She was still leaning against me as she said this, the blade of her shoulder pressing my breastbone, my exhales stirring the shining thicket of her hair. Whether she’d meant to needle me or not, I didn’t want to start anything by calling her on it. From this angle, I couldn’t see her face, and the air above her head smelled like my shampoo because she’d borrowed it this morning. After a moment, I leaned down to collect her stack of books, and she lifted Emily Dickinson’s purse to check on the hamster inside, wrinkling her nose at the unmistakable smell of urine. Between Harry needling me and Harry failing to consider me, I was trying not to think too much about which I’d prefer. But, God, sometimes Harry just said shit. I settled her books against my hip, and gestured toward the exit. “We should probably get back on the road.”

* * *

In the mornings, Harry’s alarm would wake us both up. She would refill Emily Dickinson’s food, if it needed it. I would put on coffee. She’d start packing our things while I went down to the continental breakfast, if there was one, and brought up not-quite-expired yogurts and dry bagels. Harry’s jaw popped when she chewed. Sometimes she put on lipstick. I swallowed my meds with coffee, two white circular pills. The antidepressant I’d been taking for over a year had stopped working, slowly, and then all at once, so I spent last winter in a low static. I read a lot of essays online by people who wanted to kill themselves. Everyone on my mother’s side of the family had attempted suicide at least once, except, so far, for me. I wouldn’t call us unhappy people. It’s just that these things run in the blood. During lectures, I’d look out wide windows and imagine my body hanging in the frame of them, swaying and purpling. I performed gruesome mental surgeries, picturing myself flayed, my organs on display, quietly amputating a limb in my mind while I talked to people.

It’s maybe not a surprise that my sex drive was low, haunted as I was by imagined mutilations. The one time Harry and I ended up in bed together that semester, her body was a skeleton straddling my thighs, so beautiful that I actually wanted to puke my guts up. I thought about a sharp, calm blade removing slabs of flesh from my stomach, hips, my wide shoulders, the breasts I kept tight behind a sports bra, like slices of deli meat. Until my naked body looked something like her naked body.

“You’re not really into this right now, are you?” Harry’d asked, taking her hand away and wiping it on the bed.

“No,” I admitted. “I don’t think so. Sorry.”