When Thomas started kindergarten, Helen began working part-time at a day-care center. The kindergarten program was only a half day, so Thomas went to day care with Helen in the morning and the bus picked him up to go to school after lunchtime. Helen was home by the time the school bus dropped him off in the afternoon. It was at the day-care center that Thomas met Dave. Even though Dave was only three, Thomas saw their similarities. For one, Dave’s favorite place to stand was next to his mother, wrapping her full skirt around him like a bat enfolding itself in its wings. During sharing time, Dave sat on her lap.

Dave sucked on the three inside fingers of his right hand. Thomas had sucked the cuff of his sleeve: when that was forbidden, he had learned to wait until nighttime and suck on his bedsheet instead. No one seemed to care much that Dave put his fingers in his mouth. That is, until cold and flu season hit; then it was Thomas’s job to help him remember not to do it. It was no easy task to convince a three-year-old to deny himself his greatest source of comfort, conveniently located at the end of his arm.

Thomas was there for the morning transfer at seven when Dave’s hands were pried from the lapels of his mother’s blazer only to attach themselves to one of Helen’s chunky necklaces.

“Dave.” Thomas attempted to distract him. “Do you want to play with the trains?”

Dave shook his head. But even Dave wasn’t allowed to remain with Helen all morning. When she put him down, he would disappear, and it was also Thomas’s job to keep track of him. Fortunately, Dave’s movements were predictable. Thomas usually found him in the story corner, tucked behind the milk crates filled with picture books. He knew Thomas would follow and read him a story. Though he was five, Thomas read at the third-grade level.

“Do you want to read about your favorite steam engine?” Thomas flipped over an empty crate and sat down on it. “You’re not supposed to suck on your fingers, remember?”

Dave said, “You’re not the boss of me.” It was impressive how Dave could make himself understood around his fingers.

Thomas couldn’t imagine himself being the boss of anyone. He pointed to Dave’s other hand. “What are you holding?”

Dave relaxed his fingers, revealing a round, gray stone.

“I see. A dinosaur egg.”

Dave shook his head. “Too small.”

“No it’s not. There were small dinosaurs, too, you know.”

Dave seemed to take this idea into consideration. The sucking noises grew louder. “No,” he said finally. “There were not.”

“Yes.” Thomas spoke in what he hoped sounded like a grown-up voice. “There were. I’ll show you if you don’t believe me.”

They found a book about dinosaurs on the table. He set it on Dave’s lap and watched him take his fingers out of his mouth to turn the pages. He tried to not think about how annoyed his mother’s boss, Mrs. Purdy, would be if she knew Dave was getting saliva all over the pages.

“There.” Thomas pointed at what looked like a cross between a dinosaur and a bird. “This one is small. It’s a microraptor. Only as long as your arm.”

“Why does it have wings on its legs?” Dave wanted to know, and before Thomas could stop him, he inserted his fingers back in his mouth.

“Microraptors had four wings,” Thomas explained, reading the caption. “Two on its body and two on its legs, but they couldn’t really fly. They just glided from tree to tree.”

“Some squirrels can glide like that,” Dave told him.

“That’s true.” As Thomas considered ways to get Dave to turn the pages again, Helen came up behind them.

“David Alexander Stanley Cup Playoffs,” Helen said.

She always came up with invented names for the students—they loved it.

“That is not my name!” Dave responded, giggling with delight.

“Well, then, David Alexander Balthazar Rumpelstiltskin, please take that finger-flavored lollipop out of your mouth.” Bending over, Helen kissed Dave on the top of the head and whispered something in his ear as she gently removed the fingers from his mouth.

Helen was the only person Dave would allow to do this. He’d been known to bite his own fingers to deny them exit.

Helen was the boss of him.

“I tried,” Thomas told her later when they were eating their lunch together in the break room. “It’s hard.”

“I know, sweet. He has to be very distracted to stop. If he’s not distracted, he’s thinking about—you know—his troubles.”

“What troubles?”

“Not real troubles, just…things that make him anxious. Like worrying that his mom is not coming back. Sucking his fingers calms him down.” Helen ran a carrot around her container of hummus and offered it to Thomas. “Believe me, there are plenty of adults who would do it if they could.”

“Adults still want to suck their fingers?”

“Well, not exactly. But we do get anxious. For instance, I don’t love speaking in front of a group. Like at Parents’ Night. It makes me feel like there are butterflies in my stomach.”

“What do you do instead of sucking on your fingers?” Thomas asked, biting into his carrot.

“Me? Well, I try to think of something else. Something nice.”

“Like what?”

“Like…butterflies. In fact, before your bus gets here, why don’t you draw one for me?”

“I don’t know how.”

“We have a book that shows you. Draw one of those little blue ones they’re trying to save up north. The Karner blue.”

“Is it in the book?” Thomas asked, crinkling the tin foil from their sandwiches into a ball and putting it back inside their paper lunch bag.

“I doubt it. But it’s the same shape as the other butterflies. Just…smaller. I know…” Helen disappeared into Mrs. Purdy’s office. She came back out with three blue colored pencils. “This is from the teacher’s set,” she told Thomas, handing them to him. “It’s a tiny thing, not much bigger than a quarter. And it’s all blue. Different shades of blue.”

They stood in the doorway to the break room, looking out at the children sitting at low tables eating their lunches.

“Can you show me one on your phone?” Thomas asked, hoping to keep his mother by his side a little longer. But Helen was already distracted by a crying child.

“Later,” she said. “For now, use your imagination.”