“Dude, it’s bulbous,” said Kurt. “Bulbous” was a word Ms. Martin, their English teacher, used all the time, until everyone at school said it the way she did, with a lisp. The moon was bulbous. She watched it expand and contract like it was breathing. The moon could breathe! She needed to get closer. She started to climb a tree, an old oak. How wonderful would it be to hold the moon in her hand, to pluck it from the sky and put it in her pocket? She climbed and climbed until she heard a crack. The sound didn’t alarm her; it was in harmony with all the other sounds of the universe: the water lapping at the shore, her friends’ voices, the hum of the cars that buzzed past on Lincoln Memorial Drive. Her fall was slow enough for her to appreciate the beauty of weightlessness, like when she was little and she and Ann used to jump off the roof of the garage and land in their father’s leaf piles, back when she and Ann did everything together: compete at memorizing song lyrics, speed-reading, swim races across Duck Pond.

Then there was the ground, hard and real. Lightning shot out of her ankle, piercing through the haze. Kurt reached for her. “You dropped from the sky like a raindrop.”

Kurt carried her home on his back. She almost forgot about her ankle, focusing instead on the smell of patchouli in his beat-up sweater, how his braids were coarse as ropes. Kurt stopped abruptly when he read the note her parents had left for her on the back door: “Ann’s at St. Mary’s. You’ve got to get there!”

THE HOSPITAL WAS CLOSE, LESS than a mile away. Her leg started to scream, and some little shred of sanity told her that putting weight on it would make it worse. Kurt left her at the hospital door. When she limped into the sterile lobby, she was struck by how much she didn’t belong there, as if she’d emerged from another world, reeking of spring air, campfire smoke, beer, and pot while somewhere in that cold building her sister was having her baby.

Her dad was waiting for her. Her dad! She loved him so much, from his gruff voice to the cut on his cheek where he’d taken a dig from his razor that morning. He always had to tap out whatever song he heard with his fingertips. They were on the same wavelength. He wrapped Poppy up in his wiry arms and made her wish she were still his baby.

“How’s she doing?”

Her dad just pulled her closer. She felt his body jerk with tears. She tried to sober up, be real, pretend she was the Poppy he wanted her to be. “Is the baby OK?”