Later, the director will have them discuss their discoveries—what they noticed, how it changed their movement. Nina Booker-Pope says something about how walking on her hands helped her see the world as it really is. Barf. Audrey will say something really, really smart: about how the armor—that her armor, actually, wasn’t all that different from her neutral walk, and that she wondered if what she thought of as neutral was actually a way of protecting herself.

When Andrew leaves the class, he finds he’s still wearing his armor. It’s frightening and metal, with a big claw like an excavator, and is so loud it scares even him. But he knows it’s there. He can put that armor on now. He doesn’t have to be weak anymore. He can be the thing that rips open the earth, that leaves behind gaping wounds.

THE TRIUMVIRATE REUNITED,
or Planning a Party

Immediately after my disastrous lunch with Touch, I called Ros. Normally we texted, but this time, I called them.

“Hey,” I said. My voice wasn’t shaking, but it felt like it was. “Sorry to bother you.”

“What’s wrong?” Ros asked.

They knew. They always knew.

“I had a weird conversation with Touch,” I said. “Do you think you could come over?”

“Give me twenty minutes,” they said, and even though things were a little strange between us, they said twenty minutes, and we were together in sixteen.

“I feel awful,” I said to Ros.

“I don’t think you need to feel awful,” Ros said.

“Okay, then I feel just plain bad,” I said.

“It sounds like you had a productive and necessary conversation. Like he talked to you about something that was bothering him, and you said you were sorry.”

We were sitting outside on the porch like we had that first night, when we both smelled like river and when the summer yawned out before us, fresh and easy, pre-everything: pre–Jess Orlando, pre–Oliver Teller. Pre–Dropped Acorn and pre–Friendship Disaster. Neither one of us had mentioned the marooning at Lovers’ Lagoon. We’d put aside our own friendship woes to talk about Touchstone and the way that I’d failed him as a friend.

“Yeah, but I don’t think I fixed anything,” I said. “And the fact still remains that I’m a shitty friend.”

“You’re not a shitty friend,” said Ros. “You were the best friend to me all year long.”

“Yeah, but I’m being a shitty friend to him now, is the thing. He’s right. I wasn’t even paying attention to what was going on with him. It’s supposed to be the summer of Very Serious Friendship, and I’ve been so caught up with…” Here I caught myself, because I almost said you. “Costuming.”