“No, lie down the other way. Only dead people lie down with their head to the North.” Sol pulls the pillow out from under me and slaps the back of my head. I sit up, spin on my butt to face the right way. Sol chatters away on her belly, resting her head on her hands. Her shirt is loose, so the neckline hangs enough to show her clavicle and pale breasts. I feel lightheaded and dizzy, but she won’t stop telling me stories about her life: how her father and grandfather cheered hurrah at the sound of her first cry at birth—how her cry was so loud they thought she was a boy—how she excelled in school—both in her studies and on the track team. I think about her limping gait as we ran together at the student protest but say nothing. She tells me how she once hid in her closet and didn’t come out for days. I feel thirsty and worn out from fever. I wish she would stop talking so we can go to sleep. Sol doesn’t seem tired at all. Like a kid on an overnight field trip, she talks on and on even with the lights off. She doesn’t realize my mind is scrambled like a shaken up bento box. She goes on about a time eight or nine years ago: black fungus was going around the orchards, and the disease turned all the pears black, starting at the stem. The helpless villagers could only sigh in response. Sol’s family’s orchard was hit especially hard, so the local journalists did a feature story on them. It was on that fateful day that it happened: it was cherry blossom season and tourists were coming in droves on buses. Sol was playing jacks alone in the shade behind the tour buses, and a bus backed up onto her. Sol tells me she was lucky, she could’ve been squashed into roadkill, but she only got a limp from the accident.

I’m pretending to be asleep, pretending I’m not listening. In the darkness I open my eyes to steal a glance at her face.

How long did she suffer before she got to the point where she can talk about this like it was an ordinary thing, without tears, without pain? How long did she hide in the closet, watching herself crumple in disbelief?

My pillow gets wet, and the fever seems to break. I want to reach out and hug my friend, but I don’t want her to know I’ve been listening after all. Or am I afraid I won’t be able to release her once I hug her? I stop myself from reaching out and instead wrap my arms around myself.