Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of substance use, sexual content, death, graphic violence, self-harm, and cursing.

Despite her grandfather’s assurances that she will “figure something out” when she graduates, Catalina is “frozen in fear and inertia” when she returns to Harvard in the fall (147). She needs to focus on her thesis, so she takes only two additional classes: Portuguese for Spanish speakers and “Harvard’s famous class on Finnegans Wake” (147). Catalina wants to do something “impractical and extravagant […] under the circumstances,” and taking a semester-long class on a text as “indulgent” as Finnegans Wake feels “like a fuck-you to someone” (148).

For her museum shifts, Catalina is reassigned to the Vault, where the Peabody keeps artifacts not on display, and there are many objects that feel “sinful […] to even lay eyes on” (149). She is assigned to a Brazilian conservator named Isabella, who works on preparing khipus for the Peabody’s upcoming exhibition. She asks Catalina to count boxes of broken pottery shards, and as she works, she is reminded of Robert Bolaño’s 2666, in which he matter-of-factly describes the murders of numerous women in a fictional version of Mexico’s Ciudad Juárez.