I FOLLOWED GRANDMA MELVYN DOWN THE HALLWAY TO THE MAIN ENTRANCE of the school. Mom was waiting by the office in a crowd of noisy parents. A knot of snakes twisted in my stomach when I saw her. It was first-grade math to figure out why she wasn’t in her seat at the show. She had been too busy helping Ape Boy and Grandma Melvyn and cleaning up candy messes to get there on time. Mom looked tired.

“Mom,” I said. “I …”

Mom didn’t say anything. She wrapped her arms around me and hugged me tight. Then she leaned back and looked at me.

“You were magnificent, kiddo,” she said, blinking away tears. “Just magnificent.”

She hugged me again until someone yelled something about a kid climbing a flagpole. Then Mom laughed and let go.

“C’mon,” she said. “Let’s get your brother down and grab a treat on the way home.”

We bought a box of chocolate cupcakes with white squiggles and a gallon of chocolate milk and ate them at the kitchen table. Dad called from Shanghai to hear about the show, and I told him all about it. Except the part about the janitor and the hatchet. Hey, I didn’t want to ruin all the surprises. I hate spoilers.

Eventually, Mom and Ape Boy went to bed, but Grandma Melvyn and I stayed in the kitchen. The day hadn’t started out so well, but it ended up being the best day of my life, and I wanted it to last forever. Grandma Melvyn was too busy to go to bed. Her brain was on fire with ideas for her new act. A new act with her new assistant. Guess who!

Yep. It’s me. But don’t worry about Cat. Grandma Melvyn said there was plenty of assisting to go around and that Cat could help, too.

Grandma Melvyn worked like she was on a mission, making up for lost time. She sat at the table doodling in a battered spiral notebook. She sketched a cabinet with a big wheel on the door. Here was the idea: A member of the audience would spin the wheel and the assistant in the cabinet would turn into a bird or a cat or a beach ball or whatever else the wheel decided. Between you and me, I think she got that idea from Wheel of Fortune, but it didn’t matter, because she crossed out the whole picture, flipped the page, and started over.

“Levitation!” she said. “That’s the thing.”

She sketched a new cabinet and covered it with tangled arrows showing where she and I would move and what we would do. After about thirty seconds, it looked like a bowl of spaghetti.

“No, no, no!” she snapped, crossing out the drawing.

“We need a hook,” she said. “Grab those Trixies by the collars and don’t let go!”

We sat together in the circle of light from the lamp above the kitchen table. The world beyond was dark and silent. I watched Grandma Melvyn doodle and think and talk to herself and doodle and think some more. Every couple of minutes, she tilted her notebook to show me her latest idea, and almost as fast she pulled it away, crossed it out, and started over.

Maybe it was the long, long day catching up with me, or maybe there was something calming about watching Grandma Melvyn work, but as I sat at the table and the shadows edged closer and closer, I relaxed and my body got heavier and heavier, and I rested my head on my arm, and it was so comfortable. I watched Grandma Melvyn draw and think and scribble ideas and flip pages and start over, her voice swirling through the air like a faraway song, faint and familiar and just out of reach. Once in a while, her words found me, then her voice faded again.

… stand right there … levitate …

I breathed deeply and slowly.

… maybe a lever … signal …

I blinked and blinked again, and I closed my eyes one last time—

… Thank you, Robbie …

—and I slept.