My whole body’s riding a pendulum—Yaya, Magenta, Yaya, Magenta. A little bit of other things inside, too, but I can’t see the line.” She swept one hand down her chest, where the covered cleft sucked in a pleased gasp. “At the center, I’m all me.”

The midriff stole Doc’s gaze again. The cleft’s lips stayed pursed, no longer playing at animalistic threat display, but she knew the teeth were there. “I have to call you in,” Doc said.

“Right away?” Yaya danced one hand in the air between Doc’s face and phone. Her voice took on a playful sing-song. “If they take me, you’ll never touch me again.”

“You need help. Something’s affecting you.” Infecting, Doc almost added.

Bryant Peters on his bathroom floor flashed through her head, his skull empty.

“It’s chemical, or possibly hormonal.”

“It could be either of those, sure.” Yaya nodded, her head bobbing closer.

“Do you like the infection?” she whispered. “Do you like me?”

Doc opened her mouth to answer and then closed it.

Yaya hovered inches away. “You’re brilliant, you could figure out every detail about me if I’d only lie on a steel table, let you cut me over petri dishes and test tubes. But that’s not where you want me to lie down most, is it?” She was taller now, for certain. How? She couldn’t have grown taller, not at her age.

Doc turned from Yaya’s shimmering eyes to her phone. Her thumb crossed the screen, forcing it to light up, and the glow settled onto Yaya’s lavender suit,

her soft hands, the glimpse of Magenta underneath. Beautiful and alluring. A familiar storm hummed between Doc and Yaya and Magenta, a promise that if last Friday after Pandora’s Aquarium had been a drizzle and Monday was a downpour, then tonight would bring a hurricane.

Doc didn’t think she was weak that way, but she’d spent too much time giving others what they wanted. She pressed a button to blacken the phone screen.

Yaya leaned close enough to kiss. “Your place, or mine?”

15

Yaya didn’t sleep anymore. She had dozed in Bryant’s bathtub half-awake, some shared responsibility of consciousness between Magenta and herself.

Insomnia would have terrorized Yaya’s mind back in the day, but not now. In a stoneless existence, she didn’t need to be running, running, running evening to morning.

When they were both exhausted and had made their post-coital restroom trips, Doc had pressed her back to Yaya’s chest and fallen asleep. The cleft’s teeth poked Doc’s skin. Not biting down, only holding with care, as if to remind her that Magenta was here.

Yaya spent the night watching Doc sleep. She faced away, but an eyelid fluttered at the corner of her face. Her chest expanded, shrank. Bristles of short hair trembled under Yaya’s breath. When she inhaled, she noticed Doc’s scent in a way that felt like the first time, as if Yaya couldn’t appreciate it before.

Strange, different in some unidentifiable way, but not unpleasant.

She had never enjoyed this stillness before. When morning at last roused Doc’s first conscious breath, it seemed too soon.