I told him I was memorizing.

He hesitated, just for a fraction of a second, not understanding.

He did not know that I did not need to memorize anything, because a phone under a floorboard had been doing it for three months, and every word he had ever spoken in that house was already somewhere he could never reach.

People have called that phone an act of extraordinary courage, and every time they do, I correct them, because the truth is both more useful and less flattering, and I think the true version helps other children more than the heroic one does.

It was not courage.