It’s June—a month that stretches like the song of cicadas—and every eighth-grade class in America has come to Washington DC. First stop: the museum where I work.

I plant my feet firmly on the marble floor and pause. “Be the rock in the stream,” I tell myself. Hundreds of middle schoolers flow to either side of my body in a guffawing, shrieking, gangly, hormonal, sometimes exhausted, sometimes exuberant, thrumming, humming, halting, tripping, pointing, judging, infatuated current. This jeering, love-sick river smells like Axe body spray and artificial strawberries with undertones of bowling alley. I glance at the sound meter I’ve downloaded on my phone, which reads 93 decibels. I close my eyes, a trust exercise, and listen to the encompassing torrent, feeling the breeze made by the totality of movement.

When I open my eyes, a woman is standing silently beside me, a second rock in the stream.