My urn was small. It was plain white, with no decoration at all.
Mom held it in her arms the way someone might hold a newborn baby.
"Natalie, we're home."
Once she got back, she started cleaning my room. She folded my clothes and put them away in the closet. She stacked my schoolbooks neatly. She gathered all the empty cans and bottles and packed them into a cardboard box.
She moved through the room as if I had only gone off to school and would be back any minute.
Then she opened the drawer and pulled out that thick ledger.
Something inside me tightened.
Her hand rested on the cover for a long time before she finally opened it.
Page after page, line after line, every inch covered with numbers and entries from the eight short years I had spent trying to pay for being alive.
"Lunch,
