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Katie settles in pretty well into the house, and later, when a bed has been obtained, into Lizbeth's room. She wears Lizbeth's hand-me-downs to start, then gets her own clothes; she doesn't have strong opinions about what she should be wearing, but the sizing on Lizbeth's old things isn't really right, and there aren't all that many still lying around anyway.
She has inexplicably tidy handwriting - inexplicably has handwriting at all; inexplicably can spell fifteen words in twenty instead of zero - which she uses, rather a lot. She makes a list of things that are food and magnetizes it to the fridge for reference, adding to it when she locates more things that are food, and when she is trying to tackle complex books she takes notes on who all the characters are so she doesn't have to page backward to remind herself, and she discovers journaling, even though she doesn't have that many events to record.
One day, the event she has to record is: Chris says to morrow she wil go to the DMV and shud not have us ther becas it may take six ours. We wil be baybe sat. If I hav ben baybe sat be for I do not remembre it.
She is curious about the imminent babysitter, and is up bright and early on the day when same may be expected.
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more-capable
"Not usually," she says. "Until today, I thought that the only people who didn't go thump were," she simplifies a little to avoid alarming the three-year-old, "dead. But you're perfectly alive."
more-capable
"Pretty sure. Elizabeth, can I listen to you too?"
Lizbeth nods. Virginia listens to her.
"Yep," she says, "completely regular thumping."
Lizbeth nods. Virginia listens to her.
"Yep," she says, "completely regular thumping."
"Gina, if people who don't thump are dead and I am alive and don't thump does that mean I will not ever die?"
more-capable
"...Probably not. People who are dead also don't move around or breathe or talk or eat, and you do all of those."
more-capable
She shakes her head. "Never mind, sorry. I'm just very confused. And I wouldn't like it if I found out that Chris knew all about this and then didn't tell me."
more-capable
"Part of what a babysitter does is make sure you're safe," she explains. "Whatever the reason is why you don't have a heartbeat, it means that you don't work the way most people do, and not knowing anything about that means I might not be able to do my job. So if Chris knows, it would be irresponsible of her not to tell me."
more-capable
"...Could you start thumping if you tried?" she inquires. At this point she is willing to believe it might be possible.
more-capable
"No. Everyone else just does it without trying, and we couldn't stop if we wanted to, and if we did stop we'd die."