My backpack was already packed, and I'd already gotten the other supplies together, like the altimeter and granola bars and the Swiss Army knife I'd dug up in Central Park, so there was nothing else to do. Mom tucked me in at 9:36.

"Do you want me to read to you?" "No thanks." "Is there anything you want to talk about?" If she wasn't going to say anything, I wasn't going to say anything, so I shook my head no. "I could make up a story?" "No thank you." "Or look for mistakes in the Times?" "Thanks, Mom, but not really." "That was nice of Ron to tell you about his family." "I guess so." "Try to be nice to him. He's been such a good friend, and he needs help, too." "I'm tired."

I set my alarm for 11:50 P.M., even though I knew I wouldn't sleep.

While I lay there in bed, waiting for the time to come, I did a lot of inventing.

I invented a biodegradable car.

I invented a book that listed every word in every language. It wouldn't be a very useful book, but you could hold it and know that everything you could possibly say was in your hands.

What about a googolplex telephones?

What about safety nets everywhere?

At 11:50 P.M., I got up extremely quietly, took my things from under the bed, and opened the door one millimeter at a time, so it wouldn't make any noise. Bart, the night doorman, was asleep at the desk, which was lucky, because it meant I didn't have to tell any more lies. The renter was waiting for me under the streetlamp. We shook hands, which was weird. At exactly 12:00, Gerald pulled up in the limousine. He opened the door for us, and I told him, "I knew you'd be on time." He patted me on the back and said, "I wouldn't be late." It was my second time in a limousine ever.

As we drove, I imagined we were standing still and the world was coming toward us. The renter sat all the way on his side, not doing anything, and I saw the Trump Tower, which Dad thought was the ugliest building in America, and the United Nations, which Dad thought was incredibly beautiful. I rolled down the window and stuck my arm out. I curved my hand like an airplane wing. If my hand had been big enough, I could've made the limousine fly. What about enormous gloves?

Gerald smiled at me in the rearview mirror and asked if we wanted any music. I asked him if he had any kids. He said he had two daughters. "What do they like?" "What do they like?" "Yeah." "Lemme see. Kelly, my baby, likes Barbie and puppies and bead bracelets." "I'll make her a bead bracelet." "I'm sure she'd like that." "What else?" "If it's soft and pink, she likes it." "I like soft and pink things, too." He said, "Well, all right." "And what about your other daughter?" "Janet? She likes sports. Her favorite is basketball, and I'll tell you, she can play. I don't mean for a girl, either. I mean she's good."

"Are they both special?" He cracked up and said, "Of course their pop is gonna say they're special." "But objectively." "What's that?" "Like, factually. Truthfully." "The truth is I'm their pop."

I stared out the window some more. We went over the part of the bridge that wasn't in any borough, and I turned around and watched the buildings get smaller. I figured out which button opened the sunroof, and I stood up with the top half of my body sticking out of the car. I took pictures of the stars with Grandpa's camera, and in my head I connected them to make words, whatever words I wanted. Whenever we were about to go under a bridge or into a tunnel, Gerald told me to get back into the car so I wouldn't be decapitated, which I know about but really, really wish I didn't. In my brain I made "shoe" and "inertia" and "invincible."

It was 12:56 A.M. when Gerald drove up onto the grass and pulled the limousine right next to the cemetery. I put on my backpack, and the renter got the shovel, and we climbed onto the roof of the limousine so we could get over the fence.

Gerald whispered, "You sure you want to do this?"

Through the fence I told him, "It probably won't take more than twenty minutes. Maybe thirty." He tossed over the renter's suitcases and said, "I'll be here."

Because it was so dark, we had to follow the beam of my flashlight.

I pointed it at a lot of tombstones, looking for Dad's.

Mark Crawford

Diana Strait

Jason Barker, Jr.

Morris Cooper

May Goodman

Helen Stein

Gregory Robertson Judd

John Fielder

Susan Kidd

I kept thinking about how they were all the names of dead people, and how names are basically the only thing that dead people keep.

It was 1:22 when we found Dad's grave.

The renter offered me the shovel.

I said, "You go first."

He put it in my hand.

I pushed it into the dirt and stepped all of my weight onto it. I didn't even know how many pounds I was, because I'd been so busy trying to find Dad.

It was extremely hard work, and I was only strong enough to remove a little bit of dirt at a time. My arms got incredibly tired, but that was OK, because since we only had one shovel, we took turns.

The twenty minutes passed, and then another twenty minutes.

We kept digging, but we weren't getting anywhere.

Another twenty minutes passed.

Then the batteries in the flashlight ran out, and we couldn't see our hands in front of us. That wasn't part of our plan, and neither were replacement batteries, even though they obviously should have been. How could I have forgotten something so simple and important?

I called Gerald's cell phone and asked if he could go pick up some D batteries for us. He asked if everything was all right. It was so dark that it was even hard to hear. I said, "Yeah, we're OK, we just need some D batteries." He said the only store he remembered was about fifteen minutes away. I told him, "I'll pay you extra." He said, "It's not about paying me extra."

Fortunately, because what we were doing was digging up Dad's grave, we didn't need to see our hands in front of us. We only had to feel the shovel moving the dirt.

So we shoveled in the darkness and silence.

I thought about everything underground, like worms, and roots, and clay, and buried treasure.

We shoveled.

I wondered how many things had died since the first thing was born. A trillion? A googolplex?

We shoveled.

I wondered what the renter was thinking about.

After a while, my phone played "The Flight of the Bumblebee," so I looked at the caller ID. "Gerald." "Got 'em." "Can you bring them to us so we don't have to waste time going back to the limousine?" He didn't say anything for a few seconds. "I guess I could do that." I couldn't describe where we were to him, so I just kept calling his name, and he found my voice.

It felt much better to be able to see. Gerald said, "Doesn't look like you two have gotten very far." I told him, "We're not good shovelers." He put his driving gloves in his jacket pocket, kissed the cross that he wore around his neck, and took the shovel from me. Because he was so strong, he could move a lot of dirt quickly.

It was 2:56 when the shovel touched the coffin. We all heard the sound and looked at each other.

I told Gerald thanks.

He winked at me, then started walking back to the car, and then he disappeared in the darkness. "Oh yeah," I heard him say, even though I couldn't find him with my flashlight, "Janet, the older one, she loves cereal. She'd eat it three meals a day if we let her."