Thomas is sitting in my lap. This is against the rules and I’ve hardly broken a rule since the fifth grade. I hate getting in trouble, but I can’t help it. He’s worth it with that permanent layer of tears in his anime blue eyes. I hate getting in trouble, because it means saying sorry. I’m already sorry all the time. I can’t stand the easy ritual of saying sorry a million times a day, but Thomas is worth it.

After he crawls into my lap, I break more rules and let him hold my phone in his tiny hands. He clicks on the camera with his long vampire baby nails and sticks his tongue out for a selfie. I watch him watch himself and smile as he makes the ugliest faces he can. He tells me about how his brother, the mean one, smashed his tablet so he can’t take pictures like this at home. He tells me that pictures are magic. He tells me that Burger King isn’t going to give his mom Easter off, but that he hopes the bunny brings him an iPhone. He tells me that his new baby brother has blue eyes and is turning two months old next Tuesday. He tells me he has fourteen brothers and sisters, but that some of them got lost or something. I wonder if this is true. I wonder why no one cuts his nails. I wonder why I want to bite them off myself, why I want to suck the snot right out of his nose, why I want to stuff him under my North Face and smuggle him out of town and back up the hill to college with me. I stop wondering. I get the crayons out of the craft drawer and Thomas out of my lap. He looks like he’s in second grade, reads like he’s in first grade, is old enough to be in fourth grade, and is actually in third grade. He draws a picture of Pikachu in the middle of a big scary forest. It looks like he’s going to cry, but he doesn’t.

I’m in fifth grade and I’m lost at Versailles. I’m in the Hall of Mirrors with a thousand Japanese tourists. I’m too busy staring at our reflections to wonder if someone is looking for me. Everything is gold and glass and big and huge and old and I am so little. I stick my tongue out and cross my eyes and try to make the ugliest face these mirrors have ever seen. My teacher finds me and scolds me as we walk out to the gardens, where the rest of my class has sat down to picnic beside one of the fifty-five fountains. My teacher tells me that this is no way to behave on a field trip. Rules are rules for a reason! I’m sorry!

I’m in college and I’m on a field trip again. I’m breaking the rules again with Thomas cuddled up on my lap. We’re at the public library. The kids are whining about how this is the worst field trip ever. The kids want to know what the point of a library is. The kids want to know how to spell Maroon 5. The kids want to know if I like Bakugan Battle Brawlers. The kids want to know why we’re having tuna for snack time, again. The kids don’t care about the storybooks. They don’t want to know where the wild things are or what happens when you give a mouse a cookie. They want to know who I am and why I’m here with them and if I’m the boss of them. I tell them that I’m just here to hang out. I’m here to help. They ask me why and I don’t know what to say. I’m sorry!

A long time ago all the mirrors were made in Venice. Then Louis XIV saw his reflection and decided that he wanted a whole hall of them in his new country palace. It was against the rules for Venetians to share mirror-making secrets with the French. Mirrors are magic, but magic can be learned and bought just like anything else. In October 1665, the king granted the financier Nicolas Dunoyer and his associates the exclusive right to manufacture “mirror glass.” By 1678, they had built his hall of mirrors. Soon everyone wanted a mirror of their own, so Dunoyer set up a factory in Saint-Gobain. This factory became a corporation and three hundred years later it built a factory in Hoosick Falls, New York. Now, Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics made plastic, not mirrors, and this plastic called PFOA leaked into the drinking water and made lots of people very sick. Of course Erin Brockovich showed up, but Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics was not found guilty of any crime.

At my college on the hill above the factory, above the river, above the town, we have clean water and emotional support rodents and a salad bar with feta cheese and classes to help us understand the contaminated water. I have a friend who receives a box of Essentia every month, because her mom doesn’t understand that our water is now perfect. I have another friend who grew up here, and for his “Understanding PFOA 101” final, he’s decided that he is either going to poison an emotional support ferret or sell powdered PFOA to first-years and tell them it’s coke. Instead, he turns in a blood test, a sheet of paper proving the plastic is inside him, proving that he understands. I’m eating my feta cheese in the dining hall and I realize how little I understand. I see a poster for a volunteer opportunity: the public schools in town are understaffed, spend afternoons with elementary schoolers, help them with their homework, help yourself understand, so I sign up.

I can spell Maroon 5. I can play Bakugan Battle Brawlers. I can apologize for the tuna. I can hang out, but can I help? Carson tells me I have bad ideas. Jessie says my books stink. Ryan sends himself to the padded “quiet room” so he can punch the wall in peace. Hailey is yelling about her slime collection. Caleb is mumbling about “Killary Clinton.” Chastity is telling Mia that reading sucks. Mia is crying because reading sucks. Landon is throwing pretzels. Tyler just wants to go home. Thomas is on my lap. I’m beginning to understand that understanding is not helping.

Before Louis XIV was the Sun King with a hall of mirrors, he was a little boy and there was a civil war. He lived in a palace in the middle of the city and the city was on fire and the people were unhappy—unhappy with him. He was five years old and already king. The walls of his home were falling. It was so loud and he was so little and so afraid. By his tenth birthday, the revolt had been quelled and new laws implemented in its wake, strengthening the monarchy. The revolt’s failure smoothed the way for the unprecedented absolutism of Louis XIV’s rule, for his lavish country palace at Versailles, an escape from the city and the people he feared there, for his many lit fountains and legendary parties (example: Les Plaisirs de l’Île Enchantée; early May 1664; themes of love, comedy, gallantry), and for his hall of mirrors. And eventually for a factory in upstate New York and for plastic in a river and for cancer in some people and for a class at a college on a hill.

Afterschool is over. It’s time to go. Thomas’s uncle comes to pick him up, pushing the baby brother’s stroller and holding his brother’s hand, the mean one. Thomas pries open the baby’s eyes so I can see how blue they are. He gives me his drawing of Pikachu and then he’s gone and it’s just us volunteers. The ladies from the church sigh in relief and begin to complain about what a disobedient day we had. The Americorps people leave to drink their beer and write their grants. I walk to the parking lot, hitting my JUUL™, puffing out cucumber-scented vapor and trying not to cry. Why is Pikachu lost in the forest?

On the drive back up the hill, the other volunteer from my college tells me that she’s an empath. She has to quit. She’s a highly sensitive person and this is just too much. It is too much. She’s right, but it’s also not enough. I feel like it’s too much because I’m not doing enough.

“Yeah.”

“Yeah.”

She tells me that she gets it. It’s hard to see a system fail. It’s hard to know that we benefited from this system. All systems are the same. Empathy is crazy. Yeah. She asks me if I get it. I tell her that I get it.

We say we get it to each other a few more times, but maybe we’re lying. Maybe there is nothing to get. She asks me if volunteering makes me feel good. I ask her if she wants to rip the JUUL™.

I want to feed something that isn’t myself. I want to look in the mirror and smile. Sometimes I have dreams about being Thomas’s mom, not his real mom who works at Burger King, but his dream mom who goes to college on a hill. I don’t know if I am her or she is me, but whatever we are in this dream is perfect. We take him to philosophy class and he colors quietly, listening. We brush his teeth with that children’s strawberry toothpaste I used to use. Over winter break, we take him to Versailles and make stupid faces in the stupid mirrors. Other times, I dream that I’ve given birth to a litter of kittens. I’m at the hospital and they come out of me and everyone tells me that I did a good job. Anne of Austria was thirty-seven when she gave birth to her first child, Louis XIV. The official newspaper, Gazette de France, called the birth “a marvel when it was least expected.” Everyone told her good job. I wonder if anyone said that to Thomas’s mom.

Every birth is a miracle, but Louis XIV’s spectacularly surprising arrival was taken by the court as proof of divine intervention. Finally, by the grace of God, there was an heir! He was a miracle son, the Sun King, raised by a single mother, and also God’s avatar on earth, here to rule us all. A hall of mirrors was only fitting. Light demands to be reflected. Rivers demand to be polluted. Factories demand to open and employ and close and lay off. I demand to be pregnant in the next six years even though it feels like that should be against the rules.

Hailey can’t bring her slime collection to school. I can’t have a baby yet. If you sell PFOA to first-years you will be expelled. Thomas’s mom cannot take Easter off. I cannot bite his fingernails off. Carson can only have two chocolate milks. Milk must be pasteurized. Caleb can’t put tuna in his backpack. Tuna must be tested for mercury. Flavored JUUL™ pods can no longer be sold. In the library we have to be quiet. Shhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Don’t stick your tongue out! No running in the halls! On a field trip, you must stay with the group! On a field trip, you must follow the rules! Rules are rules for a reason! I understand this, but who gets to make the rules? Whose reason is it anyways? When Hailey yells, “Why? Why? Why?” I want to join in. Why do kings get to build palaces while the people starve? Why is no one punished when rivers get filled with plastic? Why did I get to eat Nutella on a field trip to Paris while these kids have to stuff tuna sandwiches in their bags because they don’t have food at home? Why did I have to write a sentence so on the nose? Why is there a college built on this hill? Shouldn’t there be rules to ensure food access and a clear clean river and time to clip your child’s nails? Yes, but no because existing rules exist to control and exploit and protect the interests of a select few in their Nutella-filled halls of mirrors. Breaking the rules is the only hope we have, so if Landon wants to throw pretzels and Hailey wants to play with slime and Thomas wants to sit in my lap I might as well let it happen. We’re all in trouble and we always were. I’m ready to say sorry. I am so, so sorry.