Because most of the complex was used for the company, our rooms were small and there were only three of them. My grandmother had the largest, farthest from the workshop. Our mothers shared the one closest to the workshop, which left the smallest, middle room for us. Sometimes we could hear my grandmother’s coughs through the wall, or the crinkle of the newspaper when she flipped a page. On the other side, our mothers kept their voices low, though like you and me, they often clashed.

“Will you keep her in the dark forever, then?” your mother’s voice rang.

I could not hear Mother’s reply. You shifted in the bed across from mine.

“You have a duty the same way Mother had to us,” your mother continued. She wanted us to hear. My mother spoke quickly in hushed tones, clearly trying to end the conversation.

“What are they talking about?” I whispered. You shifted again. I understood it meant for me to be quiet.

“Our power is not one to leave alone,” your mother said, her voice rising at the end of the sentence.

“Silence,” Mother ordered. I shivered, hugging my blanket closer. I had never heard her raise her voice like that. She was the eldest, but until then, it always seemed like your mother was the one in control.

Your mother quieted down after that. Still, she had succeeded. I could not let the topic go.

“What was that about?” I asked you urgently. It had something to do with the drawings they had shown me, replicas of my own. That you knew and I did not infuriated me more than anything my mother could have done.

To my surprise, you answered my question.

“There is a power in the pencils made by the Phoenix Pencil Company,” you said. “And we have the ability to unleash it.”

“What’s the power?” I asked, desperate to understand.

“I can’t tell you.”

“Please tell me. I’ll draw a better picture of you. You’re so pretty, do you know that? That’s why I was mean to you. I was jealous. I won’t do it again.”

“I’m sorry,” you said. “I don’t understand it, and I’m not allowed to tell you anything about it.”

“Why not? Who said that?”

“My mother said if I do, we will get kicked out. And then where would we go?” We frequently walked past the warehouses and movie theaters that had recently been converted to refugee housing, seen more than enough people sleeping on the streets while the foreigners’ mansions loomed in the background. I would not have wished that life on anybody, no matter how much I wanted to know this secret.

But the isolation of not knowing was unbearable at that age.

“I’ll give you a hint,” you said. “But then I really can’t say more.”