Jeremy is silent. Old enough now to know their story is common, and that unyielding pain is preferable to the agony of nothing.

After lunch, outside on the playground, children stand in clusters like flickering stars of flesh, bone, hair, and breathing.

“What are you going to be for Halloween?” asks Gareth. “I’m an owl like the one in your tree, Maxine.”

Maxine knits the boy’s words as her body softens with feathers and her face rounds into something white with eyes like cave pools. It’s windy where she watches from a finger of night, the child, the mother, the father, others too, she sees, silvered by moonlight in sleep.

Then Doris screams, “I’m going to be a fox, which means I live alone and eat mice by the dozen!”

“I thought you loved mice,” says Maxine, thoughtfully.

“No,” says Doris. “That’s bats.”

“But a bat is a mouse that can fly.”

“Well,” muses Doris, “I eat those, too . . . when I feel like it.”

“I can see in the dark,” says Maxine. “So, you can’t eat me. I’m too quick.”

Gareth steps closer. “You’re not an owl, are you? Maxine, that’s what I’m being.”

“I am a rabbit like I was before. It’s a simple life, sniffing grass and eating carrots for every meal, even snack.”

“Oh good,” says Doris. “I might have to eat you up, too. I like a good rabbit.”

Maxine feels their laughter as small, soft blows. But then her ears stretch. Back legs clench and recoil. “You have to catch me first!” She bolts. The owl and the fox move quickly without thinking.

Teeth are visible. Claws rip the ground as small shoes go clopping and clapping hands mean flight. Little feet have given way to paws and feathered wings. The scream and shriek and growl and terror and ecstasy of children untangling.

The curtain of night is falling

and things felt in the day

pain and joy alike

are being disassembled

in order to be built again

tomorrow.

Maxine runs from her mother’s car to the front door, then turns back and watches the woman who was born when she was born gather things from the back seat of her blue car and approach with the glistening house key held aloft. The lock swallows, and the door swings to reveal the familiar, comforting stomach of home.

Inside, Hadley walks around the house and snaps on lights, considering what to cook.

Maxine stands in one place and takes off her coat, lets it drop. Her mother calls to her from the kitchen amidst the clamor of pans and pots pulled from cupboards.

“Did you learn anything interesting today?”

Maxine answers but forgets to speak.

“Well?” says her mother. “I hope you’re not talking to Doris during the lessons.”

“Doris is not my best friend anymore.”

“What happened?”

“She became a fox and put a worm in my schoolbag.”

“Why?”