When she had to go out in the real world, she watched for what people didn’t know they were telling you. She noted a hand playing with a necklace. An eyebrow, as an interrogative or a dismissal. The way little kids’ shoulders would turtle up near their ears when a bully was near. She listened, as well. To the pauses. The falters. The emotional floods of surprise or warmth or anger. She collected the stories she witnessed and wrote them in notebooks that she kept under her mattress.
