“Why?” he asked again, and it was a child’s voice, lost, with no way home. In that moment Louise thought of The Velveteen Rabbit and she knew why she had always hated it. Being loved didn’t mean you were alive. People loved lots of inanimate things: stuffed animals, cars, puppets. Being alive meant something else. “Because you’re real, Pupkin,” Louise said. “And nothing real can last forever. That’s how you know you’re real. Because one day you die.”
