Watching Sophie

I started keeping track without deciding to, the way you start doing a lot of things that turn out later to matter.

A little calendar in the back of my school planner, one letter a day. B for the days Sophie went out on the balcony. How many minutes, as close as I could count them without a clock of my own. By the third week the letters were on more days than not, and some of the numbers next to them were bigger than any of the ones before.

On the bad days I started standing at the glass with her, on my side of it, pressing my palm flat against the door so she'd have something to look at besides the rain. She'd press her palm back most times, small and shaking, on the other side of the glass from mine, like we were high-fiving through a wall neither of us had built.

"It's almost over," I'd mouth at her, even when I had no idea if that was true.

Curtis caught me doing it once and told me, in the calm, reasonable voice he used for everything, that comforting her through the door "undermined the lesson," and that if I kept doing it he'd have to start giving me cool-down time too.

I stopped standing at the glass where he could see me. I didn't stop standing at the glass.