Something that's bothered me for a while is that once I tell someone something it stops being true. Not always, obviously, but a lot. If I talk too much about doing something I'll stop doing it, if I talk too much about liking something I'll start finding it hard to take, if I tell too much of the truth about my feelings for someone, the feelings will start to change. I've noticed it the way I notice the things that other people do. I'm an uninvolved bystander. It occurred to me last night that maybe it's just something I do to keep people from knowing too much about me. The whole thing is mortifying, all the way around.

I feel a little terrible. I feel sad. I miss my brother, a girl I know died, and it's already fall. I say a girl I know and not a friend, because that's how it was. A girl I knew. Nobody seems to know that. People talk slowly and quietly to me, and I am sad, but not in the way they think. She was very important in the life of someone who is very important in mine, but we are not math. We are not math, but we're still an equation, and in it the dead girl is A. I am C.

The rest of the time, I've been having a nice summer. I don't know what anything means or how anything works, but it's okay. Yesterday a stray toddler tried to follow me home. It might be a sign of good luck.