I took the paper and ran, feeling it flutter behind me as I went upstairs and straight into her room. Kneeling in front of her bed, I felt underneath, then took them out and spread them around me. My hands were covered in black and I left fingerprints, perfectly gray ovals that reminded me of grapes all over the drawings. I didn’t care that I was ruining his pictures of her. I stamped my hands over them harder, tears splashing down on to the paper, making the spots where they landed ripple and fading the angry black lines to gray.

And then more because I could not stop.

I smudged and I pounded and I fought until I forgot where or who I was and then suddenly I remembered because I felt her beside me. Her hair was wet, and when it touched my cheek it cooled me. She was rocking me, kissing the top of my head. When she spoke the words got lost between us, but I understood.

“I will never leave you again, Franny.”

I don’t know how long we stayed that way, but when we separated I was still clutching the paper. And when I let it go, it dropped from my hand and crumpled to the floor. The black letters were now covered in a delicate swirl of gray and it was hard to read, but I could still read what I had written.

F-O-R-G-I-V-E M-E

After that night she came back to me. At the pool she waved from the bleachers every time I popped out of the water. She took me to the grocery store and let me pick out things that I liked. I chose bright green lollipops that made my lips pucker so much that I looked like a fish when I ate them. She thought it was funny that I loved them so much. I liked to see her smile.

We sat in the living room together, me on the couch and she in a rocking chair, moving back and forth, floating through the stillness that surrounded us. Then one night she turned on the radio and a melody that sounded like bells streamed around us and I saw that she had her sketchbook in her hand. It took me a few minutes to realize I was her subject. She was looking at me closely, her gaze brushing down the slope of my nose and slipping across the curve of my lips. No one had ever paid such close attention to me before and it made me feel stiff. I was scared that if I moved too much, she would lose interest in me and then I would go back to being who I was before. So I stayed perfectly still, my word search book laying flat on my lap.