Vertigo feels not unlike witchcraft, altered reality, a departure from gravity. If my own body could mess with one law of physics didn’t it call everything else into question?

“Lonnie, this isn’t what you want.”

I kept focusing on the room to steady myself, as if going over all the details could preserve me in that space.

I wish I could remember it all, but I know how dangerous that is.

“It’s been the worst summer of my life,” I said, when Lonnie didn’t answer. Not true of course, or maybe completely true. There has to be some kind of explanation for that in physics.

I’d quit a million jobs but I’d never been fired. There was no precedent for how I was supposed to act. I started crying. “Lonnie,” I muttered miserably, the words catching in my throat, the room spinning. “Lonnie.”

I was desperate to sit down.

“You know,” James said. “Maybe I shouldn’t bring this up, but you were the one who found Lonnie when she was roofied. She said she didn’t feel strange until she got home.”

“You can’t possibly think I did that,” I screeched. I had no control over the volume of my voice.

“I didn’t think so at the time but there’s all this”—he tossed the notebook on the ground—“and it got me thinking. You didn’t call the cops until I got home.”

“You got home right after I found her!”

“I had to tell you to do it.”

The pattern on the rug, the pink and green and navy swirls, the little corner cabinet with all the antique figurines and vases that probably would’ve meant something historical or financial to someone else from a different background. I stared at everything, trying to take it in, worried it would be the last time I’d see any of it. Why do we do that to ourselves? Why do we implant all those stupid details on our brains? We always think we want to remember the things we so desperately need to forget.

“You brought this on yourself,” James said. “Robert says you pretended to be Lonnie in the Adirondacks?”

“Lonnie wanted me to!” I shouldn’t have said it. Turning on her wouldn’t accomplish anything.

“I thought you were my friend!” she spat back, lifting her face from her knees. She wasn’t crying. She was supposed to be the one crying. If she cried, I wouldn’t have to. I tried to think of some words I could stab back at her, something to provoke tears, but I came up blank. I shook my head; there was nothing I could say, no way to argue.

“More importantly,” James continued, “Carlow says you threatened him with a knife?”

“Pocketknife,” I said, desperately, remembering what I’d done in the little bathroom for the first time. “I was high.”

“He says you stabbed him.”