You padded over, and I felt your weight on the edge of my mattress. There would come a day when we camped out freely on each other’s beds without a second thought, but that was the first time you came so close. In the dark, you guided my hand to your forearm. I felt the lines—long, thin scars—that traveled to the crook of your elbow. They looped and intertwined. I shivered, my body recognizing it before my mind caught up, a buried memory, one from when my father left and I had held Mother’s arm, wormed my hand beneath her sleeve, and she let me run my fingers over the strange pattern on her arm—and there it was on you, too.

“How?” I whispered.

My grandmother let out a violent cough. You retreated to your bed, the warmth of your arm against my fingertips gone.

I ran my hand over my own smooth arm. It was a cold night. I pulled the blankets closer, my body curling in on itself, wondering what it was that I was missing, how my exclusion could be branded into my skin.

Like Mother, I have kept the truth of the pencils a secret. Monica does not know. I can see you shaking your head—after how desperately I wanted the truth back then, how can I not tell her, when I have so thoroughly felt the sting of isolation? But Monica is different from me. She has never thought to ask about the pencils. Why would she when her world is digital? And if I don’t tell her, the secret might die with us. Would that not be for the best? Or am I just setting myself up for missing a chance for the two of us to understand each other a little better?

There is one more thing I have not told her. She returns home tomorrow, and I cannot be more excited or more anxious to see her. It wasn’t that we intended to keep it a secret. The diagnosis came shortly after she left for her summer internship, and it wasn’t the sort of thing I wanted to share over the phone. We’ll tell her when she gets home, I told Torou, who agreed, perhaps the only person less willing to hurt Monica than me.

The doctor says consistent mental stimulation might help slow the disease’s progress—and it turns out a convenient side effect is that your earliest memories become the clearest. So really, my writing this to you isn’t only for you. It’s for me as well, to cling to something. And maybe, in a way, it can be for her, too.

Chapter 3

From the diary of Monica Tsai, backed up on five servers spanning three continents

August 18, 2018 (2018-08-18T16:34:08.192273)

loc: Cambridge, Massachusetts. United States of America (42.3721865,71.1117091)

It’s been a difficult day.