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care of you. No one else knows how.”

SIX
    Even though I was relieved that we didn’t find the girl, I still worried. I couldn’t guess what Audra was planning to do, and she wouldn’t tell me anything.
    I kept thinking that I would show her the words in the yellow notebook, the messages that had come to me, only me. But I also didn’t want to share them. If I told someone else, the words might stop coming. I think I was also saving the secret of those messages, in case I needed it, to show Audra that I knew things, too, that I should not be left behind.
    I started to worry that the words in the yellow notebook might fade away, or disappear, so I began to copy them into another notebook. That’s how I began to writethis all down, so I wouldn’t lose anything. And the afternoon I started copying it, sitting at my desk in my room, I found new writing, a blank page that wasn’t blank anymore.
    The sea is a flat stone without any
    scratches, a fairy tale is a made-up story
,
    history is a story of the before, and even a
    made-up story is made up of real things
.
    Does static really mean stillness, a lack
    of motion? We never stop moving, we are
    always here, listening; still here and yet far
    from still. Different worlds are all around
    us, some easier to see, some too distant
,
    too far beyond. Hello, we are interested in
    you. You’re a nice smooth girl, a person
.
    Girls slip and shift; they disappear, they
    can become another person. People band
    together for protection or they don’t even
    know why, and we think it’s the tenderest
    thing when members of different species
    befriend one another. A kitten and a
    monkey, a duck and a cow, a dog and a
    chicken. We find this so surprising, and feel
    that it demonstrates something important
    about kindness, and how natural it is when
    we let it happen
.
    Even though the writing was cursive, every now and then a letter didn’t fit, like a capital
A
in the middle of a word. It was ragged, the words sometimes stretched out, sometimes crushed together. It was like no one’s handwriting I’d ever seen, and the paper was smudged, dirt rubbed into it from the hand dragging along, writing the letters. I wondered whose hand that was, who wrote those words—yet even then I could feel that the messages came from somewhere else, beyond the places and people I knew, to find their way to me. Only to me. And it was true that since I’d received the messages I hadn’t felt so agitated, hadn’t felt the agitation come over me. The messages were confusing and calming at the same time.
    I sat there, copying the new words. It was late in the afternoon; I looked up at my bookcase, to check if therewere other forgotten notebooks, but there were only my encyclopedias, my books about animals.
    Next to my newer books were books that were passed down from Audra, which were too young for me. I had no one to pass them down to, so they stayed in my room.
The Boxcar Children
and
Island of the Blue Dolphins
and
Beezus and Ramona
—we’d gone to Beverly Cleary Elementary, and in the park near our house there were statues, one of Henry Huggins and his dog, Ribsy, one of Ramona. Audra and I used to play Beezus and Ramona; I stopped liking that game when Ramona started seeming like a brat to me. And then we’d play
Little House on the Prairie
—I was Laura and Audra was Mary, and I described everything to her because she went blind. I led her through the house, blindfolded, all around the neighborhood, and she held on to my arm, unable to see, unable to do the simplest thing without my help.
    Looking at my shelves, thinking of Audra, made me miss her, made me want to talk to her. I finished my copying, hid the yellow notebook in the bookshelf, then stood and crossed the hall.
    I pushed her door open. The empty room smelleddamp, like wet clothes and dirt, and it felt quieter, the air a soft hiss in my ears. There was a new lock