The next day, Harriet and Nisha cornered me outside, in the dregs of lunch. Harriet had an enormous red spot on her chin. “What happened to your face?” I asked.

She pressed two fingers to the angry mark. “I was drinking tea while walking,” she said. “Nisha always says I should watch where I’m going.”

“It’s the kind of thing that could only happen to Harriet,” Nisha said fondly, petting her friend on the head.

“Sorry,” I said. “It looks like it hurts.”

“Not the point,” Harriet said. “Listen, we’re worried about you.”

“We don’t want you to come to any harm,” Nisha said. Her voice was absent its usual pillowed quality.

“That’s sweet,” I said. “I like you guys too.”

“I hear you leave with them at night,” Harriet said. Sometimes, I thought bitterly, but I smiled at her. “Where do you go?” she said. I kept smiling, and Harriet scowled. “Serena’s a liar, you know,” she said. “She’s always been a liar.”

“What do you mean?” I said.

“She manipulates people. She uses people. She pretends to be your friend and then she isn’t.”

“Oh,” I said. I suddenly felt immense pity for her. Was Harriet one of the girls they hadn’t kept? I remembered the Kyūdō range, the way Harriet had looked at Laurel.

“She has a history,” Harriet said. “I’m just saying, you’re new.”

“Is it really Serena you have a problem with?” I said. “Or is it someone else?” Harriet’s face closed. She narrowed her eyes at me.

“It doesn’t matter,” Nisha said, moving slightly in front of her friend. “They’re all the same. But you’re not really one of them, are you?”

At that, I turned on my heel and walked swiftly away. Jealous! Unkept! Burned by tea! Wrong about Serena! And wrong about me. So, so wrong.

Funny how come to harm can mean itself and also its own exact opposite. I’ve been harmed. I’ve come to harm you.

Speaking of harm: for a while after my father disappeared, I burned photos of him in the bathtub, watching the edges of his face curl and scroll, leaving a black stain on the porcelain that afterward I’d sit on, imagining that his destruction could power me like a battery. I didn’t tell my mother. I didn’t want to encourage her. She was so angry already. Later, I was sorry not to have those pictures, but isn’t that always the way?

But of course my mother wasn’t always angry, even after her transformation. That’s just a story I tell. I remember one afternoon when she burst into the house from the garage. “Let’s go on a walk,” she said.

I pulled away from her. The night before, she had held me up by my hair, yelled into my face. “I’m eating,” I said.