There were no counselors in sight. There often weren’t. Still, arming fifty fifteen-year-olds with knives and sharp sticks seemed like poor planning. But they were all intent on their task, and hardly anyone noticed when I walked in and took my seat.

If I had carved more quickly, I might have made it out without ever having been seen—but the scrape of the knife on the wood, the smell of the fresh pulp—it was so hypnotic I remained still much longer than I should have.

“We could hunt pigs with these spears,” Avery said, her voice like fairy bells and river music. Every face spun to her, then to me. “Want to practice, piggy?” She snorted through her upturned, freckled nose and thrust the stick at me.

It jabbed me in the shoulder. I yelled and my knife slipped, sinking into the palm of my hand.

I leapt from my chair and ran at her, around the table, trailing blood—chasing her across the tent.

She danced out of reach. I panted after her, reaching for the flapping hem of her skirt. She spun in the air, hair spreading in a rose-gold arch around the vortex of her laughter.

Her eyes sparkled when she laughed.

That was Avery, then.

***

Avery now struggles a bit with her boyfriend, her college classes, her share of our rent. Her weight.

Mostly she struggles with the fact that, while she played beer pong, I nibbled celery, and now I’m the one turning heads.

But I love her. Always have. Small miracle.

And she loves me, and has loved me since I sucked the venom from her spider bite. Never mind that the spider wasn’t venomous and no amount of sucking could draw all the poison out of Avery. I know, I tried—sucked long and hard.

I give her my expensive fat jeans as I shrink out of them and slip into something slimmer.

She’ll pretend like she likes it—says it’s good to have curves—but the tall stack of fad diet books at her bedside is as straight as a column.

Six months ago, she brought home a sack of expensive creams. I rubbed them over her till I couldn’t tell where the cream ended and her soft skin began. I cupped the puckered speck of her spider-bite scar in the pale crescent knife scar on my palm.

Still, her thighs dimpled. I like them that way, but she cried an ugly cry, face twisted, and reached under my skirt and pinched me—hard—on my smooth, firm thigh.

It bruised, but it was lovely.

Three months ago, I handed her an old dress. She held me and wept and asked for help.

I taught her how to sit down to a healthy meal. How to then excuse herself discreetly. And how to bring it all back up—every crumb and calorie in accelerated reverse.