“Now,” she says, “we wait for this motherfucker.”

The sun sets, and the moon rises. We fall asleep on the couch. When the sun rises again, my father still hasn’t come home.

“Time to get ready for school,” my mother says.

She slides the bottle back behind the curtain, a strange magic trick, the evaporated day.

VISION

My father has special places for the bottles: Behind the toilet, in the back of the truck, beneath the pillows of the fancy sofa, beneath the chair in the living room, in the shower, in the trash can.

“You’re hiding them everywhere,” I say. “I found one behind my bed last night.”

“It’s not what you think. Please don’t tell your mother,” he says.

“It is too what I think. What will she say when she finds out?”

“You can’t tell her. You can’t, I’ll stop.”

The world will spin on as it does until you do something to change it. I pull each bottle from its special place. I stack the glass bottles, half-full of clear liquid, on the front lawn, in the sun.

The pile is bigger than the front door, bigger than the truck. I hurl my body at the pile of glass and begin to smash the bottles one by one, shards glinting in the sun like a new future.

AT NIGHT, I LAY MY HEAD IN MY mother’s lap.

“Unknot me,” I sob. “Please make someone fix me.”

“There’s nothing we can do,” she murmurs.

“Kill me then,” I say. “Please.”

My mother exhales smoke, stubs out her cigarette, then puts her cool hand on my forehead, a rare touch.

WHEN THE HOUSE IS SILENT, I SNEAK into my father’s office. This is my favorite place.

The room bursts with him. The shelves are lined with his favorite objects: Paused lava rocks, bleached-white bones, books about meat, empty bottles that catch and refract the light like diamonds.

I sit at his desk in his red leather chair. I spin the chair a few times. I open his desk drawer. The silver key to the Meat Quarry gates glistens against the black liner. I clench my fingers around that cool metal until it aches, then slide the key back into the drawer.

A map of the Meat Quarry lines the office wall behind me. The quarry is mapped like veins of a heart: fat arteries, thin arteries, all connected and winding. Areas with the best meat are marked with a red X.

I run my fingers over the map, trace the arteries, memorizing paths until I hear the front door open. I sneak out, heart in my throat.

EACH DAY AT SCHOOL, I STARE AT BODIES, memorizing their limbs, their smooth lines. The body of Sophia is my favorite.

A PORTRAIT OF SOPHIA: LONG BROWN hair which shimmers where mine is dull, narrow shoulders where mine are gangly, long legs, no knot where I am knotted.