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—I don't know.

Po Sin straightened, folded his arms, shook his head.

—Xing, I will never take you to the American Girl store ever again if you don't stop lying.

Her eyes went big. She looked at him, found him unyielding; looked at her mom, found her utterly fed the fuck up. Her eyes darted from side to side, surveying the room, found no escape. She made little fists, pounded them against her thighs twice.

—But I didn't steal it! I just borrowed it!

Po Sin held out his hand.

She frowned, squatted, unlaced her left shoe, dug a finger inside and came out with a little knobbed bit of black plastic.

She put it in her father's hand.

—It's just a little piece. He has hundreds of them.

Po Sin folded the piece in his hand.

—And they're all equally precious to him. Just like the two of you are equally precious to us. We wouldn't want to lose either of you, no matter how much we love the other one.

—But he has so many.

—That doesn't matter, honey.

He turned and walked to his son.

—That doesn't matter at all.

He squatted and opened his hand in front of Yong's face. Yong looked at the piece, started to reach for it, stopped. Po Sin nodded, set the piece on the floor. Yong snatched it up, opened a zipper on the side of his backpack, dropped the piece inside, and zipped it back up.

Po Sin held out his index finger again.

—Now can I have a real hug?

Yong nodded, wrapped his little hand around Po Sin's finger, squeezed, and let go.

Po Sin looked over his shoulder at us.

—There, all better.

—Today was a bad day.

I walked with Lei to her car.

—Usually he's more interactive. But when something gets out of sequence, or lost, he gets untracked, his mind, and he can't focus on anything else. Emotions don't make much sense to him, so he has to concentrate very hard to read signs he's been taught to recognize. When he can't, he gets confused and scared. He withdraws. And touch is difficult. He doesn't like too much contact. Random contact. It's hard to explain. He loves being sandwiched. We have these pads at home we can put him between and apply pressure over his whole body, and somehow that comforts him, makes it easier to think. But generally, he needs a task to focus. The Legos.

She opened the driver's door of her tiny yellow Scion.

—Those kits? The impossibly difficult ones? Cities, trains, huge airliners. He opens the box, glances at the instructions, and builds them without ever making a mistake. You can take thousands of pieces, mix them all up, pull out one and show it to him, and he'll know exactly what kit it's from, where it goes, even what page it's on in the instructions, and its code number. The other kids know he's different, but they're young enough to think it's cool that he knows so much about Legos.

She shaded her eyes from the sun to look up at my face, smiling.

—They come to him with all their Lego dilemmas. He's like their shaman. Treasured for his oddness. For now, anyway.

A big sigh.

—We'll see in a couple of years how they deal with him.

—Um, Lei.

—Yes?

—Speaking of touch, could I have my hand back.

She looked at the hand she'd not released since she first took hold of it, laughed, let it go.

—Sorry. Sorry. Poor Yong hates to be touched, and his mother is so touchy-feely I have to struggle not to hold his hand or rub his neck. And then it gets bottled up sometimes, next thing I know I'm stroking the cheek of someone I met five minutes ago.

She raised and dropped her shoulders and climbed into the car.

—I've invaded the personal space of every checkout person at our Ralph's. The tellers at the bank, they're lucky they have those Plexiglas shields to hide behind or I'd be hugging them every time I go in.

I pushed the door closed and she rolled down the window.

—Nice to meet you, Web. Glad we finally did. When I didn't see you last year, at the memorial, I was disappointed. I'd wanted to thank you. I was going to track you down, but then Po Sin said he ran into you at your friend's shop. I figured it was a matter of time before