“Hi,” she whispered.

Warmth filled me despite the underheated room. I hadn’t encountered Maggie like this—lips melting, skin relaxed and smooth, breasts flushed pink—in weeks. I’d forgotten her body ready for me. “You okay?” I whispered.

“Can’t you tell?”

She lifted her arms and I dropped into them, the vial still clutched in my fist, heating it with all my might. Maggie’s velvet skin was exactly right, her skinny limbs curving around me, the ache of her breath on my forehead. “What changed?” I asked.

She pulled her head back. She was glowing. “I had to know you’re serious.”

The vial cooled between my fingers. How had this sludge been so recently inside a body? She wanted a baby.

“You were testing me?” I flashed with fuzzy, distant rage.

She tipped her head back. “Don’t talk. Just touch me.”

I was so grateful to be back with her that, even as a barb of anxiety drew through me, I hung above her, our bellies grazing. I saw Sunil in the dark as a man-wolf stalked the stage, seeking someone familiar. The turtles’ gerbil, so sweet and easy that he could never exist. He might be the only baby I’d ever create. But I couldn’t do it with Maggie. Not the silence and manipulation and lies. Not with a kid.

Tomorrow I’d tell her what I was about to do. We’d fight, in a subdued, broken way, and we’d be over. The enormity of what I’d done wouldn’t hit her for days, when she’d call me, furious. I’d leave her without a job or a girlfriend or a kid. I already knew how our end would play out, and I’d be right.

I drew the semen into the syringe. But before I pushed it into Maggie I aimed the tip down and pressed the plunger, freeing the sperm under the bed. Our baby, soaking into the carpet, my only chance, as it would turn out, and hers too. A shudder shook through me. I dipped the syringe into her and then I lay on her body, focusing on her dusty mammal smell.

The Black Winter of New England

HAZEL LEARNS ABOUT THE NEW YEAR’S PARTY WHILE in the graveyard behind Sacred Heart. Melissa and Kit crouch downhill from her and explain. Since Hazel is sitting higher than them, she can see the sky; the clouds press together in an upside-down bowl. Black trees ring the bowl at the horizon, more like tree holes, really, where trees fell through and left a mark. The cherry sun teeters just above. Soon it will suck down into the branches, and the evening will be dark and freezing. Melissa and Kit are underdressed, but Hazel has mittens and snow pants strapped up around a flannel shirt.

“I don’t get it,” Hazel says.

“What’s not to get?” Melissa says, shaking hair over her shoulder. “We go to her house at ten and party. There’s gonna be high school boys.”

“But how can I go out at ten?” Hazel asks. “My curfew’s eight thirty.”