I grab the next one out of her hands. “Look it up online, they have archives and stuff. Even I know that and I’m ten.”

She tries to grab it back off me. “Don’t tell me what I can and can’t do! You can’t come in here and tell me what’s important. You don’t know.” She beady-eyes me, like I’m the one with the problem. The sun’s fully up now. The day’s ticking away, and if this hall’s an indication, we’ll be lucky to get the first meter cleared. It’ll never pass as manageable. Lettie rips the paper back out of my hands. “Who do you think you are anyway?”

I snatch it back. “Someone who’s trying to help you.” I yell it at her, right in her face. She steps back like I’ve hit her.

We stare at each other. I want to hit her.

Lettie slumps onto a pile of crap. “I’m yelling at a ten-year-old. About newspapers.” The hardness slides off her face, taking her cheeks with it. She reminds me of the plants in the front yard before I watered them.

I sit next to her. “They’re just newspapers, Lettie.”

“I know.”

“I can help you look up anything in them online. If we throw them out, all the information and stuff, we can still find it.”

“I don’t have a computer.”

“You can get one.” I think of all the stuff already in her house. “You can use mine,” I add quickly.

Lettie nods. “That’s sensible.” But her hands are still pressing into the pile of papers in front of her. I lift them off; her skin’s dry and soft, like one of her old newspapers.