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it to me before he left. I didn’t have anything else to put it in.”
    Inside the napkin is a brown leather journal. The cover is embossed with a symbol that looks like a triangle with a face in it. I rub my thumb over it. The whole cover feels softand weathered, but when I flip it open I see that the crisp, lined pages are blank and clean.
    “Dad gave this to you?” I ask.
    “To pass on to you.”
    I shake my head. “He was on his way home. If he wanted to give it to me, why didn’t he have it with him?”
    Eddy shifts back into her chair with a painfully sad sigh. “Your father … knew things.”
    “Like what? Are you saying he knew he was going to get into an accident?” Eddy doesn’t answer. “No,” I say, trying to keep my voice calm. “If he knew, he wouldn’t have gotten into the car. He’d have stayed at the hotel.”
    “I don’t know how it worked,
querida
. I don’t know what he could or couldn’t change. I only know what he told me. To give this to you. To let you know it could change your life.”
    “It’s a journal,” I say, waving it in the air. “How is that going to change my life?”
    She wraps her arms around her bony body. “Do you feel that? They turned down the temperature. They do that here. They never want us to get too comfortable.”
    Uh-oh. I’m losing her. “Eddy, what did Dad say? Specifically. How did he say a journal would change my life?”
    Eddy suddenly bolts forward and grabs my wrist. “Write in it, Autumn.”
    Ow. She’s eighty years old. How can she have a grip of steel? Must be from all that pottery.
    “Promise me,” she insists.
    “Okay, okay. I’ll write in it.”
    “Wonderful,” she says. “Now help me pick out a dress. There’s a Sadie Hawkins dance, and if I don’t ask Juan-Carlos
esta tarde
, Dariana will get to him first.”
    “Juan-Carlos … Falciano?” I ask carefully.
    “
Sí
. You know him?”
    Not really, but I do know he was my grandfather. Daddy started going by “Falls” in college. “Yeah,” I assure her, “he’s a catch. I bet he’ll totally go to the dance with you.”
    Eddy beams. I spend the next half hour helping her get dressed and ready for a man who’s been dead forty years; then I say good-bye.
    I have some writing to do.

I intend to sit down on a bench outside Century Acres to write in the journal, but something is bothering me, so I don’t do it. I wait until I get on the bus, then text Jenna the whole story.
    AUTUMN: What do you think, real or delusional?
    JENNA: Y would your dad torture you? DELUSIONAL!
    She’s right. I hate writing, and Dad knew it. It’s a dyslexia thing; words don’t come out the way I want them to. Why would he give me something I’d have to trudge through hell to use?
    My phone chirps.
    JENNA: Unless … is there a note?
    I didn’t check. Why didn’t I check? Of course if he was going to give me something as twisted as a journal, he’d leave a note to tell me why.
    I pull out the book and turn each page slowly.
    AUTUMN : No note.
    JENNA : Mystery solved. Journal = Eddy’s gift 2 you, not your dad’s, but E messed in head & confused.
    AUTUMN : Yeah. OK.
    JENNA : You should use it tho.
    AUTUMN : ?!?!?!?
    JENNA : You can use journal for an anti-list. A wish list for good.
    AUTUMN : Maybe … still involves writing.
    She’s right about Eddy. Of course she is. Eddy was nuts even before she had her stroke. Now she’s over the edge. If what she said was true, that would mean Dad knew he was going to die and couldn’t do anything about it.
    Horrific.
    But if he
did
know he was going to die … and if he
couldn’t
do anything about it … it would be pretty cool to have one last gift from him. Even a random gift he’d never expect me to use.
    “Hey, Mom,” I ask during dinner, “did Dad ever … sense things?”
    “Oh God,” she groans. “What did Eddy tell you?”
    “Sense things?” Erick asks. “Like ESP?”
    “She didn’t tell me anything,” I say,