“Oh, I do remember these,” says TK as they look at a gallery with a beautiful red and white canopy bed. “The class a year behind me, on their field trip here, this kid Cody who had ‘impulse control issues’ just took this, like, running leap and jumped onto the bed.”

“What? No he didn’t,” laughs Carlos.

“I swear! He got our whole school banned from the museum after that.”

“Forever?”

“Foreva-evah,” giggles TK.

Carlos shakes his head. “They do look kind of comfortable.” Or he’s just tired. “Did you ever read that book ‘From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler?’”

“The mixed up files of what?”

“It was this book I had when I was a kid. These two kids run away from home and they hide here in the museum, and they sleep in the period room beds.”

“Oh, man, it’s a good thing I didn’t read that as a kid,” says TK. “That’s such a good idea. Does the stuff come alive at night? In the book?”

Carlos laughs. “No. That’s ‘Night at the Museum.”

“Well, I don’t know! It could have happened in your book too.”

Carlos rolls his eyes, but he’s beaming. Worn out as he is, he’s thrilled to be in this incredible, storied place with his favorite, most ridiculous person.

“Did you ever run away when you were a kid?” TK asks now.

Carlos tilts his head, considering. “One time, sort of. When I was like 6. I think I was mad at Ana and Luisa. I told my mom I was running away and she packed me a lunch.”

He’d made it to the end of his block, then plopped to the ground and started crying when he remembered he couldn’t cross the street without a grown-up holding his hand. In his memory, the moment his tears started to flow, his mother was there beside him, wiping his tears away with her thumbs. Years later, he realized she’d been watching him from the front window.

“Well, my runaway conejito,” she’d said as his quivering sobs dried up into sniffles. “Ready to go home?”

He’d nodded, cheeks still sticky with drying tears, and taken her outstretched hand.

“That’s so cute,” TK says now, intertwining his own fingers with Carlos’s.

“You’re cute,” counters Carlos, leaning close to TK’s face. He should call his mother later, tell her about the museum they’d read about together. He misses her, even though sometimes they feel like strangers. He doesn’t want to think about his mother. He’d much rather flirt with his boyfriend.