At ten after one, Krista came up the stairs.
She was carrying a shoebox. A Payless box, the old orange kind, with the lid taped on at the corners and KRISTA — CHEM II written on the end in purple marker in her neat round handwriting. I knew what it was before she opened it. She set it on the step between us and took the lid off. Index cards. Hundreds of them. Maybe more than a thousand. Pink and yellow and green and blue and white, rubber-banded in stacks of fifty, every one covered on both sides in her tiny blue-ink printing. Equations. Diagrams of molecules like little snowflakes. Words I didn't know. On top was a stack of pink ones and the top card said LE CHATELIER'S PRINCIPLE in block capitals, and under it, A SYSTEM AT EQUILIBRIUM, WHEN DISTURBED, SHIFTS TO COUNTERACT THE DISTURBANCE AND ESTABLISH A NEW EQUILIBRIUM.
"For the roof," she said.
I looked at her.
"I don't need them," she said. "I know them. I know every one of them. That's never been the problem." She pushed the box toward me an inch. "It's good paper. It's index stock, it's heavy. It's got tooth. I don't know. I don't know if it's anything. I just—you need a roof, and I took yours, and this is what I have."
I didn't take the box. I sat there and looked at it.
"It's not red," I said finally.
"No."