SHE'S VERY DEVOTED

Klara Mohr dies at twenty-seven on a bus in winter rain, marking other people's essays, her phone showing the wedding of the boy she built and the girl the caption credits with believing in him first. She wakes at seventeen on the morning of the exam that made him, his name on every other page of her blue notebook. This time the notebook goes into the drawer, the brass key turns, and she sits the exam for herself. Not revenge but arithmetic: ten years of unpaid invoices arrive at the correct address, and Julian hears her say no in front of the whole year. Her mother, three years ahead of a cough nobody has heard yet, is the part Klara came back for.