It was, fittingly, a portal to imagining a different reality, one in which they had stayed together, in which they were all unremarkably happy and shared a rhythm and tempo. Ayanna could see afternoons where she and Olivia came home from soccer practice and each ate a bowl of cereal, then did their homework together in the living room. She would wake up at night and her mom would be in the dining room reading a book and slowly drinking a cup of nighttime tea. Their parents making a plan in the backyard for the yearly vegetable garden. All of them watching a movie together and splitting a large bowl of popcorn. There would be annoyances—someone always hopping into the shower when you were getting ready to take a bath; the loneliness of being around people whom you loved but could feel how emphatically different you were from them; bad meals; three out of four of them on their periods at the same time; parents arguing with each other about money; petty arguments with Olivia over who took the last Fruit Roll-Up—but there would be the intimacy between them that most of her friends took for granted.

“Be careful, Ay,” Olivia said. “You almost got your finger.”

Ayanna nodded and set the kitchen utility knife down.

She had done a terrible job of dicing the shallots.

The lettuce had been torn in a half-hearted way, demonstrating how little Olivia was also paying attention. Their parents turned toward them and gestured to the backyard. The girls went to them and together watched as a doe and two fawns sat in the grass.

“Dad,” Ayanna said, “we should keep them. They would be great pets.”

“We should probably get them to leave,” her mom said. “They’ll eat your whole garden.”