Wash the spoons and clean the table after we eat.

Don’t ask for a birthday party with my friends next year.

Be really good and really quiet so nobody gets mad at me.

At the very bottom of the yellow-lined page, one last sentence had been written, erased until the paper was rubbed thin, and then written again in dark pencil.

Maybe if I don’t cost too much money, they will change their minds and let me stay.

I clutched that blue notebook so hard the cardboard back bent under my fingers, a wave of deep sorrow and furious rage threatening to tear me in half.