I was getting a bioaffective spike as we settled into the velvet chairs; inside my giddiness, the lobby colors sharpened and bloomed.

“I’m going to be direct here, which is not my usual tactic. This will sound naïve for someone such as myself, but you must know how we trans are often furiously spinning through various life stages at once, so pretend it’s coming from a fifteen-year-old trying to talk to a cool, older sixteen-year-old.”

“K.”

“Are you really perfect?”

“Wha?”

His blankness was a door slammed.

“Never mind.”

He looked down at his phone.

I wanted to pour my shrub on him. And his gadget.

What had I expected from this advertisement of a human? A dense encounter?

TBH, I wanted to absorb his otherworldly perfection, which was still intact across the low lobby table. And punch him.

For so many mornings, I had given his bod my rapt and self-disgusted attention, and now all he could return was generic, glazed-over, limp distraction that any cis adolescent teen could have offered.

“I must know what is up with your goose,” I said, my voice getting louder and higher. “You just leave her behind on the other coast?” My distrust of California was evident.

“Say again?” He was still looking down at his phone.

“I . . . I asked you about your goose.”

“That’s personal,” he said shortly. “I should be going.”

He stood up and I caught his scent. Laundry with April Fresh–scented dryer sheets, the heady BO of trans anxiety, and pine-based cologne.

“Cya,” I said, hoping to sound aloof.

For a moment, I was a crushed child. Then the swell of rage returned, though arguably it had never receded.

I called an apartment meeting. This was highly unusual, and the roomies must have thought we were getting evicted.

We sat in our tiny living room, a few feet between the entrance to the Witch’s room, my room, and the start of the kitchen. The S-H was cross-legged on the floor, and the Witch and I sat too close together on two sectional pieces that had once belonged to a longer, nicer couch.

“I need to curse someone, in both the old ways and the new.”

The Witch gave me the same look she’d given when I suggested a chore wheel. “This is not child’s play,” she said.

“Exactly. That’s why I need a professional witch and a professional . . . hacker.”

“You remember what I told you about this man?” she asked.

“Yes, that our conflict is purely astrological. His Jupiter-blessed Leo sun conflicts with my strident, truth-seeking Sagittarius sun, vindictive Scorpio rising, and watery Pisces moon. But he has slighted me! He has lied. He has tried to attain perfection, and someone needs to punish him!”

She did not look convinced. I had to use her language.

“This person resides inside his devices, devices made from leaching the earth’s minerals. He watches neither sun nor moon nor California wildflower blooms. His message is facile, though his body is hard.”