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Three red LEDs, a piezo switch, and a coin cell soldered under the insole. It worked for maybe eight months. Then it was a regular shoe, that had once, briefly, been better.

It grabbed the purple dinosaur. It lifted the purple dinosaur. Halfway up, the fingers went slack and the purple dinosaur fell back into the pile. This was not bad luck. This was the machine doing what the machine was built to do.

You hit the little orange basketball on the tongue and something inside the shoe hugged your ankle and you were absolutely convinced it made you jump higher. It did not.

You unwrapped the straw from the top. You scrunched the paper into a tiny accordion the length of your thumb. You dipped the straw in your water, capped the top with your finger, and let one drop fall. The paper woke up and grew.

You wrote it in blue Bic pen in social studies. You folded it into a triangle the size of a stamp. You passed it up and left, over Kevin's shoulder, and you waited thirty minutes to find out if she checked Yes.

A manila envelope glued in the back cover. A stiff paper card in the envelope. A list of names, in a dozen different pens, of every kid who had checked the book out before you. Sometimes one of the names was your sister.