I cannot breathe. Sweat sprouts at my hairline and on my top lip. I fan hot air into my face, pressing my lips tight against a scream scraping the inside of my throat. The sun is too bright and the sky isn’t wide enough, the clouds seeming to drop and loom over me. I need to run, but I can’t escape my own body. I’m tethered to this flesh and bone, and these ticking-time-bomb ovaries.

A chorus of laughter floats out to the patio on a song of childish joy, and it squeezes my heart until my lungs must be drowning in my own blood.

I don’t need this shit.

The door opens behind me. I stiffen. Kayla is the last person I want to see me like this. She has a fundamental lack of tolerance for weakness, and I’m weak as a lamb inside right now. I hate it.

She walks up beside me but doesn’t look my way, choosing to instead squint up at the sun.

“What the hell was that?” she asks, her voice a low, insistent shovel primed to dig.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Did I ask if you want to talk about it?” Kayla is leader of the won’t-let-up crew.

“Zee, could you just leave it alone?”

“I don’t think I can.”

She takes my hand in a strong grip. I jump, startled. She’s holding my hand? I hazard a glance at her profile.

“What exactly are you doing?” I ask, a little laugh managing to squeeze past the rubber bands tight at my throat.

“We’re having a moment, Tru.”

“Did you schedule this? You know you can’t just make moments happen, right?”

“Well, I am. It’s happening.” She turns to me, not letting my hand go, and when I glance over at her, the real concern in my sister’s eyes dissolves my reservations.

“I’m sorry I freaked. I was…and then Zaya…and it just hit me. I haven’t dealt with it, I guess.”

“Please stop speaking to me in half-formed thoughts. I really can’t bear it.”

“I’m in perimenopause.”

A shocked silence absorbs the sounds of laughing and screeching from the living room. I can’t tell if there’s any crying mixed in.

“Are they okay by themselves?” I ask, glancing back to the glass doors.

“Yes. Trin, Ida and Gwen can make sure Joe and Zaya survive me leaving the room for five minutes.”

Five minutes? Jesus. I have to do this for that long? Could we have a shorter moment?

“Perimenopause.” She says it slowly, turning the syllables like they’re a foreign tongue and she’s repeating them, having no idea what they actually mean. “You’re not even forty. Isn’t this early?”

“Yes, but it happens.”