The sun rose at 7:24 a.m., and by then the line was around the block and past the parking garage. The crowd was feisty that morning, undoubtedly because it was the last day of the exhibit and everyone who hadn’t made it in yet had shown up expecting entry before it closed. There was a lot of pushing and shoving. People tried to cut the line. One guy offered Eli two grand for his spot. A girl in Birkenstocks and thick wool socks offered me sex for mine.

About an hour before the doors opened, a museum representative named Tamisha came out, counted off the first one hundred people by marking them with little yellow stickers, and announced that anyone who didn’t have a sticker would be turned away. However, she assured those one hundred people that they would all get in to see October, even if it ran beyond the 5:00 p.m. cutoff time.

The 103rd person in line was a man who claimed he’d come all the way from Croatia to participate in Sorrow, to which Tamisha replied, “You should have come sooner.”

In protest, the man tore off his clothes, curled up in a ball on the sidewalk, and screamed like someone auditioning for a role in a horror film until Security came and took him away.

All the commotion set a tone that Eli called “unbefitting for the last day of such a beautiful experience.” He asked me to hold his spot, wandered off for a bit, and came back with five big boxes of doughnuts that he passed out to everyone in line.

At first I didn’t take one because I didn’t want my fingers to be sticky when I held October’s hands, but Eli had anticipated that problem and also had a bag of little, individually wrapped moist towelettes. He passed those out too.

I was as nervous walking in on the second day as I had been on the first. Maybe even more so, because I was second in line behind Eli and had much less time to mentally prepare. In fact, I was already standing beside the computer screen rereading the rules when the massive shades fully disappeared into the ceiling.

Eli was still in with October when I opened my voice memo app and once again pushed record. What can I say? I’m a rebel.

I approached the door as soon as I saw Eli exit, then I waited for Security to wave me in, and I entered the room.

October was wearing the same dress she’d had on the day before, except in a different color. This one was a light, shimmery blue, and the tint in the shattered panes seemed to match the dress, though I was fairly certain it had been a pinkish rose color twenty hours earlier. Her hair was down this time, and she had a tiny gold beetle on a chain around her neck.