I felt pure and peaceful as I listened. I was sliding down from the sky with lightning around me, and I could see it was no thicker than a pencil, though it seemed as wide as horses. Dice was stroking his lip with his thumb, and I knew exactly what he wanted me to do. He would not punish Pear himself. That was my job. That was what would please him. I felt all the hair on my head and neck strain up like the room was filled with static.

I turned to Pear. My hands shook—the fearless feeling. The buzzing in my head got so loud I felt fly-struck like the sheep.

I felt myself lunge at her. My body moved but my mind was calm, watching as she fell to the floor under me. Here was the floor, the oak’s golden grain was around us like a current, the calendar of all the years it had lived, and my hand pushed into the softness under Pear’s chin. I know I bit her because her neck was bleeding. Hands hauled me back into the room’s dark periphery. I wiped my hand across my mouth and found the red.

The hands moving me away felt good, like they were stretching me out after the high jump when my body fell onto my head and knocked me out in a curious way, when I was awake and could not move, and I could hear but not feel the hands slapping my face, and an assortment of track fathers carried me off the blue mat. Isaac sat with me in the ambulance, slapping my face and saying, “Stay with me, Berie,” which was hilarious. Then at the hospital I could not remember what month it was but I knew it was spring.

I rested in the shadows, abandoned now, and I clasped my shaking hands. I watched several people heave Pear up, and she leaned on them, limping away from the circle of light, holding her neck. I sat up against the wall; my breath came out of my mouth, choking.

Dice walked toward me. His face was so weathered I could not read it. I’d been so certain I’d done what he wanted. Maybe I’d done it the wrong way, too hard. I wondered if I’d really hurt her. I didn’t want to get in trouble; I noticed, unable even to disapprove of myself, that I cared more about getting in trouble than whether I’d really hurt her.

Dice knelt beside me. He put his hand at the back of my skull and angled my face toward him. “You’re a good girl,” he said.

CHAPTER 18

That night, I lay in a bottom bunk, watching the mattress above me bow as someone turned. I could not remember biting Pear; I only remembered her throat, soft like risen cream. I’d done it, hadn’t I.