The coat

The coat found her, not the other way round. Camel, long, the kind that makes a girl in a video look like she owns an apartment in a city with a river. It came back every evening for a week, between a running video and a friend's story. On the eighth evening Nora bought it with four Saturdays of bakery money.

She wore it twice. Once to school, where it was too warm and too much, and once to the station to pick up her grandmother, who said, "Very elegant," in the voice she uses for things she doesn't understand. Since then it has lived at the back of the wardrobe, behind the waxed jacket that costs nothing and gets worn every day.

Her brother, who is twelve and misses nothing, finds it in November. "Why don't you ever wear this?" he asks. He is holding it up by the shoulders like a salesclerk. "It looks expensive."

Nora has a choice between three sentences. "It's for special occasions." "It doesn't fit right." Or the true one. She picks the true one, mostly because he is twelve and she wants him to hear it from someone before the feed gets to him too.

"I bought it because a video told me to," she says. "Four Saturdays. I thought it would make me into the girl in the video, and it made me into me, in a coat that's too warm." He thinks about this. "That's stupid," he says. "Yes," says Nora. "Hang it back up."

She still hasn't sold it. That part of the story isn't finished.