‘I was jumping in the leaves,’ she said, climbing the stairs into the bus.

‘Sure.’

Her teacher that year was Mr Chester. He was one of those teachers who preferred his students to sit in circled groups rather than rows, and who brought in muddy plastic bags full of plums and apples from the trees in his yard. Anouk was relieved to see, when she walked into the classroom, that the seats had already been assigned. That she wouldn’t have to be asked to join a group. Or not be asked.

The first day of school was unremarkable except for one thing: Mr Chester announced that they would each make their own time capsule, which he would keep, and deliver back to them in three years.

‘Three years is a heck of a long time,’ he said, rubbing his hands together, circling their tables. His shoes were as soft and floppy as dog ears.

‘You’ll choose a few objects that are significant to you. There’s no rush. I’m giving you until Christmas to decide. Also, you’ll write a letter.’

‘To who?’ someone asked.

‘To whom,’ Mr Chester corrected, one finger on his chin.

‘To whom?’

‘To yourselves.’

This is going to be good, Anouk thought.

By the end of the first week of school, Anouk had set aside three objects for her time capsule. One, a celluloid film in a manila envelope, a chest X-ray of her lungs that was taken after her last infection. She knew how to look at an X-ray, how to identify the smoky shading of scar tissue. Like thin clouds, the kind that looked as if they were about to disappear.

The second choice for the time capsule was a plastic pill bottle full of river water. Naturally.

The third thing, a fossil of some primordial shellfish, bought in the gift shop at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. The fossil had been presented neatly on a square of yellow foam in a small plastic box, and with it, lost now, a written explanation of how the fossil had been formed. More or less, it read: this was not the actual animal turned to stone, but a copy. Any physical trace of the animal was gone, the soft parts, the muscles and skin and organs, eaten by other animals or bacteria. Then, millions of years after its death, the skeleton, buried deep in sedimentary rock, dissolved as well, leaving an empty space, a mould. Mineral-rich water eventually filled this vacancy and, under the pressure of layers and layers of rock, turned to stone. This was the fossil. Seas dried up and the earth’s crust shifted, and what was underneath rose to the surface like an ancient book found and opened and deciphered.

So when you died, Anouk understood, you could leave an imprint of yourself behind. Even if no one ever found it. But if someone did, she might try to figure you out. Who you were and where you came from. How you lived.