Elif and Rana had been friends since the first day of secondary school, when they had both arrived early and pretended not to be nervous. They shared headphones, passwords, and a running joke about the geography teacher's ties. The one thing Elif never shared was her sketchbook, a blue book full of drawings of bus stops, cats, and strangers' hands. On a Friday in May, she left it on the number 14 bus. By Saturday morning it was gone, and so, she believed, was a year's work.
埃利芙和拉娜从上中学第一天起就是朋友。那天她们都到得很早，还都假装不紧张。她们共用耳机、密码，还总拿地理老师的领带开玩笑。埃利芙唯一不愿分享的是她的素描本——一本蓝色的册子，画满了公交站、猫和陌生人的手。五月的一个星期五，她把它落在了14路公交车上。到星期六早上，本子不见了；她相信，自己一年的心血也不见了。
Rana had borrowed the sketchbook on Thursday to copy a drawing of a bird. She swore she had returned it; Elif remembered seeing it in her bag. Memory is a poor witness. At lunch, Elif told three friends that Rana had been the last to hold it. By the end of the day, the story had details nobody had witnessed: that Rana had been seen with it, that she wanted the bird drawing for a competition, that she had never really been a good friend.
拉娜星期四借过素描本，想临摹一幅鸟的画。她发誓自己已经还了；埃利芙则记得曾看见本子在她包里。记忆是个不可靠的证人。午饭时，埃利芙告诉三个朋友，拉娜是最后一个拿着本子的人。到放学时，这个故事已经多出了一些谁也没亲眼见过的细节：有人看见拉娜拿着本子，她想用那幅鸟画去参加比赛，她从来就不是什么好朋友。
Rana noticed the silence before she understood it. Partners stopped choosing her for group work; a girl moved her bag from the next chair. When she finally heard the rumour, she did not cry or shout. She found Elif by the lockers and asked one question: “Do you actually believe I stole it?” Elif, who had spent two nights imagining the answer, said nothing. Rana nodded slowly, as if the silence had confirmed something, and walked away without her coat.
拉娜先察觉到沉默，后来才明白原因。分组时没人再选她；一个女孩把书包从她旁边的椅子上挪开。当她终于听到那个传言时，她没有哭，也没有喊。她在储物柜旁找到埃利芙，只问了一个问题：“你真的相信是我偷的吗？”埃利芙曾用两个晚上想象过这个问题的答案，此刻却什么也没说。拉娜慢慢点了点头，仿佛这沉默证实了什么，连外套都没拿就走开了。
The sketchbook turned up a week later in the lost-property office, with a torn page and a bus ticket marking the place. Elif felt relief for exactly one minute. Then she looked at the ticket. The bus had run on Saturday, not Thursday; her younger brother had taken the book to draw dinosaurs and left it behind. She sat on the floor of the office and understood that she had not lost a sketchbook at all. She had spent a week building a case against her friend and calling it memory.
一周后，素描本出现在失物招领处，里面有一页被撕破了，还有一张公交车票夹在那里。埃利芙只轻松了短短一分钟。随后她看了看那张车票。那趟车是星期六开的，不是星期四；是她弟弟拿走本子去画恐龙，然后落在了车上。她坐在失物招领处的地板上，明白自己根本没有丢失一本素描本。她花了一个星期，给朋友拼凑出一桩罪名，还把它叫作记忆。
Elif told the truth the next morning, loudly enough for the corridor to hear: it was her brother, her mistake, her rumour. She did not ask to be forgiven. She returned the sketchbook to her bag and the bird drawing, carefully copied, to Rana's desk. For two weeks Rana accepted her help with homework and declined her company at lunch. Elif kept offering, without pressure, the way you hold a door open for someone who has not yet decided to walk through it.
第二天早上，埃利芙说出了真相，声音大得整条走廊都听得见：是她弟弟，是她的错，是她传的谣。她没有请求原谅。她把素描本收回包里，又把认真临摹好的那幅鸟画放到拉娜桌上。此后两个星期，拉娜接受她帮忙辅导作业，却拒绝和她一起吃午饭。埃利芙继续主动靠近，却不施加压力，就像为还没决定是否走进来的人扶着一扇门。
In June, Rana sat beside her on the bus. Neither of them spoke for four stops. Then Rana opened the sketchbook to the torn page and drew a small, crooked cat in the gap. “You owe me a bird,” she said. Elif laughed, and the sound surprised them both. They were not the same friends they had been in May; something had been broken and repaired, and the repair showed. The bus carried them past the stop where the book had been lost, and neither turned to look.
六月，拉娜在公交车上坐到了她旁边。整整四站，两人都没说话。然后拉娜翻开素描本，翻到那页撕破的地方，在缺口里画了一只歪歪扭扭的小猫。“你欠我一只鸟，”她说。埃利芙笑了，这笑声让她们俩都吃了一惊。她们已不是五月时的她们；有些东西碎过又被修好，而修补的痕迹看得见。公交车载着她们经过当初丢本子的那一站，两人都没有转头去看。