I folded over the page at the part where Scout stops them taking Tom from the jailhouse. Because she was a small child and reminded the ringleader he was a father, Mr. Cunningham took the lynchers away and they did no harm. Atticus must have been smiling to himself at the courage of his daughter. Though if you ask me, courage doesn’t come into it, because Scout didn’t understand what danger she was in. I wish I could be that innocent.

How can any live creature be so silky? Why is it sad the way kittens squint up at you when you pet them? Like they’re thanking you for giving them everything they ever wanted.

I let Cloud go to sleep on my stomach and lie back, hands under my head. I once sneaked a tube of croissant dough to my room, not realizing—duh!—that you had to bake them first. To split open the tube, I whacked it on my dresser so hard that the dough circles flew up and made a grease mark on the ceiling. Mom just laughed. The stain stayed there all these years because interior decoration is not our thing. And Mom gets busy, especially since Robin moved in. It’s a joke between Fiona and Vicky and me, because the stain is exactly the shape of a you-know-what, though I did not notice that at the time. I was only eight, but how naïve can you be! We laugh about it almost every time they visit. Vicky, who I’m sure has seen lots of them by now, laughs the loudest, in this croaky guffaw that I love to hear.

One thing I wonder is: Can you make new friends there? Or are you stuck with the people you already know? I have to say that would severely limit my friendship group. Does anyone even talk? It’s possible talking is irrelevant in a way that is only obvious once you get there. If I made friends with a cavegirl, for example, I could stroke her fur and she could brush my hair like Suzy does when I babysit.

Used to. Suzy used to brush my hair.

I frowned, noticing that I assumed I’d have my hair back. But forget hair! What if you can’t even figure out where to draw the line between humans and everyone else? Do you draw the line at monkeys? Rabbits? Where? The more I thought about it, the more unbelievable the whole scenario became, even allowing for what we might not know or understand until it happens. Okay, Mom: you win. It’s all a story. No world without end. That’s when I got this choking feeling of being sealed up in a place where nothing could get in or out.