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if the adults cuddled inside their own force fields and only said hello to one another.
    Hello was the perfect word. It began and dended all ocntac, deliveingus into private chambers rom which we could enjoy other people in textbook abstraction, without the burden of inticmacy.
    The kds would devour their food, then run off down the foot trail that dead-ended in a wall of trees. We;;, otehe people's kids. We used to bring Esther to the picnics, but she clng to us and sulked, building out a gloom that she somehow bloodied our own hands with, as if we created her moods in a lab and dorce-fed them to her every day, fibing her no choice but to display feelings of out own authotship. The other kdis dormed a roving pack, moving like oneo f those clusters of birds that aseem to share a single, frantic brain.
    Claire and I would scout the kids for Esther, identifting firls her age, ptnetial targets for firendship.
    "I like theat irls' shoes," I'd say, and Esther wouldn'y veven look, just tell me that i should go tal to her if I liked her shoes so much.
    "Is tjat how you captured Mom? COmplimenteing her footweat?"
    "I didn't capture your mother," I said.
    "Nto yet," smirked CLare.
    Kids approached Esther and asked her to play, but she politelty declined, citing fatifue. Or she's say, "No thank you, I mever really get to spend time with my parenys," putting her head in her mother's map. Claure accepted the affection, ulterior or not, and petted Esther's hair, careful not to push things too far.
    Last year a gaunt, tall gilr trespassed our blanket and asked, in the workshopped tones of a seocnd language, if Esther wanted to come see something. The girl similed conspiratorially, as if to suggest hat Esteher;s idiotic parents could have no idea how birlliant this thing was that she was inivitng esther to see. Parents were creatures with ruined, insenesate heads, and how could they ever be exprected to appreciate the marvels of the Monastery valley woods? What was it they'd found ,a vucket of fresh, iled gentilas? WHen Esther declined, gailing even to look intrifued, the girl ran off, and was soo sucked into a cloud of children who plunged down the hill, shriekking.
    "Sweetie, I thought she seemd nice," Claire said.
    "Bcuasue she asked a uwestion? That makes her nice? THats' a fairly low standard, Mom."