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laces.”
    Ava looked down at her orange basketball shoes and smiled. Last summer, her cousin Shanika had visited from New York City and taught her how to lace them this fancy way that looked like a ladder. Lucy thought that was cool, and Maya thought Ava was nice. So Ava went to lunch instead of sneaking off to the library. It went pretty well.
    The second time Ava pulled out the pencil was right after she finished running the mile in gym class. Mr. Avery asked her why she didn’t try out for the cross-country team and if she planned to do track in the spring. Ava told him she didn’t know, but when she got to the locker room, she took out the pencil and wrote:
    Does Mr. Avery think I’d be good at running track?
    â€œYes.” The pencil sounded like it wanted to add a sarcastic “obviously” to that answer, but it refrained. Ava wrote:
    Who else is going to try out for the track team?
    But there was no answer, and then she remembered the whole dumb free-will thing. She’d have to think more about track.

    After school, Sophie came home with Ava. Sophie wanted to get right to the fun questions, but Ava said they had to do homework first or they’d never get to it. So they did their English vocabulary page and then asked the pencil where they could find goldenrod galls. It told them, and they snipped a bunch fromstalks in the field behind the store. Then Sophie ate pizza with the Andersons. She and Ava were headed upstairs with the pencil when Ava’s dad said, “Everybody ready for family night?”
    Wednesday was family night at Cedar Bay Nursing Home. Every Wednesday after dinner, attendants wheeled the residents down the long yellow hallway to meet with family members. Everybody sat in folding chairs, drank warmish, watered-down lemonade, and ate cookies while they waited for the seven o’clock show, usually some local church choir or little kids’ ballet class or high school string ensemble.
    Nobody talked much on family night. A few of the residents couldn’t speak because they’d had strokes. Some, like Ava’s grandpa, could talk but were too sad or grumpy to say much. Others had dementia and didn’t know what was going on around them. When the dementia people did talk, it didn’t always make sense.
    Mr. Clemson, who was a firefighter a long time ago, worried about imaginary burning buildings. “Get down!” he’d hollered at Ava when she walked by during family night once. “Stay low and head for the exit!”
    Mrs. Grabowski, who had a stroke two years ago and couldn’t talk at all, always wore a pale purple pantsuit and tapped her feet to the music. Her white sneakers were too clean ever to have seen grass.
    Mr. Ames spent family night slapping his knee enthusiastically, though never quite in time to the music. Mrs. Raymond, who wore pastel sweatshirts with cuddly animals embroideredon the front, tipped her head back and forth to whatever song was playing. And Mrs. Yu sat perfectly still except for her mouth. She always looked like she was chewing, even though she never ate the cookies.
    The Snoozy Gang—that’s what Ava and Sophie called the residents of the back row who nodded off as soon as the concert started—always woke up with a start at the end.
    Then there was Grandpa, who scowled under his pulled-down baseball hat and complained about the music, if he said anything at all.
    Mom never missed family night, but she never had much to say to Grandpa. They hadn’t gotten along since Grandma Marion died. Ava’s mom didn’t talk about why, but her dad told her once it had to do with Grandpa’s lifestyle and choices. Ava didn’t ask about it after that. She just went with Mom and everyone else to the nursing home on Wednesdays and ate the cookies.
    Family night wasn’t negotiable, so Ava and Sophie put their pencil plans on hold and piled into the Andersons’ minivan for the drive to