The pantry door opens. Hazel is afraid it’s more Mengs, that Esther’s family will pop now from every crevice. But it’s a boy with a black bob and a dent under one eye, like someone pushed their thumb in, hard. His shoulders curl forward, and he walks like a weasel, tense and sly.

“Hey, Anthony,” Kit says. “Having fun?”

Anthony snorts, and Melissa steps from the pantry, yellow hair flashing. It’s uncool to smile, but Hazel can’t help it. Melissa’s already here. They all are. So what if they’re at Esther Meng’s? They’ve never cared if they’re on the highway or in the graveyard or in Hazel’s room with her parents reading downstairs: wherever they are, the three of them build their own world. They can reach that place here as well as anywhere.

“Hey, Melissa,” Hazel says.

Melissa rolls her eyes and laughs at Anthony, though he didn’t make a joke. Her mouth is shiny around her lips, and her eyes are agate marbles, hard but pretty. They flicker, and Hazel’s breath catches. But Melissa walks the other way and curls up on the couch decorated with snowflakes from the open door. Wind wrinkles her hair. She’s a lioness, golden and proud and easy with danger.

Hazel scrambles for any scrap that will remind Melissa they’re friends. Some secret that only the three of them know. “Hey, Melissa. I have an idea.”

“Congratulations.” Melissa watches the wall as if it were a TV, focused on a bloom of mold. Her hair is washed of its yellow by the fluorescent overhead. Hazel twists in her seat. She longs for Melissa’s mouth to twitch like it does right before she orders Hazel to pin Kit to the ground, one wet tooth flashing. But Melissa’s face is set, her concentration drilling into the mold. She’s willfully forgetting Hazel, and even Kit. After all Kit lets them do to her, Melissa should at least acknowledge her.

Hazel sits forward. She can’t merely say hi. She has to remind Melissa who she is. “Let’s do a practice sex,” she says, her voice as strident as a parent’s.

Kit releases a low hoot, and Esther covers her mouth too late to block a snort.

“Oh shit,” Esther says. “Melissa’s been revealed.”

Melissa turns to Hazel, hair flinging over her shoulder. Her nose and cheeks burn rashy red. “What are you talking about?”

Hazel shudders, but her voice comes out clear. “You know. Like at Sacred Heart.” The whole room is listening now, even the walls bending toward her. The boys are open-mouthed, feebly laughing. Esther leans forward like she wants to join the fight.

“When we put Kit on the ground and you tell me to hold her wrists.” She’ll explain it all if they let her: the corners of Kit’s bones cutting into Hazel’s palms, the static in the air, the clouds pressing on her back, snow ready to drop. Melissa’s finger pushing into Kit, shallow, then deep, then too deep, that swish of moisture and that sound Kit makes, halfway between murmur and growl, like a song to which Hazel wishes she knew the words, the graves rising around Melissa like men, gray and featureless. Melissa’s face over Kit’s naked groin, gazing at Hazel. Kit’s head resting on its thin cushion of hair, her expression faraway. All Hazel has to do is hold Kit’s wrists and she’s part of all that.