Summary

This section begins with the second person narration of a man who is in prison. He traces the grain of the wood on a wooden desk and realizes that if he were different, he could learn all there is for trees to teach him. He caresses the wood, trying to learn but he is held in a place with no change of the seasons.

The narration shifts to a third person narrator telling readers that Olivia survived her electrocution by falling on the floor and the impact restarting her heart. The narration jumps to her first person as she sneaks out of the hospital and barricades herself in her room at the boardinghouse. She calls her parents and tells them that she quits school and that she will not come home for the holidays. Olivia enters 1990 alone and ponders over the strange beings...