the summer i was ten

[deepest_magic]

Bella is ten. School has let out; she spends one week at the beach with Renée, celebrating, and then from there Renée drives her up to Forks, and drops her off, with many hugs. Charlie picks her up, with some hugs, although not as many; it's not his way. Bella settles in for the summer. It is, if nothing else, cooler up here.

Comments

[neverbeatme]

"Heh," says Elizabeth.

[deepest_magic]

"Well, it's always best not to have any bad things happen," says Bella. "Sometimes I can do that. Or sometimes the bad things are things like - if it costs money but saves time to do something, I have extra time, that way, and I can mow the lawn and my dad will give me a few dollars. That's not exactly cheating but it sort of is."

[neverbeatme]

"I don't really think of things that way, but I can see how it works."

[deepest_magic]

"What do you do instead?"

[neverbeatme]

"Well - let's say my aunt Chris gets a cake and we have some and there's one piece left in the fridge. I could take it, or I could leave it for her. I know how much I want the cake, and I don't know how much she wants the cake but I can guess, and I know how much I care how much she wants the cake. So I write down all the numbers, and if how much she wants the cake times how much I care is worth more than how much I want the cake, I leave it. I took the cake," she adds. "I could've split it in half, but it was pretty small already."

[deepest_magic]

"Oh. I'm not sure numbers would help me compare those kind of things. They seem to match up pretty good in my head without involving multiplication. I'd be thinking, Will I get in trouble for taking this cake? Should I make some brownies? Are we getting more cake any time soon? Maybe there is ice cream?"

[neverbeatme]

Elizabeth giggles.

"Okay, so - what's processing?"

[deepest_magic]

"That's when something happens, something out of the ordinary or just rare and biggish - I usually do some before and after every time I come here for summers. And I figure out what happened in my head, and all the parts and how they affected each other, and whether any of them mean anything that I should worry about or account for later or if it's all temporary, and whether I need to change anything about how I think about things like the thing I'm processing. Oh, um, installing changes is a separate thing, I forgot to list that one, it's like - teaching my brain new tricks, only it's faster than when you're training a dog with treats or whatever."

[neverbeatme]

"And how does that one work?"

[deepest_magic]

Bella thinks of examples, and finally says, "I have sort of a script I run through when people interrupt me. Not a script really - more like - a flow chart, that depends on who did it and when. I still don't like it, but I don't let it make me be mean, anymore, unless for some reason I think that will help."

[neverbeatme]

"Hm," says Elizabeth.

[deepest_magic]

"What?"

[neverbeatme]

"Filing the fact that you don't like to be interrupted."

[deepest_magic]

"I'm glad," laughs Bella. "Anything like that I should keep in mind about you?"

[neverbeatme]

She shrugs. "There's not really stuff that I get annoyed about like that."

[deepest_magic]

"That sounds useful."

[neverbeatme]

"I'm too busy figuring out why people do things to get mad at them for them."

[deepest_magic]

Bella laughs. "Have you got me much figured out? I can always use more perspectives."

[neverbeatme]

"I don't think I know anything much about you that you don't know. Yet," she says. "I'm still collecting data."

[deepest_magic]

"I'm curious about what you know that I do know. I like to know how much I telegraph," laughs Bella.

[neverbeatme]

"Nothing specific is jumping out at me right now."

[deepest_magic]

"Keep me posted."

[neverbeatme]

She shrugs. "Okay."

[deepest_magic]

"Do you want to actually try any of this stuff? It's not like teaching you to ride a bicycle where I know where to start."

[neverbeatme]

"I don't really know where to start either," she points out. "So I'm trying to figure out how it all works first."