There's a party at my house. I don't seem to be enjoying it; somehow it just happened, and I feel like I should remind myself not to let it happen any more. Dance music plays loudly, as I lean against a wall watching the people in the room, and talk to someone about drugs, and how I never liked narcotics. Maybe they offered me some and I declined.

A girl is leaving, a girl named Leilani I knew vaguely in high school. She stops by to say goodbye to me, handing me back my set of children's felt-tip pens, the kind with about 30 pens of different colors, but they seem to predominantly yellow and orange, and many are missing. She also gives me a page she just drew, with a lot of fine little sketches in the same colors. "I just wanted to give you something," she explains.

I invite her into another room, as if to get her alone before she leaves.