My mother comes back from the kitchen holding a silver tray. She holds the tray so high I cannot see over it, even though I strain.

“Happy Birthday!” she cheers. “All for you!”

A small watering begins in the corners of my mouth as she lowers the tray.

Disappointment busts black through my veins. Stacks of black rocks are shaped like a three-layer cake. No frosting, no sugar, just granite from the ground, that familiar red glisten.

THE NEXT DAY, MY FATHER PRESSES A KEY into my palm.

“Once a week,” he says. “You can come harvest.”

A real smile comes to my face.

“Ah! So, she does smile,” he teases.

And so, it begins: Each week, I spend one day in the quarry, tearing the meat from the walls.

JARRED COMES TO THE HOUSE TO CALL on me.

“May I take Cassie on a walk?” he asks my father on the front porch.

“Better you than me,” my father jokes.

Jarred doesn’t laugh.

“Cassie, you have a visitor,” my father calls up.

WE TAKE THE PATH AWAY FROM THE RED barn, which recedes like an old heart in the distance. My body quickens around him, my pulse, the breath, the lungs trying to catch air.

“Let’s sit next to the tree,” he says.

I keep my body near his, in case he is ready to touch me.

“I rode my bike to your house,” he says.

“That’s a long way.”

“Took an hour.”

I want his words to stop and his hands to move. I always imagine it, this touching, the knee between the legs, the sweet pink sensation, a candy.

“That’s a long time,” I say.

Then I smash my mouth onto his, taste the salty metal again, the cut of his braces through his lips to mine. He puts his hands on my shoulders and we keep our mouths pressed like that, motionless, holding our breath. Then he pulls away.

“Can I touch you?” he asks.

I nod.

He puts his mouth on mine and we hold our mouths together again and his hands move up my legs, up past the hem of my black dress. I feel dizzy from wanting more, from his still mouth, from his hands. He keeps going. I hold my breath as he moves his hand up to my knot.

“I don’t—”

“Shhh,” he says.

He puts his mouth on my neck, fingers reaching my knot and caressing it, making me tremble. His hands go greedy, running over the knot, digging into the crevices, gripping the curves of it.

“You’re hurting me,” I say, panic rising in my throat.

“Good,” he says, pressing harder against me, pushing my body into the grass, sliding on top of me, grabbing the knot with both hands now.

He shoves my dress up so my knot and underwear are exposed in the sun. He looks down at me in disgust.

“Look at you,” he hisses. “You’re fucking gross.”