But Daniella didn’t have a time machine. She just had poetry and a bad attitude. Daniella looked up, willing Rinn to look at her. And like magic, it worked. They stood there, eyes locked for a moment.

“I’m sorry,” said Daniella. It seemed a paltry thing, that apology. “I’m sorry for hitting you. I’m sorry I took everything out on you. I’m sorry.”

Rinn seemed to make up her mind. She nodded, almost to herself, and then turned and sat beside Daniella. “I’m sorry, too. I shouldn’t have called you a bitch when I could tell you were feeling vulnerable.”

Daniella didn’t say anything else for a minute. None of them did. They all sat there in a strange, comforting silence. Imogen with her twirling vape. Rinn with her tapping foot. Daniella with her shaking hands. Melting together into a concert of wordless symphony.

Daniella couldn’t have said how long they all sat there like that. But she knew she had to be the one to break the spell. She knew it the way she knew when the rhythm was off in a poem. By instinct, by feeling. By hard-won knowledge that made her feel witchy and portentous even if she knew she wasn’t. “I hate being alone, you know. I always have. I think it’s because I grew up in that house with my mom. Full of siblings but she made it feel so empty that it felt haunted. And not even haunted by my dad. He died in a hospital. But it felt haunted by her, somehow. By all her candles and all her prayers and all her hours on the icons when she wasn’t in church. I love the saints; I did as a kid. But she just made it this space filled with her memories and everything she hated losing. And so I hated to be alone in that place. And I hated being stuck there with nothing to do.”

Imogen stopped twirling her pen. Rinn stopped tapping her foot. They were both watching her, rapt. Daniella had that ability, she knew. To tell a story. To capture people’s attention. It sometimes felt like her one and only skill in this life. That it was a sickness to need an audience. But with these two, it didn’t feel like that. It felt like something else altogether. Like connection, maybe. Like a lifeline, too.