But June was digging in her backpack. She pulled out a book Theo had not seen in years. Its cover was soft and threadbare, the corners rounded from being carried everywhere. On the front, in their grandpa's careful handwriting: The Fox Who Said Wait.

Grandpa had made it for Theo when Theo was June's age. Paper, colored pencils, a long-armed stapler. After Grandpa died, Theo had given the book to June because he was too old for it. That is what he had told himself, anyway.

"Read it," June said. "Out loud. Here."

"June. No."

"Please." She held it up with both hands, the way you hold something that matters.

Theo pulled out one earbud. Ollie was watching now, pretending not to. Theo sighed, sat on the cold wall a careful two feet from the new kid, and opened the book.

Theo's voice did something strange on page four. It faltered, just for a second, on the word wait. He had read this book maybe two hundred times when he was little. He had never noticed that the mouse was there on page three before anyone saw him. Grandpa had drawn it so small on purpose. You had to look down to find it.

When he closed the book, it was quiet except for the traffic.

"I like the light part," Ollie said softly. It was the first thing Theo had heard him say.

"Me too," June said. "Grandpa said the light gets bigger when you share it. That's not how lanterns work. But it's how people work."

Theo looked at Ollie's bare hand, red and stiff, tucked into his sleeve. He thought about the wind saying hurry. He thought about how he had been the wind all afternoon. All year, maybe.

Then he did something deliberate. He pulled off his own gloves (big gray ones, way too big for a first grader) and held them out.

"They're huge," he said. "But they're warm."

Ollie looked at the gloves, then at Theo, like he was checking whether it was a trick. Then he put them on. His hands disappeared completely, and June laughed, and Ollie laughed too, and something in Theo's chest loosened that had been tight for a long time.

Ollie's bus came. He climbed on, waving one enormous gray glove from the window.

On the walk home, Theo did not put his earbuds back in. His hands were cold, but he barely noticed. June held the book against her coat.

"Theo?" she said. "Can we sit with Ollie tomorrow too?"

He thought about it. Not because he did not know the answer, but because he wanted to say it right.

"Yeah," he said. "We can wait for him."

That night, Theo found a stack of printer paper and a box of colored pencils. He did not know how to draw a fox. He was not sure he knew how to write a book. But he knew how Grandpa's story had found its way back to him, right when he needed it, and he understood now that a picture book was never really just for children. It was solace you could fold and staple and hand to someone. It was a lantern.

He wrote at the top of the first page: For June. And for Ollie.

Then, slowly, he began.