Lila Moss stood in the lift with her finger on the blank button. Her left sock held a pencil and nothing else. The list that usually lived there — folded soft, both sides written — had been gone since lunch. "If I don't write it, it wriggles," she told Jed Crow. Jed's empty pocket twitched. "Benny said—" "I know what Benny said." Her yellow beads clicked once. One bead was already missing from the left twist. "My turn." The lift smelled of metal and someone's tomato soup. Above them a dryer tumbled like distant thunder. Lila pressed it.