I gaped at them, my arm still lifted in evidence. My mother shut the door. I was alone with her again.

Anyway, this is not a sob story. These are only the facts. After my father left, my mother began to hit me, and after a while, my pleas to live with him first ignored and then impossible, I did something so that she wouldn’t hit me anymore.

“Sometimes,” Serena said once, her toes digging into the warm grass, “I think just rage would be enough.”

We kept meeting at the rock palm. We drank our nettle tea. We focused on our empty stomachs. We fainted dead away. Serena did not want to talk about what had happened with the fence. It didn’t matter. During that time, I felt that the space between lifting our bodies and not lifting them was so infinitesimally small, a sliver really, one that could be transcended at any moment. It was the same feeling you might get when faced with a deeply desired object that is only barely out of reach. Pony backpack, etc. The difference between having and not-having is so thin you imagine you’ll break through it at any moment, like a film of soap. If I can stretch this far, why not stretch a little farther?

One night, Serena stood at the edge of the rock palm, looking out into the darkness. Daring herself, I thought. She got close, closer than I had ever been, shuffling her sandals against the rock. She lifted one leg, and then another, shifting her weight experimentally.

“Careful,” said Laurel.

“Maybe I’ll float,” said Serena. She spread her arms. She was facing away from us, and her voice sounded much farther away than her body.

“Maybe you’ll fall,” said Janet. She stood and went over to the edge to retrieve Serena, but when she reached her side, it was as though she had stepped into a sphere of hypnotic influence. Her shoulders dropped. She pressed her hip against Serena’s. They stared out into the darkness together, their arms entwined. I felt the urge to join them, and I must have moved to do so, because Laurel grabbed my wrist. Her eyes were wide. She’d been drinking again. I could smell it on her. I could always smell it on her, now. I thought I should say something, but I didn’t know what to say. I stayed where I was, and eventually both Serena and Janet returned to us.

“We’re close,” Serena said. “We’re so close.”