Gabrielle and Kelsey had the benefit of each other for their haphazard trial and error, but I had the benefit of knowing that what I was doing—what I was feeling—was real, an actual scientifically verifiable thing. Because there are a bunch of places in the book where Kelsey and Gabrielle wonder whether they are making the whole thing up, imagining it. Whether they both might even be losing their minds.

I skip ahead until I get to the word BLOCKING, in all caps and boxed with several deep, dark lines. Followed by four numbered points:

1) BELIEVE THE LIE 2) Imagine a box 3) put your feelings in that box 4) stare at the flat black top, think of the box (only the box). G

But how are you supposed to do that while you’re having a conversation with someone? K

IDK. Practice? G

From how good Kelsey seemed in the hospital at blocking, they must have figured it out eventually.

I try to do it myself now: I close my eyes and imagine pushing all my feelings into a box. I stare at the top of the black box. Try to think of only that. After a minute, I do feel emptied out, though I have no way of knowing if I’ve done it right, not without Kelsey here to try to read me. As much as I want to pretend that I have a leg up because of what I know from my dad, it feels more important that I am alone.

On a diagonal below the bit about the blocking I find the following: Knowledge or cognition without evident rational thought. Intuition—as defined by Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary.

They figured out what I have: HEP is more than just reading people’s emotions. Already practice has made me better. The real question is how much better we can get. What’s the limit of what we can do.

I flip through the rest of the book to the end pages, which are filled with notes. Not all of it is about reading either. There are some exchanges about friends; some girl named Sarah on the volleyball team was causing Kelsey all sorts of problems—she made up a rumor that Kelsey had had sex with somebody who was married and old and, most importantly, totally disgusting.

There’s something about Gabrielle’s new-at-the-time boyfriend—a point of testiness between the two girls. His name is Leo Berkowitz, and he’s a rower on the Harvard crew team, which Kelsey somehow makes seem like an insult the way she hurls it at her sister. A stupid cliché to date a “college guy,” and, “ew, Harvard, gross.”