No. 17 Lost and Found

Eleven-year-old Lu Xiaoman remembers everything: the year she was four, eleven plane tree leaves fell in the courtyard, and three landed faceup. But there’s an empty place in her mind. Not blurry, just empty, as if someone had cleanly torn out an entire page. Then a package with no return address arrives at her door. Inside is a wooden nameplate, its name worn away, with a tag that reads: “Storage period: 180 days. Stored for 178 days.” But before it left the lost-and-found shelf, it said 179 days. It’s going backward.