Her hair is shorter, cropped at the shoulder. She’s made a brave choice, bangs on curly hair. She leans forward over her newspaper. (Yes, it’s hers. The early bird of the house. The others will have their news delivered in hindsight, after dinner, on the couch, a cup of tea or wine on the side table.) She pulls at the hair, impatient, willing it to grow. It falls loose, masking her face like the ears of a cocker spaniel.

He can’t deny it’s cute. He preferred her hair longer, the forceful part down the middle, how it fell over her shoulders, how she tucked it under a fleece headband in winter, something resembling an 80s tennis player. The day she showed up at the station after the cut she wouldn’t look him in the eye. He knew. He knew he had one chance to get this right.

“Now, I can see your eyes all the time.”

Her husky blues.

Young love.

**I’ll be back January 7, 2008. Warm wishes and see you soon!**

Caucasian woman, late 30s, wearing a large knitted ski sweater and hat, large leather carry-all hoisted on her lap, edging into the next seat.

The Pleasure of Finding Things Out, Richard P. Feynman (Basic)

About halfway through:

And then we have this terrible struggle to try to explain things to people who have no reason to want to know. But if they want to defend their own point of view, they will have to learn what yours is a little bit. So I suggest, maybe incorrectly or perhaps wrongly, that we are too polite.

She stamps her feet on the soaked runner, looks up in time to see her young colleague holding her purse in the elevator door. There are five people inside including “those women” from the floor above, the ones who look at her, then each other. And she knows one day it will be just them and they’ll tell her, tell her to just take the stairs, it’s not like she couldn’t use the exercise. She lunges into a half-spirited jog, her breath catching in her chest in a huff, the candied smiles of her carefully arranged shortbread snowmen falling to their shoulders. Mute.

Caucasian woman, 50s, with snow white bob, wearing powder blue boots, green jacket and emerald green scarf.

Last Dance, Last Chance, Ann Rule (Pocket)

Near the beginning:

But nothing changed. She sat in her chair for what seemed like months. He lay on the couch nearby, rarely leaving her alone. Sometimes it seemed to her that he was watching over her with concern, and sometimes he didn’t seem to notice her any more than if she were a piece of furniture.

The bus idles at the station, the driver arranging their suitcases, his care adapted for days like this when a hip and heel is all it takes to get the luggage inside the belly. He’s like them, just wants to get on the road, be home before the storm. He lumbers up the steps and into his seat. The door closes and the carriage lifts. She shifts in her seat, tries to find something that resembles padding on an otherwise dilapidated cushion, tries to picture a happier, healthier Mama. The man beside her fills in a folded Sudoku. She rests her head against the window and closes her eyes to rest. When she wakes she’s facing the man, his breath soured by bottled fruit juice and dill chips. It’s dark out, raining. They’ve taken a detour. Five missed phone calls. And she’s forgotten her black dress shoes.

Caucasian girl, 12 or 13, fuzzy hair pulled back, wearing a purple ski jacket and green corduroy pants, cuffs tucked into winter boots. She doesn’t read to pass the time, to avoid contact with others. She’s a lifer, focused: an important distinction.

Magic Street, Orson Scott Card (Del Rey)

Page 71:

Quon said she was in competitions all the time, and she outswam and outdived girls two years older than her and people said she was so natural and quick in the water. “She just lives to swim.”

In grade 5 she moved. In her old hometown, her old elementary friends learned the new ways, the new rules, of grade 6, 7 and 8. She spent the summer alone, thinking the rules would stay the same. She looked away from the girls in the street, ignored their attempts to befriend her. She would have new friends soon enough. She spent the months sitting in a woven sun chair under a new-old maple tree in her new-old backyard, outside her new-old house in a new-old town. Sitting in the locker room, two days into new-school, she changed into her shorts and two-toned cap sleeve tee, canary-yellow and pistachio-green, enough to cover her shoulders. But as the other girls stood in their bras she missed her old elementary friends more than ever before. They would have told her it was the summer they’d all started shaving.

Meet her again, for the first time.

South Asian girl, 14-15, wearing a bright red jacket with black stripe down each arm, and a black and red striped tuque.

Sunwing, Kenneth Oppel (HarperCollins)

Page 6:

The sound picture blazed in Chinook’s mind only a fraction of a second, but was so sudden and so horrifying that he cried out and careened into a fir bough, dousing himself with snow.

There’s the binders, the lunch bag, the thermos, and the gym shorts. The sneakers, the mittens, the ruler, and the pencil case. Side upon side, edging into folds, straining against the seams encrusted in random flecks left over from early high school, one damp gum wrapper bleeding into the nylon. The outer pocket lies open and empty, the corner pulled down in wait. Zipper on stand by to pull closed the chamber reserved only for the book.