During the game I would be the girl and the girl would pick flowers until suddenly, the girl would see a flash flood. Which is to say she would see water coming at her from a distance, rushing at terrible, even impossible speeds. The girl would scream. The girl was at all times both tragic and beautiful. The girl would fling her flowers down and run for the ladder and always she would pull herself up at the very last possible moment. Always the bottom of the shoe of the last foot into the treehouse would get wet. The point was to get to safety, but the point was also I suppose, thinking about it now, that the girl always did. That somehow, the girl always knew when to fling down the flowers and run. The right way to ask, the right exact moment to run away. Safety was always possible but it hinged on codes, secret knowledge and precision. The girl could save herself but only if she did everything right.

The flowers in the vase were dead now. Where is the Princess? E asked, looking at the flowers. Why didn’t she come? We both thought that maybe she’d been eaten by trolls, we both agreed that this was horrible. To myself though, I thought, that someone must send the real Aurelie flowers every day, that she must have vases overflowing and a path of petals leading from the flower shop to her apartment. To myself I thought that these flowers, my flowers, were, to her, to Aurelie, a drop in the bucket, nothing that she would miss or come looking for.

Anyway, they were hanging down over the top of the rental-company vase, their heads drying, the stalks melting slowly into goo, disappearing into the brackish water. I could never remember to get rid of them and so we, E, B and I, watched the deterioration. We noted the smells that rose from the water, the rot creeping up the stems. It was science, I told E. E took her animals, two plastic giraffes, a mother and a baby, one orphaned kangaroo, a baby orangutan and a white pony with dark spots, one by one to the edge of the vase to sniff the water. To gaze into it. Some of the fallen petals were collected to make a nest for the kangaroo. We were learning now by watching very carefully. Look, I said to her. Look at this and this and this.

I wasn’t sleeping, I really wasn’t. Not much. Not enough. E got up early. B stayed up late. In between the nights stretched, the hours drifting farther and farther from each other, like planets pushing outwards, always more and more alone inside the expanding dark. M was back sometimes and sleeping but he felt always very far away. When he didn’t come home I called my mother from the guest room and I’d gaze at the screen and not be able to make any sense of what she was saying. Go to sleep, she’d say, you look awful.