June 17, 2019:
My two friends are in their Brownie uniforms. Lulu, and her dark-haired sister whose name I now can't recall.
They're afraid. Their father abuses them. There are beatings, arbitrary punishments. They're meek and lovely, and Lulu has huge bags under both eyes. Probably lack of sleep from hypervigilance, although here in our second-grade class portrait they could equally be bruises.
Why do the kids know of these horrors, while the adults do not?
No-one else in this class of thirty has or ever did have an existence for me. Only my two friends, same then as ever since.