“She’s a lightweight,” Laurel said. She pulled out her button and put it in her mouth. That summer, Laurel carried a large coat button on a piece of string in her pocket; periodically, she would slip the button into the space between her teeth and lips and tug on the string. It was a lip-strengthening tool, she told us. A dentist had prescribed the button when she was a child, after he noticed her mouth hanging open in the waiting room, and she’d kept using it. (For fun and profit, she said. Orally fixated, said Janet.) Laurel pulled on the button until it came away from her mouth with a little pop.

“I’ve just seen what an asshole it can make you,” Janet said.

“You don’t have to be drunk to be an asshole,” Laurel said. Button, pop.

“True,” Janet said. “Most people operate in the red on that spectrum every day.”

Serena poured the last of the whiskey into her cup. She held the empty bottle above her head and then, without warning, she let it go. I gasped instinctively, but the bottle just bounced on the stone. “How do you feel?” she asked us.

I felt warm, sunk, unseparated; like I was part of the rock and part of them and part of the velvety black. I couldn’t figure out quite how to express this, though, so I said nothing.

“Not like levitating,” Laurel said. She wiggled on the blanket. “More like kissing.”

“Too bad,” Serena said. She nudged the empty bottle with her toe. “What did you think this was for?”

“For fun?” Laurel said. She stuck out her bottom lip. “Fun is something pretty girls like us are supposed to have at summer camp.”

“This is in no way summer camp,” Serena said.

“Would we call us pretty?” said Janet. “As a group, I mean.”

“You have to admit there’s archery,” I said.

“Zen archery,” said Serena.

“Arts and crafts, hiking, yoga,” Janet said. I smiled at her.

“You know who can really levitate,” Laurel said. “Planes. Planes!” She was drawing out her words again: Plaaaaaanes. She tried to stand and tipped over instead. She scrabbled around on her hands and knees, as if looking for something.

“How did you get so drunk?” Serena said. I knew how—I’d seen her drink almost half the bottle. But Serena had drunk almost as much, and she seemed only enhanced, herself and more. Laurel had flipped onto her back, legs and arms splayed.

“Maybe we should do it another night,” said Janet.

“How do they get up there?” Laurel said. “No, actually. Who thought of that? I mean, listen, I know who. I may be extremely attractive but I’m not stupid, Janet. But I mean, what was the step after the propeller?”

Serena made a disgusted sound. “Janet,” she said evenly, “take her back down, will you? It’s pointless for you anyway.” She gestured at Janet’s full cup.