The fluorescent lights buzzed with the particular frequency that only children and dogs can hear. Room 304 smelled like pencil shavings, lukewarm pizza from the cafeteria, and the ghost of a science project involving rotten bananas that someone had hidden in a desk back in October.
Mrs. Deluca, now teaching third grade because the district had shuffled teachers like a deck of cards, stood at the whiteboard, marker in hand. She had drawn a diagram of the water cycle. It looked like a rabbit with wings. She was not an artist.
Twenty-two bodies sat at desks arranged in pods of four, a configuration designed to foster "collaborative learning" but which mostly fostered elaborate systems of note-passing and foot-kicking. The same faces, older now. Marcus had lost his front teeth and gained a Minecraft t-shirt. Sophie had abandoned princesses for gymnastics and wore her hair in a tight bun because "loose hair is unprofessional." Tyler still wore capes, but only on Fridays, and only under duress from his mother. Oliver's glasses had thickened, the lenses now resembling the bottom of Coke bottles. Emily had braces with neon green rubber bands. Priya had become the class treasurer, collecting and redistributing pencils with the efficiency of a small-town banker. And Jacob...Jacob sat by the window, reading a book about space, his thumb no longer in his mouth but his eyes still fixed on distant things.
"Before we start the water cycle," Mrs. Deluca said, "I want to ask you something."
Marcus immediately perked up. "Is it about the field trip? Because my mom said if I don't get to go to the museum, she's suing the school."
"It's not about the field trip."
"Because she has a lawyer. His name is Steve."
"It's not about the field trip, Marcus."
"Steve says we have rights."
"Marcus." She set the marker down. The rabbit-water-cycle stared back at her, judgmental. "What is the most important thing in the world?"
The class went silent. Not the chaotic, explosive silence of kindergarten, but a considering silence. They were eight now. They had opinions. They had hierarchies. They had a complex social structure involving Pokémon cards and who was allowed to sit on which bench at recess.
"Money," said Priya immediately. She was organizing her desk caddy by color and size. "Money is the most important. My dad says money makes the world go round, and also that we can't afford a dog because of my brother's braces."
"Money is stupid," said Tyler, whose cape was hidden under his hoodie today. "You can't buy happiness."
"Yes you can," said Priya. "You can buy ice cream. Ice cream is happiness."
"Money can't buy love," said Sophie, adjusting her professional bun. "My mom says love is free but divorce costs thirty thousand dollars."
"Your parents are getting divorced?" Emily asked, her braces catching the light like tiny neon traps.
"No, but they could. It's a statistical probability."
"What's statistical probability?" asked Marcus, who had begun drawing a T-Rex eating a lawyer named Steve on his folder.
"It's when something might happen because of math," said Oliver, not looking up from the circuit board he was building. "Like how there's a statistical probability that the sun will explode in five billion years."
"Will we be dead?" asked Jacob, still looking out the window.
"Everyone will be dead," said Oliver. "But it's okay because we'll be dust."
"I don't want to be dust," said Emily. "I want to be a ghost so I can haunt my brother."
"Ghosts aren't real," said Oliver.
"You don't know that," said Tyler. "Scientists don't know everything. My uncle saw a ghost in his basement. It was wearing a hat."
"That was probably a coat rack," said Oliver.
"It was floating."
"Coat racks can float if there's an earthquake."
"There wasn't an earthquake."
"Then it was a ghost," Oliver conceded, though his tone suggested he was humoring the masses.
"Can we get back to the question?" Mrs. Deluca asked, though she was enjoying this. They were forming arguments now. They were learning to spar.
"Friendship," said Sophie suddenly. She looked down at her hands, which were calloused from the uneven bars. "Friendship is the most important. Because if you don't have friends, you have to eat lunch alone, and if you eat lunch alone, everyone thinks you're weird, and if everyone thinks you're weird, you don't get invited to birthday parties, and if you don't get invited to birthday parties, your mom cries in the car."
The room went very quiet.
"Your mom cried?" asked Emily.
"Last weekend. In the CVS parking lot. She thought I didn't see, but I did."
Jacob turned from the window. "My mom cried too," he said. "When my grandpa died. She said it was because he was her best friend."
"See?" said Sophie. "Friendship is everything."
"But what about family?" asked Marcus, looking up from his dinosaur-lawyer drawing. "Family has to be more important than friends. Friends can leave. Family is stuck with you."
"Family can leave too," said Priya quietly. She was still organizing her pencils, but her movements had slowed. "My cousin's dad left. He went to get milk and never came back."
"Maybe he got lost," said Tyler.
"Maybe he didn't want to be found," said Priya.
"That's dark," said Emily, but she said it with a certain respect, as one acknowledges a particularly good jump-rope rhyme.
"Being good at stuff," said Oliver, abruptly changing the subject. He held up his circuit board. "Being good at stuff is important. Because if you're not good at anything, what are you even doing? Just taking up space?"
"You're not just taking up space," said Mrs. Deluca.
"But what if I am?" Oliver pushed his glasses up. They were held together with tape in the middle because he had sat on them last Tuesday. "What if I'm just a waste of atoms? There are seven billion people. The universe doesn't need me."
"The universe might not," said Jacob, "but I do."
Everyone looked at him. Jacob rarely spoke, and when he did, it was usually about Jupiter's moons or the specific way his grandmother made dumplings.
"Need me for what?" asked Oliver.
"For being you," said Jacob. "You're the only one who knows how electricity works. If you weren't here, we'd all electrocute ourselves trying to plug in the pencil sharpener."
Oliver blinked. "That's... that's actually true. The wiring in this building is from 1974."
"See?" Jacob smiled. It was small, but it was there. "Important."
"Being remembered," said Emily suddenly. She was picking at her braces now, a habit that drove her orthodontist to drink. "That's what I think. Being remembered after you die. Like in that song from Coco. My grandma says the worst thing is being forgotten."
"But everyone gets forgotten eventually," said Tyler. "Like... like that king. Tut. Everyone remembers him now but in a thousand years, no one will."
"Then we have to be so awesome that people remember us forever," said Marcus. "Like T-Rex. Everyone remembers T-Rex."
"T-Rex didn't choose to be remembered," said Sophie. "He just existed. And now he's oil."
"I want to be oil," said Emily. "Then I could be in cars and go fast."
"You're already going to be dust," said Oliver. "We established this."
"I can be dust AND oil. I'm multifaceted."
Mrs. Deluca leaned against her desk, the water cycle rabbit watching over them like a fuzzy guardian angel. They were eight years old, and they were already carrying so much—the fear of being alone, the weight of their parents' tears, the desperate desire to matter in a universe that would eventually turn them all into dust and oil and memory.
"So," she said. "We've got money, friendship, family, being good at stuff, being needed, and being remembered."
"And snacks," said Priya. "I haven't abandoned snacks. I just think money can buy them now."
"Fair," said Mrs. Deluca.
The bell rang, a harsh, electronic chirp that made them all jump. The conversation scattered like marbles. Chairs scraped. Backpacks were zipped with the violence of youth. They filed out, already forgetting the heaviness, already planning their trades and games and alliances.
But Jacob lingered at the door.
"Mrs. Deluca?" he said.
"Yes, Jacob?"
"When I was little, I said love. Remember?"
"I remember."
"I still think that," he said. "But it's harder now. Because love doesn't fix the wiring. Love doesn't stop people from leaving. Love doesn't make you good at stuff."
"No," she agreed. "It doesn't."
"But it's still the reason," he said. "It's the reason you try to fix the wiring. It's the reason you get good at stuff. It's the reason you don't leave."
He looked at her with his serious, eight-year-old eyes, and then he was gone, swept into the hallway current of third-graders rushing toward recess.
Mrs. Deluca turned back to the whiteboard. The water cycle rabbit seemed to wink at her. She erased it, slowly, thinking that Jacob was right and also that he was wrong, and that this was the nature of growing up, discovering that the answers got more complicated, not less.
Outside, twenty-two children ran across the blacktop, screaming, their shadows long in the afternoon sun. They were eight. They were learning that the world was bigger than snacks and smaller than dinosaurs, that friendship could break and family could leave, that being remembered was a kind of immortality but being needed was a kind of grace.
And somewhere in the chaos, Jacob was sitting on a bench, reading about nebulas, waiting for someone to need him.