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Max nodded without hesitating.

The three of us stood up and left the main room. The sensory room was a closed space off the secondary hall, and it was exactly what the name said — somewhere to rest your senses, away from the music and the crowds. The sensory room was one of my favorite spaces in The Hearth.

It wasn't just a quiet little room with cushions on the floor — although it had that too, an area along the walls completely padded with soft foam, with low lighting and an even warmer amber tone than the main room. The big part of the space was an enormous play structure, the kind you'd find at a playground, only in an adult-sized version — a tall spiral slide, foam platforms at different heights, and in the far corner a ball pit that was genuinely large.

I walked in first. Obviously.

"BALL PIT," I announced.

Max stood in the doorway for a second, taking everything in with those big eyes of his. The softer light in here hit his face differently — he looked less scared than he had in the main room, or maybe it was just the fact that nobody was flogging anyone in here and the music was muffled by the walls.

"You can come in," I said, waving him over. "I promise they don't bite. The balls, at least. Henry I can't guarantee."

"Hey," Henry said, offended. “I only bite with consent.”

Max gave a tiny smile. Tiny, but it was a start. He came in. He stayed near the entrance for a while, arms folded around himself, watching me and Henry throw balls at each other with no particular strategy or objective. I threw a green ball at Henry, Henry returned with three blue ones, I jumped to dodge and missed completely.

Silence. Max moved a little closer to the pit, looking into it with an expression I recognized — the expression of someone who really wanted to do something but thought they weren't allowed.

"You can get in," I said, quieter this time. "There are no rules here. This is literally what the room is for."

He looked at the ball pit for another second. Then he took his shoes off, set them neatly outside the pit, and stepped in. The balls rose up around him to his waist, and he stood very still in the middle, like he wasn't quite sure what to do with himself. I picked up a yellow ball and put it in his hand without saying anything.

He looked at it. Then at me. Then at Henry. Then he hit me directly in the nose with it.

"HEY," I said. Max's mouth fell open, clearly having not planned that at all.

"Sorry," he said immediately. "I don't know why I did that—"

"WAR," I declared.

What followed was the kind of thing none of the three of us would probably be able to explain to an adult in a way that sounded reasonable. Balls flying in every direction. Henry hiding behind a foam platform and sniping from a distance. Me trying to climb the slide to get the height advantage and sliding back down before I got halfway up. Max — who at first was throwing very carefully, almost apologetically, each ball accompanied by a checking glance to make sure everything was okay — gradually getting more and more shameless, until he fully submerged himself in the ball pit, disappeared for a second, and surfaced on the other side to hit Henry in the back with a frankly premeditated quantity of balls.

"You were pretending to be a good boy," Henry said, indignant.

"I am a good boy," Max said, completely innocent.

"You're a brat," I declared, impressed. He went red again, but it was a different red than before.

"I'm not," he said.

"You are," Henry and I said at exactly the same time. He hid his smile behind his hand again, but this time he couldn't quite hold it back all the way.

I was in the middle of the slide — literally stopped midway, having gotten distracted — when the sensory room door opened.

"JJ."

I turned around.

Daddy was in the doorway, with Jeffrey and Dominic on either side of him. Daddy's expression was the kind that made me want to become invisible — not full anger, but concern in the process of becoming firmness, which was sometimes worse.

"You disappeared," he said.

"I didn't disappear," I said, finishing the slide slowly because there was no stopping the process at that point. "I came to the sensory room. Which is in the building. Which is safe."

"Without telling me."

"I should have told you," I agreed, because there wasn't much to argue with there. "Sorry, Daddy. I was showing Max the room." I pointed at Max.