She isn't deep in the stacks, but her book is slim, stuffed in between larger volumes. There are places in the stacks where ghosts slump against the bookshelves or re-read their books over and over; occasionally a passing custodian presses them, chivvies them into flatness, stillness. There's no hint of a lingering shade here.

There's no dust on hers, for one thing. Freshly shelved.

The book opens with a tinny melody like a novelty birthday card, but instead of Happy Birthday, it's the tune of New Brain. The book, unlike her file, is vividly illustrated:

Eight-year-old Quinn hanging out in a piano bar in the afternoons before it opens, sitting against the shabby upright and listening to her father play, sunlight slanting through small windows.

Past the first few pages, almost all of them are ragged and loose, as though someone tried to pull them out, hanging onto the binding by only a few threads: Ten-year-old Sky in sequins on a stage, bowing with a bouquet of flowers bigger than her head, standing beside another girl with a gold trophy, runner-up in the Tots Pageant. Embracing a girl with dark hair, singing in a recording booth, then on a stage.

Paul's body, dangling, upside down in the ruined car. Lewis's face with no skin on. The dancer-centipede, coiling all around the page, hands clutching at the border, as if they could almost crawl out instead of her, all eyes staring at the reader. The second-last page shows the vast crowd in the stadium on the night of her death, tiny glowing cheering faces, shown through one vertical oval that only reveals about half of the page, on the left side. On the right side, the same shaped oval is full of dark red, oozing and cracking like blood into the darkness of what must be her own distorted skull, her own face a foreign mask she can only glimpse past.

The last page is completely black.