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that these annual installments are, collectively, Annie’s “conceptual autobiography.” Apparently, they “comment on father-daughter relationsin a postmodern consumer-driven world in which the gulf between self and other can never be bridged by material objects.” Maybe this year, Annie thought, I won’t get my A+.
    “This is cool, Dad.”
    “Really?”
    “Really. It feels like being inside a cathedral, almost, the way the ceiling is shaped.”
    “A waterproof worship-centre, assembled in less than five minutes,” Jake said, adopting an infomercial voice as he held up his fist to his mouth like a microphone.
    Annie lay down on the sleeping bag and looked up at the blue for the first time. As she tried to get space-worthy strawberry seeds out from between her teeth with her tongue, she felt, for a moment, as if the tent had become the whole world.

    They hadn’t meant for the tent to stay there. Jake was so excited that he had finally hit the mark, present-wise, that he hardly wanted to say anything when its continued presence in front of the pine bookcases and beside the living room set started to seem a bit odd. He knew he should probably exercise his parental authority at some point and insist that they tear down the camp; in truth, he didn’t want to take it down any more than she did. Before the tent, Annie spent most of her time alone in her room. He never asked what she was doing, because he has not forgotten how much he hated his mother’s constant nagging while he smoked pot in his bedroom when he was Annie’s age. He was always curious, though, and wished that she wouldcome down and watch TV with him. Back when her pajamas still had feet, she would beg to do just that, to stay up that extra half hour and fall asleep in his lap while he watched the news. Now she was the one who stayed up late, and he found himself wishing that he could curl up and fall asleep in the chair in the corner of her room while she talked to her friends on Gchat. If she’d wanted to come downstairs, he would have watched whatever she wanted to watch, even if it involved style makeovers or reality shows about spectacular desserts. Sometimes he walks up to the top of the stairs and stands outside her closed door, willing himself to knock, but he always goes back downstairs without asking her to join him. The idea of her saying no, however gently, is somehow worse than not asking at all. Besides, she was diligent about her homework, and although he worried about the fact that she didn’t go out all that often or talk to him about her classmates, he knew she had friends at school. She went for a long run every other day and played field hockey, so really, how could he complain? She was basically the perfect kid, wasn’t she?
    In the weeks that followed the construction of the indoor campsite, two unexpected things happened: they began to spend their evenings together in the tent, and, to Jake’s surprise, Annie began to open up to him. Like a seedling at first, offering gossip about the new music teacher at school, or her friend Miranda’s constant battle with her sister over the use of their parents’ car. Then, over the course of the first month of tent evenings, Annie burst into chatter as bright and full as a garden of prize-winning chrysanthemums. Her voice took on a new, sweet pitch when she told him about Todd, the shymath genius who sometimes stayed with her after class to work on bonus questions. “He’s attentive, like he notices when I wear my hair up and stuff. And he’s so smart, like he was explaining projective space to me, which is basically when …” Jake relished the warble of excitement when she explained hyperbolic geometry problems he wasn’t sure he understood fully, even though he had learned the same things once himself. This was the first time she’d ever mentioned a boy, but Jake knew better than to say he was more interested in hearing about the boy than the math. He didn’t want to slow