“The bad news is: you’re falling through the air, with nothing to hang on to, and no parachute,” he said. “The good news is: there’s no ground.”

I wanted to scream. My father used to say this exact thing. My father used to sit on the same rock I did. My father had gone to the Levitation Center, but he hadn’t come home. All of my life he had been looking for something. But what was it?

I thought of the way Luke had looked at Serena, her body almost naked, barely hidden behind thin swatches of white cotton and lace. I gradually became aware of my stomach, the flesh of my arms, the sweat behind my knees, all of them inferior to hers. It was the way he had looked at her that made me take a step toward him. I knew he loved her, despite the fact that he hadn’t yet given her everything. If he loved her, I was safe, and also ruined.

“You smell like cigarettes,” he said. He took the empty lemonade glass away from me and set it down on the little table. Our lavender slumped like a worm at the bottom.

“I smoked in the womb,” I said. I didn’t know what to do with my hands.

“No, you didn’t,” he said.

My head felt inflated with air. I smelled like cigarettes. My hands were empty. I was alone with Luke. I could see his bed. Where he slept, where he touched himself. I wanted him to touch me. I wanted to be rubbed, stroked, bitten, pinched, smoothed over, and dug into. I wanted to be skinned like a rabbit and stretched between two poles. I wanted to be forced open like an oyster. I wanted to be caught, coded, specimenized, my wings pinned back and stamped. There were too many places on my body that had never been touched, not by anyone, not even by me. I imagined them black with disuse, smoldering in wait. I wanted them exposed, licked. I was tired of being the one to look, to want, to wait. I was tired of being the one to binge. I wanted to be put whole into someone else’s mouth. I wanted that person to want me so badly, to fear me so much that they couldn’t help but bite down.