That night, Annamae fished Coco from her bedside table for the first time in a long time. It had somehow migrated to the bottom of a slightly teetery stack that included the pale brown workbook for practicing the letters of the alef-bet (everything after the first two pages was blank), the book she’d made in Art Explorers (all the pages were blank and the cover had come unglued), an Agatha Christie mystery Nana had given her for her birthday, a graphic novel Danny had lent her, and several library books, which made their crackly plastic-film sound when she moved them.
She gave herself a ritual gaze in the mirror that was no bigger than a stick of gum, then undid the thong around the middle and let the book bloom open. On the inside front cover, in big, careful childish letters that slanted up the page, it said ANNAMAE GALINKSY AGE 7 YEARS OLD. The first E had four horizontal lines, the second had five, and the third had three.
Leafing through the book, she found poems consisting of nothing but the words Yes and No. She found lists of names, some she recognized, like Wasim and Nobomi and Freddie Festano, and others that did not ring a bell. There were entries about things familiar to her through years of retelling, entries about things she recalled only upon being reminded, and others that meant nothing whatsoever to her now. Some passages she could make neither head nor tail of. She came across odd little drawings in crayon and colored pencil, many paper staircases she could stretch out along their folds, a page on which she’d glued flower petals, another on which she’d left a thumbprint in blood, gone rusty brown with age.
The longer she looked, the more somber she became. This object, which she’d carried around with her the way other kids might carry a blanket or a bear, this book, once her most intimate, most animate companion, had become a rather shabby thing, its cover stained, some of the stitching come loose, and—most troubling of all—much of its contents turned to gobbledygook.
Whoever had written these things was a stranger to her now.