Reads Normal

You wind your tape over the tape already there, three turns, and press it flat with your thumb. It is the same blue. You cannot tell where the other stops.

The needle on the gauge sits in the green, where it sat when you came. You push a finger into the soil under the cut. It is dry to the second knuckle. You tell yourself the leaves will come up in the sun, and you go down the stair.

At dawn you are on the roof. Row seven says 4 in black. Beside it, in pencil, is yesterday's second number, 31. Odile reads them both. She does not look at you. She draws one line through the 31, so that it can still be read.