Sofia and Antonia close their eyes and make the world. Together, they go on safari, narrowly escaping bloody death in the teeth of a lion. They travel in airplanes, to Sicilia, where their families are from, and to Japan, and to Panama. They survive in the wilderness with only two sticks and a tin of Christmas cookies to sustain them; they escape quicksand and locusts. They marry princes, who ride down bedraggled Red Hook avenues on horseback. Sofia and Antonia straddle their own horses. They lean forward and whisper into their horses’ ears. They shout, fly like the wind! and are hushed by their mammas. Go play somewhere else, the mammas say. Sofia and Antonia play on the moon.

Antonia feels free next to Sofia, who is lit by an internal flame that Antonia can warm her hands and face next to. Antonia catches herself just watching Sofia sometimes; staring at the place her dress tugs between her shoulders as she hunches over a table, or forgetting to rinse her hands as they wash up side by side in the bathroom before dinner. If I can see you, I must be here. Antonia feels that without Sofia she might float away, disintegrate into the night air. And Sofia, comfortable in the spotlight of her friend’s undivided attention, feels herself growing brighter as it shines. If you can see me, I must be here.

—

Antonia and Sofia live, mostly, with their mothers, and with each other. Their fathers are often gone, though Sofia’s father comes home for supper often enough that she can feel his presence like bookends to her days: filling the house with the smell of brilliantine and espresso in the morning; rumbling around the kitchen just before she goes to bed at night. Sometimes, the click of the front door and his retreating footsteps just as she falls into sleep: leaving again.