Chapter 11: The Fight Scene

The System didn't say anything else that night.

Neither did I.

Briggs drove me back to Goldie's with the heat on high and the radio off.

At the curb he kept both hands on the wheel.

"I'm not going to ask what that was," he said.

"Good."

"I'm going to want to, though. Tomorrow. Probably every day."

I looked at his hands. The knuckles were white.

"Can you not ask for a little while?" I said.

He turned and looked at me for a long time.

"I can do a little while."

I kept the list in my notebook, in the back, behind my blocking notes.

Nobody saw it. Nobody knew what the number at the top meant.

On Day 9 Birdie came to Goldie's after school, and I gave her her first stage makeup lesson at the kitchen table.

I showed her how to draw age lines with a brown pencil and blend them with her ring finger.

She wanted to be ninety.

When we were done she looked about forty and furious about it.

"More wrinkles," she said.

"You're eight. You don't have the bones for ninety."

"I have the attitude."

"That's true," said Goldie from the stove.

I drew three more lines across her forehead. She went home and scared her grandmother.

I crossed off the first thing on the list.

That night Goldie turned on the radio in her sewing room, an oldies station, while she pinned a hem.

A fast song came on, all horns.

She put down her pins and held out both hands.

"Come on. I know you can."

We danced between the bolts of fabric in our socks. She spun me so hard I knocked a box of buttons off the shelf.

We picked them up on our hands and knees, laughing so much we couldn't count them.

I didn't cross that one off. I wanted another one first.

I didn't tell anyone about Day 30.

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