That morning, he's at the place whereI told him to meet, but my younger siblings and parents are theretoo.

"You're late," he says.

"No," I say. "You're early.What's going on?"

My dad asnwers. "Michael was sittinghere alone, so we invited him to play cranium with us."

I sit down with them. I join in theirgame. When it's my turn, I have to spell a word backwards. But Ican't do it, I freeze with the microphone in front of my face,completely forgetting how to spell. Then my time is up and someonefrom another team goes up and does it.

"What happened?" they all ask mewhen I sit back down.

"I don't know."

After that, we all go to brunch.Michael sits in between my dad and me. Halfway through my macaroniand cheese, I start to feel sick and can't eat anymore. My dad asksMichael a lot of questions. I just tune everything out. I want to goback to my room and be alone.

the table

After brunch, I'm feeling better. I leadMichael to my room, then make him wait outside the door while I getmy journal/drawing book (I don't know what I want to call it) andmarkers. Then we go find a table to sit at.

"What's this?" he asks, flippingto a page I've already drawn on. I take the book from him.

"Nothing."

"It didn't look like nothing."

I open it up to a blank page, take outa marker, and start drawing. He picks up another marker, and startsdrawing on the same page. I don't know what else draw, so I draw acircle. "Look, it's a triangle," I say.

"That looks like a circle."

"Oh. Yeah it is."

He takes his marker and writes insidemy circle it's a triangle. Then he draws a triangle and writes it's acircle inside of it. He grabs a different marker, a gray one. And hedraws a line on my arm.

"Hey! Now I'm a hippo."

I draw on his arm, and he does thesame. The end result: colorful arms.

 (LAUGHTERS)