The earth shakes with the puncture. The mallet leaves a deep dent in the dirt.

“Let’s take a look,” he says.

We bend over the new hole, stare down into the deep dirt.

“See, the dirt gets redder at the bottom. Step back.”

He lifts the mallet again and drops it once more into the same hole, driving deeper this time.

We lean over the hole again, which slowly fills with red liquid. Blood rises up from the meat below to the upper crust of the soil.

“Red never lies,” he says, grinning. “That’s how you know.”

He grabs his shovel and digs. Blood rushes forth with each new slice into the earth. Soon, he is covered in it. My brother keeps digging and digging, down to the meat, a slick machine.

TODAY, MY MOTHER IS FOCUSED ON illusion.

“We must do something about your face,” she says.

I follow her voice into the yellow light of her bathroom.

“Look at you,” she says. “You’re a mess.”

She pulls her makeup from the cabinet. Small pots of color cover the counter alongside sharp silver instruments, black brushes.

“Let’s start with the eyebrows,” she says.

She brings a thin pair of tweezers to my face. She grasps a single hair and pulls. Tears well up in my eyes.

“It hurts!”

“Too bad,” she says. “We can’t have you walking around like this. People talk, you know.”

She keeps going, keeps pulling the hairs from my brows, one by one. Each yank is a small torture. Water streams down my face, which becomes red and blotchy in the mirror.

“Now let’s do the rest,” she says.

Her fingers run over my face, then a brush, then another brush, I am a painting.

“There now,” she says. “Open your eyes.”

I don’t recognize myself. I am another girl from another planet, a warped version of myself.

SOPHIA STARTS TO DO BAD THINGS.

First, she steals lip gloss from the store in town.

“You just put it in your bra,” she says, then she puts it in her bra.

When I try, the lip gloss slides over my braless chest and catches on my knot before it falls to the ground.

SOPHIA IS ALSO SMOKING.

She smokes the butt of a found cigarette on the walk home from school each day, coughing.

“You just purse your lips and inhale,” she says, smoking.

I take a drag and cough like her.

“Nice,” I say, smoking.

SOPHIA HAS ALSO BEEN KISSING THE BOYS. Everyone knows about it.

“Sophia’s a slut,” the girls whisper to me in the hall. “Sophia’s a total hoe.”

She kisses the boys with the plain brown hair by the dumpsters after lunch.

“It’s no big deal,” Sophia says, smoking. “It’s just mouths.”

I think about the smell of rotting lunches in the dumpsters. Then I think about Jarred’s mouth on mine.

◆Two-thirds of people tilt their head toward the right when they kiss

◆The muscle used to pucker the lips is called orbicularis oris