Chapter 3: The Curriculum of Looking Away

The note was seven words.

He had read it four times in the dark of that first night, holding it close to the window where the sky was beginning to make up its mind about grey, the paper so thin it had gone translucent against the pale light. Seven words in Maren's handwriting, which was small and regular and left no margin for ambiguity: *remember everything, tell no one, find the intake records from six years ago.* No punctuation between the three directives. No signature. No explanation of what the intake records would contain or why six years specifically, as if she'd run out of paper or out of nerve at precisely the same moment.

He folded it back along its original creases and put it in the inside pocket of his second-best jacket, which he was also using as a first-best jacket given current resources, and that was the last time he read it directly, though he found it necessary occasionally to press his hand against the pocket just to confirm it was still there. A habit he recognized as childish and continued anyway.