Grey doodles on tampered papers, tissue lints inside all corners, unopened ketchup packets, crumbled bus tickets . . . Zoya, on weekends would empty her purple backpack. The side of it was a splotched, dirty blue, curtsey to unlid pens. Today would be the last, last time. She would empty everything, fold her big backpack into a bulging, disobeying square. Stuff it inside a cupboard in a random passage. And then she'd like to whistle, and stretch arms. Something would stand at the end of the turning. Something beaming, maniacal perhaps. Beckoning, right perhaps. And Zoya would stare, for a very long, long time. And then would walk toward it. And that beaming, beckoning impetus will grow duller, and duller. Till Zoya would stand right next to it, and it would disappear. But Zoya would not be puzzled, things right around the corner, disappear — because it's never time to stop. And you will not be puzzled, just like you never are when you go from one season to next, unequipped, yet somehow so prepared.