Matty lifted his poster board, his round glasses sitting crooked on his nose.

“Does the ship look okay?”

“It looks perfect, buddy,” I said.

I reached across the table and took a thick red permanent marker out of his pencil case.

I went to the wooden wall calendar hanging by the pantry door, where the box for Friday, October sixth, was still empty.

I pulled off the cap, pressed the felt tip to the paper, and wrote Friday 0900 on my wall calendar in thick red marker.

At eight on Thursday morning I walked into the middle school gym for the pre-assembly walk-through.