There is a folded piece of paper on my desk in AP English when I arrive Thursday morning.
Centered placement.
Not dropped or left carelessly.
It was put there on purpose, by someone who had already left, because Elias Cross is in his corner with Middlemarch and has been there since before I arrived.
There is no one else it could be from.
I look at the paper.
Then the corner.
He turns a page.
I sit down.
Open my notebook.
Mr. Pearce begins the class.
I do not touch the paper for eleven minutes, which is as long as I can maintain the pretense that I’m not thinking about it.
Then I unfold it under the desk with the deftness of someone who has been passing notes in environments where notes shouldn’t exist since the sixth grade.
It is a pack genealogy record.
My bloodline
