She looks at the mirror above the cabinet in front of her. She is too low to see her own reflection, but she can see the wall behind her, and a drawing hanging there that her father did in pencil years ago. She squints at the drawing in the mirror; she has not looked closely at it for some time. It is of their apple tree, and it is perfect. It is fading and a little bit water stained, and she thinks that tomorrow she should take it down and put it somewhere safe, since now the apple tree is dying. She lowers her eyes from the mirror to the cabinet, behind which she keeps all her old sketchbooks. She loves to go through this cabinet, but she will not do it often; to go through the cabinet is a special treat, a special activity that if done too much will lose its magic. Right now she knows too well what is inside: old bath toys, shells that she collected from Hilton Head, a box of rocks she collected at her grandmother’s house after she died, a mustard-colored basin her parents bathed her in when she was a baby, an old set of curlers, a sewing kit, a box of bobby pins and barrettes, sample perfume vials. She wants to forget about these things, so that in a few months, some day when she is at home alone, she can rediscover them all.

She loves to rediscover things: letters in the folds of old books, money in winter pockets, the playbill from the circus in the bottom of a drawer. She wills herself to forget the details of the photographs in the album of her parents’ wedding, or the contents of books in the locked bookcase in the hall. She takes more pleasure in rediscovery than in discovery itself, the mixture of newness and familiarity that rediscovery affords. Someday, she thinks, she will rediscover her voice. She thinks of the winter before, where she left her voice, and how some days the prospect of waiting for even only an hour to pass seemed like a lifetime, and how she started to feel better once she’d resigned herself to silence, once she’d made a game of it. It was one thing that she could control; it was one thing that was hers. That first day had been February 29, 286 days ago. It wasn’t a real day, anyway, she’d figured, a day not to get out of bed, to eat, to drink, to speak. And that silence—it had given her something to live for, became an addiction. What she should have done, she thinks now, is set a limit for it. She should have allowed herself a day of silence only, maybe two, three, or four, or allowed herself only one day of silence a week. But she hadn’t, and the longer the silence has gone on, the greater an issue it has become. She can’t bear to think of the attention words would bring her, the looks exchanged at words coming from the silent girl’s mouth. Yes, in trying to withdraw, she has called too much attention to herself; no one is going to ignore the fact of her silence. Hello used to be so easy, and part of her longs for that time when it was. She should get it over with, just speak before the days between her old self and the self she has become are too many to overcome; the problem is that she’s afraid it might be too late. It is too late. She can’t even bring herself to speak aloud anymore when no one is there to listen.