“Of course there are,” he snaps. He wants to learn how to - how to swim, or play ball, or make canned soup in a microwave. He wants Dad to teach him how to drive and he wants Mom to beam at him for real when he takes back a perfect score on his math test. He wants to whistle way too loud at Natalie’s recitals at all the most inappropriate times, so she punches his arm and calls him a jerk and has to hide a smile when he pretends she left a bruise.

“Someone brought me here,” he adds, a mumbled undertone no one’s precisely supposed to hear. “Once they figure that out, all they’ll have to do is forget me too.”