Quiet Time. We all had to do this." Sam put his fingers to his lips and said "Ziippppp." After demonstrating, he added, "And then our lips were zippered and it was Quiet Time. When it's Quiet Time you can color or look at books, but you
can't
talk or sing or yell for a little while. That's the rules. My friend Adam—"
    Anastasia put her fingers to her lips.
    Dr. Krupnik put his fingers to his lips.
    Mrs. Krupnik put her fingers to her lips.
    "Zzzziiippppp," they all said together.
    Sam looked up. He closed his mouth. He was very quiet.
    Then he whispered, "And they don't give shots. I love my school."

7

    Sam and his mom were at the supermarket. It was one of Sam's favorite places, because he got to ride in the cart with his legs dangling, and he got to point at things.
    "I want
that,
" he would say, pointing at bananas. And usually his mom would say, "Okay," and she would put bananas into the shopping cart.
    "I want
that,
" Sam would say, pointing to orange juice and to chocolate milk. And those things would go into the shopping cart.
    "And I want
that,
" he said, pointing, but he always knew she would shake her head and say no in that aisle. It was the cookies-cakes-candies-sugary cereal aisle. She always whizzed through that one, pushing the shopping cart very fast, grabbing a bag of flour or some oatmeal, but nothing else.
    Sam didn't mind. He waited for the yogurt department and pointed again, because his mom always said yes to yogurt.
    Finally, with a very full cart, they got to the check-out line. Sam looked up to see which line they were in. There was one that he hated.
    It was the No Candy line.
    For a long time, when he was smaller, he hadn't understood about the No Candy line. Then, after he turned two, and then two and a half, and was big and going to nursery school, he began to understand about letters and about reading.
    At home, he had plastic alphabet letters that stuck to the refrigerator door. He could spell his name and
Mom
and
Dad.
He couldn't spell his sister's name, but that was because she had a name that was longer than the whole alphabet.
    One day he realized he could spell
no.
His mother had found him playing with her jewelry box and trying on her earrings. She had knelt down on the floor, picking up all the necklaces and earrings that he had scattered about. She was very angry.
    "No, Sam," she had said in a loud voice. "No, no, N-O, NO!"
    Sam listened carefully.
N,
she had said. And 0. He had both of those letters on the refrigerator. While his mother was still looking for the last of her jewelry, he had scampered away to the kitchen and spelled
NO
on the refrigerator.
    Later, his mother had shown him how to spell
yes.
But he liked
no
better.
    Not long after that, he had seen the word
No
at the supermarket. It had another word after it, but he didn't know what the other word was. He asked his mom. He pointed to the sign.
    "
Candy,
that says," his mom explained. "The sign says, 'No Candy.' If you go through this line, there won't be all those candy bars and things. Some people like this line better. I like this line better, as a matter of fact."
    Sam scowled. He didn't like the No Candy line at
all.
    And today she was at the No Candy line again. Rats.
    "Can I get down and walk?" Sam asked his mom. She was putting the groceries onto the counter so that the woman in the pink smock could drive them over the beeping thing with the green and red light. Usually Sam liked to watch that. But today he wanted to get down.
    His mother was counting the yogurts as she took them out of the cart. She nodded. Then, after she had the seven yogurts on the counter, she lifted Sam out of the carriage and down to the floor. "Stay right here," she said. "Don't run off."
    "I won't," Sam told her. He had no intention of running off. He was simply going to walk four steps sideways over to the next