We brought our plates to the couch and cut into our pancakes, staring out the picture window. Someone had set up a tent on the far side of the river, a separate life running corollary to the Lily Pad. I resisted the urge to ask Ros if they were okay. Touchstone had been right that I needed to trust that they were doing better, and by all accounts they were: They were awake. They’d gone out to the farmers’ market. They’d made pancakes. There was no real reason for me to be worried about them.

“You know I got in trouble for fighting at my old school,” Ros said as we worked our way through our pancakes.

“No,” I said. “Really?”

“Yeah. That’s why I switched schools. I pushed someone. Harder than I meant to. This guy was kind of hassling me at recess. Like, what are you kinda thing.”

“Fuck that guy,” I said—our standard response for people who’d done us wrong.

“Yeah. Obviously. But I pushed him, he fell, and he hit his head. It was more instinctive than anything else. The pushing, I mean. He was so much bigger than me, and I was afraid. And he was okay but, like—it was scary. To know that I could do that.”

“I can’t believe you’ve never told me that before,” I said.

“Not the sort of thing you want to tell people, is it?” They bit off a piece of their nail. “The scary part was that even though it felt bad, it also felt good. Like, to know I could do that. Protect myself. Maybe it even felt good to hurt him; I don’t know.”

The pancakes were sticking in my molars. What was Ros trying to say? That they were like Jess Orlando, maybe—that they understood not only the impulse to protect oneself, but also the impulse to hurt. That they were both fighters—and I was a softy who couldn’t possibly understand the appeal of a well-thrown left hook.

“I bit Touchstone once,” I said.

“What? Really?!” Ros was giggling.

“Yeah, I mean. We were little. I didn’t draw blood or anything. But I chomped down fairly hard. According to my mom.”

“Damn, Celia. I didn’t know you had it in you.”

“He stole my My Little Pony, and he wouldn’t give it back.”

“That is so not what happened,” Touchstone yelled.

“It moves!” cried Ros.

“Yeah, because you two won’t shut up, and Celia won’t stop telling lies!”

“We’re not relitigating this, Andrew!” I yelled upstairs. “The really funny part,” I said to Ros, “is that then my mom bit me.”

“Wait,” Ros said. “Clare bit you?”

“Clare bit me,” I confirmed. “Lightly. But yeah. I mean—I never bit anyone ever again, so.”