“Tell me how to stop crying,” she said.

“We have to do something else,” I said, turning over the knife in my hand. “Look, do you want to be blood sisters?”

Lonnie smiled, sniffed. “Where?” she said.

I calculated her body, calculated my own. I couldn’t let her bleed on her white dress. I moved to the other end of the tub, so we faced each other, and then, sliding off the heel, brought the sole of my foot to my lap. I cut it along the ball, underneath my toes, pressing down until a line of red emerged.

“Do you want me to do yours?” I asked.

As Lonnie wasn’t wearing shoes, she just held up the bottom of her foot, leaning back in the tub, her arms pressed against the porcelain on either side of her body to brace herself for the pain.

I studied the small perfect object in front of me, her pink heel cupped in my palm. She wiggled her toes, her face twitching, her nose wrinkling, reminding me of the rabbit I killed as a child. Steadying my hand against the side of her foot as if the knife were a pen I pushed the blade into the flesh once, then twice, forming a small red X. She didn’t make a sound. Blood pooled quickly around it, her soles were so smooth and thin; I must’ve cut her pretty deep.

I pulled my leg up, lined up our matching wounds, and pressed my foot against hers.

OUTSIDE, THE RAIN WAS VIOLENT BY THE TIME WE MADE OUR way downstairs—beating against the windows, making a mutiny of the pool’s surface. Paper boats were capsized, run ashore on the patio. Guests were damp, hair flattened. It had started suddenly, waves of it, and they’d had to run inside. Waiters were passing out white hand towels, women were fanning their faces, patting the skin, trying not to smudge their makeup. Everyone laughed. “It wasn’t in the forecast!” “Where did it come from?”

“Gigi’s here,” I told Lonnie, remembering the reason I’d gone to find her in the first place. “Why did you invite her?”

She laughed maniacally. “I thought it would be funny. We’ll just switch back, she’ll think she’s crazy.”

James was in the kitchen. I was still holding Lonnie by her waist, though she’d stopped crying. “I found her,” I said. James smiled at us, lecherous. “She needs a drink, a strong one.”

“I have something better,” James said, winking at me as if we had a plan and pulling a plastic bag from his pocket.

I didn’t know what it was. Inside the bag were what looked like three tiny wads of toilet paper.

“This is what I need,” Lonnie said.

“You want one too?” James asked. “You haven’t had much to drink yet, have you?”

I shook my head. “What is it?”