Free Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr

microwave when Bunny defrosts a freezer fajita.
    Seymour makes it through Group Math, through Lunch, through Fluency Tubs. But by Reflection Time, his endurance is fracturing. Mrs. Onegin sends everyone to their desks to color their North Americas, and Seymour tries to draw faint green circles in the Gulf of Mexico, tries to move only his hand and wrist, not shifting so the desk frame doesn’t go screek screek , not breathing so he doesn’t smell any smells, but sweat is trickling down his ribs, and Wesley Ohman keeps opening and closing the Velcro on his left shoe, and Tony Molinari’s lips are going poppoppop , and Mrs. Onegin is writing a huge, terrible A-M-E-R-I-C- on the whiteboard, the marker tip rasping and squeaking, the classroom clock ticktickticking, and all these sounds race into his head like hornets into a nest.
    The roar: all his life it has rumbled in the distance. Now it rises. It obliterates the mountains, the lake, downtown Lakeport; it smashes across the school parking lot, tossing cars everywhere; it growls outside the portable and rattles the door. Black pinholes open in his vision. He clamps his hands over his ears but the roar eats the light.
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    Miss Slattery the school counselor says it could be sensory processing disorder or attention deficit disorder or hyperactivity disorder or some combination thereof. The boy is too young for her to know for sure. And she’s not a diagnostician. But his screaming frightenedthe other children and Principal Jenkins has suspended Seymour for Friday and Bunny should make an appointment with an occupational therapist as soon as possible.
    Bunny pinches the bridge of her nose. “Is that, like, included?”
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    Manager Steve at the Wagon Wheel says, you bet, Bunny, bring your kid to work, so long as you want to get fired, so on Friday morning she plucks the knobs off the stove burners, sets a box of Cheerios on the counter, and puts the Starboy DVD on repeat.
    â€œPossum?”
    On the Magnavox Starboy drops from the night in his bright-shining suit.
    â€œTouch your ears if you’re listening.”
    Starboy finds a family of armadillos trapped in a net. Seymour touches his ears.
    â€œWhen the microwave timer says zero zero zero, I’ll be home to check on you. All right?”
    Starboy needs help. Time to call Trustyfriend.
    â€œYou’ll sit tight?”
    He nods; the Pontiac rattles down Arcady Lane. Trustyfriend the Owl soars out of the cartoon night. Starboy lights the way while Trustyfriend tears through the net with his bill. The armadillos squirm free; Trustyfriend announces that friends who help friends are the best friends of all. Then something that sounds like a giant scorpion starts scratching on the roof of the double-wide.
    Seymour listens in his room. He listens at the front door. At the sliding door off the kitchen. The sound goes: tap scratch scratch .
    On the Magnavox a big yellow sun is coming up. Time for Trustyfriend to fly back to his roost. Time for Starboy to fly back to the Firmament. Best friends best friends , Starboy sings,
We’re never apart,
    I’m in the sky,
    And you’re in my heart.
    When Seymour opens the sliding door, a magpie sails off the roof and lands on an egg-shaped boulder in the backyard. It dips its tail and calls wock wock wock .
    A bird. Not a scorpion at all.
    An overnight storm has cleared the smoke and the morning is bright. The thistles nod their purple crowns and tiny insects sail everywhere. The thousands of pines stacked against the back of the property, rising toward a ridge, seem to breathe as they sway. In out in out. It’s nineteen paces through waist-high weeds to the egg-shaped boulder and by the time Seymour climbs on top, the magpie has flapped to a branch at the edge of the forest. Splotches of lichen—pink, olive, flame orange—decorate the boulder. It’s amazing out here. Big. Alive. Ongoing.
    Twenty paces past the boulder, Seymour