"Hi," says the stranger. "What are you reading?"

"It's an omnibus of Dr. Dolittle," says Bella.

"I haven't read it. Any good?"

"It's cute. The animals all have peculiar names, I'm not sure why."

"Define 'peculiar'."

"Dab-Dab. Jip. Gub-gub," says Bella. "It's almost like onomatopoeia - for a duck, a dog, and a pig - but since the animals talk perfect sense as far as the Doctor is concerned I don't know why that would be how they're named. It doesn't seem like it could much distinguish them from other ducks and dogs and pigs, does it? Even if they wouldn't use human sounds they could use words. The parrot talks English," she adds, "and is named Polynesia. For some reason. I don't even know if there are parrots in Polynesia."

"Maybe they talk perfect sense except when it comes to names, and he's just doing his best with what they sound like. And the parrot just likes the sound of 'Polynesia'."

"All right," says Bella, "then how do you explain the pushmi-pullyu?"

"...What?"

"It's a two-headed gazelle-unicorn cross," says Bella brightly, "and that is its only name. It's very shy, and whenever it tries to go somewhere its heads can't agree on where."

"I have," she says, "no explanation for the pushmi-pullyu."

"My explanation is that the heads can't agree on a name. So that is just what it's called, since they have to call it something."

"Reasonable theory."

"You only have one head," Bella says. "What's its name?"

"Elizabeth. Or any variation," she says. "I like my name, it's so collapsible."

"My name is a little collapsible too. I collapse it to Bella."

"Nice to meet you, Bella."

"You too. Do you live around here?"

"No," she says in perfect deadpan, "I walked here from Port Angeles just to talk to you."

"Well," says Bella loftily, "I am very important."

Elizabeth-or-any-variation giggles.

"Why did you walk however far to talk to me, though? Usually nobody bothers. I'm only here summers."

"But you are here summers," she says. "How else am I going to find out if you're worth talking to than by trying it?"

"Hearsay," suggests Bella. "Logical deduction from first principles. Guessing."

"You just explained why there is no good hearsay. The last two are pretty much equivalent here and they're both worse than the method I actually picked. Nice try, though."

"What makes somebody worth talking to?"

"Interesting question," says Elizabeth-or-variants. "How would you answer it?"

"If it's more fun or useful to talk to them than to do whatever else I'd be doing," says Bella. "Or if I have to for some reason, I guess."

"Reasonable," she says. "Kind of like that, yeah."

"Am I worth talking to?"

"Observe me talking to you."

"You could still be forming an opinion."

"I could! But I clearly haven't decided that you're not worth talking to, because here I still am."

"You are still here," agrees Bella. "And I still haven't shooed you and started reading my book again."

"I feel so special," she says dryly.

"You should," giggles Bella.

She grins.

"When you find someone who's worth your time what do you usually do with them?"

"That depends entirely on the person," she says. "And factors such as, for example, what they like to do with their time."

"I mostly read. Or write notes about things," says Bella. "I'm not particularly interesting company, I think. It's pretty neat living in my head, but you aren't invited. So if we're going to do anything it might be useful to know what you like to do."

"That is why what you like to do with your time is only one factor," says she whom we shall call Elizabeth. "What's neat about living in your head?"

"I just think I'm interesting. I like to take my thoughts apart and find what littler thoughts they're made of."

"Nice hobby," says Elizabeth. "What does 'not invited' mean?"

"Well, you can't read my mind. And if you could, you shouldn't."

"But it doesn't mean you don't want to talk about it?"

"I don't want to talk about all of it. I might talk about some of it."

"Well, some of it like what?"

"I dunno, no one ever wanted to know that many details about it before. If it comes up in conversation I'll tell you."

"Okay," she says. "Do you keep a mind palace? You seem like the kind of person who might."

Bella shakes her head. "I just write a lot. I guess I might have sort of something like that because I'm very good at finding the place where I wrote things, but I have to actually go read it to be sure of what I put there."

"Huh," she says. "I've been using mine for a year and I haven't forgotten anything out of it yet."

"I'm less worried about forgetting than I am about distorting," says Bella.

"...Yeah, that's what I mean."

"How do you know nothing in your mind palace is distorted if you don't also write it down?"

"How do you know that what you wrote down means the exact same thing to you now that it did when you wrote it?"

"Some of it's just facts, and the stuff that isn't I'm very thorough about taking apart."

"Well, okay," says Elizabeth. "Your standard for 'not distorted' is that something matches what you wrote down. My standard is that it matches what's in my mind palace. Neither one of those is literally perfect, but they're both pretty good. And they probably work best at different things. I have a whole bunch of people's faces in my mind palace," she offers as an example. "I'm sure they're not as good as photos, but it means I don't forget which name goes with which."

"That sounds useful. I'm not all that bad with names but I'm not perfect with them either," acknowledges Bella.

"It is useful! I keep little files on everybody I know."

"What's in mine now?" giggles Bella.

"Where did you find out the parts I didn't tell you?"

"Just around," she says, opening her eyes. "From people I talk to and stuff."

"Is there anybody else interesting around?"

"Not really. There's kids I'll help with their homework and stuff, but nobody I want to keep when I grow up."

"...Keep when you grow up?"

"...Yeah? You know, sometimes when people are friends when they're little, they're still friends later? I don't want to do that with anybody I know in Forks."

"People don't usually say it as keep, is all."

"Isn't 'keeping friends' a thing people say?"

"Ye-e-es. But only with the 'friends' part said out loud."

She shrugs.

Bella also shrugs. "I don't know what kind of friends I'll want most when I grow up. It will depend on what I'm doing."

"I can tell what kind of friends I won't want most when I grow up."

"I bet a lot of cool grownups were not cool ten-year-olds."

She shrugs. "I know what I know."

"But how do you know it?"

"I'm good at figuring people out," she says.

"How do you do it? That sounds useful."

"Well, I'm not sure. It's just obvious to me, but if it was obvious to everybody then people would be a lot better at each other."

"How do you mean, better at each other?"

"I mean everybody would understand each other more easily and not have such a hard time figuring each other out."

"I think people are pretty bad at themselves," says Bella after a moment. "If the thing I do was easy for everybody they wouldn't be."

"I write," Bella says. "Whatever I'm thinking, and why, and then I figure out if those whys make sense or not, and what I want, and how I could get it with what I have."

"...See," says Elizabeth, "that's the kind of thing that's obvious to you but not to other people."

"I wonder why."

"Well, you've been doing it for a while, right?"

"Since I was six."

"And you don't talk about it with other people much, right?"

"Not the specific things. I'll tell them approximately, but people don't ask usually."

"Yeah. So the person you usually talk to about it is yourself. Right? And when you talk to yourself - I mean general 'you' - you can leave a lot of things out because you know what you meant to say, and it'll still make sense. To you. But then if you try to talk to other people the same way, they get lost because they don't already know what you're talking about. See what I mean?"

"Ye-e-es. That makes sense," agrees Bella. "I take lots of shortcuts writing it down because I'm the only person who'll read it."

"That I take shortcuts writing things?"

"No - that lots of people do stuff like that sometimes, and that that's probably the reason why the stuff you said about what you do makes more sense to you than it does to me."

"Okay. I wonder if I could teach somebody to do it if I really wanted? I figured out how all by myself."

"You could try it and see!" says Elizabeth.

"Do you want to learn it?"

"Sure."

Bella pulls out a notebook, flips through the first few pages, then says, "Just a second," and goes inside and comes out again with a fresh one, which she presents to Elizabeth, along with a pencil.

"Okay," she says. "Now what?"

"Well, it depends on what you want to do, I guess," says Bella. "Some pages in my notebooks are just like diaries basically, with more made-up words because English isn't very good at some things. Some of them are for processing and some of them are for decision-making and some of them are for figuring out what I want."

"I use paper and pen to make decisions too sometimes," she says. "But with math."

"I don't do math for mine," says Bella. "What do you do your math for?"

"When there's something complicated where I want a lot of different things and I don't know how they all add up, I do math to figure that out."

Bella thinks about this. "I don't think that would work for me. I might not like the answer."

"What do you mean?"

"If I have a lot of complicated wants, I don't know how important they are for sure until I think about getting them or not getting them in all different combinations. If I made up numbers, maybe the numbers would tell me what to do, but I'd be pretty likely to just go "no, that's not right" and have to keep thinking anyway, so it'd be an extra step that didn't do anything."

"I still don't see what the point of the numbers part is."

"Maybe our brains just work differently," she says. "Mine does numbers. Yours does made-up words."

"I guess," says Bella. "What do you want to try first?"

"Well, how do you do making decisions and stuff?"

"First I write down everything I can think of about the decision. Sometimes in columns, one for all the obvious general things I could do, and then I look at the bad things about the one that looks maybe best and see if I can cheat and make them go away."

"Heh," says Elizabeth.

"Well, it's always best not to have any bad things happen," says Bella. "Sometimes I can do that. Or sometimes the bad things are things like - if it costs money but saves time to do something, I have extra time, that way, and I can mow the lawn and my dad will give me a few dollars. That's not exactly cheating but it sort of is."

"I don't really think of things that way, but I can see how it works."

"What do you do instead?"

"Well - let's say my aunt Chris gets a cake and we have some and there's one piece left in the fridge. I could take it, or I could leave it for her. I know how much I want the cake, and I don't know how much she wants the cake but I can guess, and I know how much I care how much she wants the cake. So I write down all the numbers, and if how much she wants the cake times how much I care is worth more than how much I want the cake, I leave it. I took the cake," she adds. "I could've split it in half, but it was pretty small already."

"Oh. I'm not sure numbers would help me compare those kind of things. They seem to match up pretty good in my head without involving multiplication. I'd be thinking, Will I get in trouble for taking this cake? Should I make some brownies? Are we getting more cake any time soon? Maybe there is ice cream?"

"That's when something happens, something out of the ordinary or just rare and biggish - I usually do some before and after every time I come here for summers. And I figure out what happened in my head, and all the parts and how they affected each other, and whether any of them mean anything that I should worry about or account for later or if it's all temporary, and whether I need to change anything about how I think about things like the thing I'm processing. Oh, um, installing changes is a separate thing, I forgot to list that one, it's like - teaching my brain new tricks, only it's faster than when you're training a dog with treats or whatever."

"And how does that one work?"

Bella thinks of examples, and finally says, "I have sort of a script I run through when people interrupt me. Not a script really - more like - a flow chart, that depends on who did it and when. I still don't like it, but I don't let it make me be mean, anymore, unless for some reason I think that will help."

"Hm," says Elizabeth.

"What?"

"Filing the fact that you don't like to be interrupted."

"I'm glad," laughs Bella. "Anything like that I should keep in mind about you?"

She shrugs. "There's not really stuff that I get annoyed about like that."

"That sounds useful."

"I'm too busy figuring out why people do things to get mad at them for them."

Bella laughs. "Have you got me much figured out? I can always use more perspectives."

"I don't think I know anything much about you that you don't know. Yet," she says. "I'm still collecting data."

"I'm curious about what you know that I do know. I like to know how much I telegraph," laughs Bella.

"Nothing specific is jumping out at me right now."

"Keep me posted."

She shrugs. "Okay."

"Do you want to actually try any of this stuff? It's not like teaching you to ride a bicycle where I know where to start."

"I don't really know where to start either," she points out. "So I'm trying to figure out how it all works first."

"Okay. I'm not sure what else to say without concrete examples to work though. It would be like teaching someone to add without any numbers, only this is more personal so I can't just make up some numbers."

"Hmm," muses Elizabeth. "Maybe it's just not the kind of thing you can teach right when you decide to. Because the actual stuff to write about, the 'numbers', isn't there."

"Maybe. So I guess you should let me know next time you have a thing to process or decide or change about yourself?"

"How do you decide what to change about yourself?"

"I notice something's not - working. When I'm just sort of flailing around like a turtle on its back, or worse, and I need a way to flip over and accomplish stuff from there."

"...I don't think I've ever done that," says Elizabeth.

"Lucky you," laughs Bella.

She grins.

"I didn't come perfect out of the box, I have things like being really annoyed when people interrupt me to deal with."

Elizabeth shrugs. "Point in your favour, though: you deal with it."

"Yes. I do."

She laughs.

Bella stretches her arms up above her head. "What do you want to do when you grow up?"

"I'm going to be a mathematician. What do you want to do when you grow up?"

"I'm not sure yet. I want to do something useful for people but I want to do it the best way. The obvious thing is to be a doctor but there might be something better."

"What's 'best' mean?"

"Well, like," says Bella, "lots of people help a few people. Or help a lot of people a little. My dad helps people. People who sell you ice cream are technically helping you. I want to help the most people the biggest amount that I can."

"Why?"

"If I don't they won't get helped," says Bella reasonably.

"But you just said lots of people help people, so...?"

"Right, but not everybody has already been helped all the ways they need to be, and I bet that's still true when I'm grown up," says Bella. "If I don't do whatever I'm going to do, it won't get done. People will still get sold ice cream but maybe then they die of cancer or something."

"Hmm," says Elizabeth.

"What?" laughs Bella.

"Filing that."

"Also I want to be immortal. It's probably easier to figure that out if I'm a doctor than if I decide to be helpful by running a food pantry," Bella muses.

"It sounds like what you want is medical research, then," says Elizabeth.

"Yeah, I probably wouldn't just be the kind of doctor you go and see. They only do things for their patients and it's not that many people."

"Or you could be a judge. But that won't help with the immortality part."

"Right. And judges have to do what juries say a lot of the time anyway, I think, I'm not sure they do as much as it sounds like or there wouldn't be a point to juries."

"No, that's not what being a judge is for," she says. "I was thinking politics first, but I bet you wouldn't be really good at politics, but I bet you would be pretty good at law, and judges don't just sit around doing what juries tell them to, they set precedents and stuff."

"Why wouldn't I be good at politics?" asks Bella curiously.

"Too honest," she suggests.

Bella laughs. "I can lie. I don't like it and I'm better at just saying the most useful parts of the truth, though."

"I'm not sure that's what I meant," she says thoughtfully.

Bella tilts her head.

"How come you want to be a mathematician?" asks Bella.

"Because I'd be really good at it."

"What do mathematicians even do? My math teacher says it gets more interesting than adding fractions and finding least common denominators but he didn't explain how."

"It gets way more interesting than that," laughs Elizabeth. "Mathematicians mostly go around proving things, and proofs are really fun. To me. They are not really fun to most people or there would be way more mathematicians around."

"What kind of things do you prove?"

"Um... think of it this way," she says. "Math is really just a pretty small set of pretty simple rules called axioms. All the interesting stuff like calculus and linear algebra, somebody had to figure out how to do, just based on those small simple rules. Mathematicians look at the rules, and everything that everybody else has already figured out about how they work, and they figure out new stuff from there. It's kind of like science, but with pure logic instead of the physical world."

Bella thinks about this. "Huh," she says. "That sounds interesting. I don't know about fun, but if you think it's fun you should do it."

"It is really fun!"

"Okay then," says Bella. "Math for you, something to be figured out later for me."

"Sounds like a plan."

"Yes. An incomplete but totally good plan."

"Hey, never underestimate the importance of the 'figure out what the heck you're doing' step," she says.

"I never do," says Bella.

"Good! It is vitally important and nobody ever gets anywhere by skipping it."

"You mean the movies lied to me?" giggles Bella.

"That is their job."

"Professional liar movies," snickers Bella.

"It's true," she says solemnly. "Ask anybody. If they don't know what you're talking about, you know the movies are doing a really good job."

Bella bursts into helpless laughter.

Elizabeth giggles.

"I like you," Bella declares when she's simmered down some. "Do you want to keep me when you grow up?"

"I think I might!"

"Even though I don't think math is fun for me?"

"How boring would it be if all my friends were math people?"

"I don't know," says Bella. "It would certainly be very mathy. Maybe that would be a plus." And then she giggles at her unintended pun.

Elizabeth sporfles.