“Blake,” my mother said. “There’s a place I know. They have a special tool for it. A gun. Let’s take her there.”

He doused the earrings in alcohol, poured more on his fingers and rubbed my earlobes.

“It will be fun!” my mother said. “We’ll go as a family. It’s a special gun. It works so quick. Blake.”

But he didn’t listen. He stabbed the earrings into my earlobes. One sharp pain and then another, and then hours of throbbing until my mother crept to my bed with two empty pillowcases and ice in a paper cup from the convenience store. She split the ice between the pillowcases. She had me lie on my back so she could press the ice against both ears at the same time.

Stars flashed in front of my eyes. My earlobes throbbed. I was on the floor of my cabin, arms wrapped around my knees.

One breath and then another, I told myself.

I made it to the door and pushed it open, stumbled into the evening, the sun just setting. Billy and Liz were leaving the second cabin.

“Walk over with us?” Liz asked.

“Where?”

Billy cocked his head. “The house. For dinner. Are you okay?”

“Oh,” I said. “Dinner.”

Liz took a few steps toward me. “Hey,” she said, squinting. “What happened to your ears?”

“My ears?” I touched one and then the other. When I lowered my hand to look, blood was on my fingertips. “Oh,” I said. “Yes. The earrings. I . . . He pierced them.” My head was heavy, my mind swimming. “I don’t think I should go to dinner,” I said. “Not yet. You go ahead, though.”

I turned away from them. Something was on my doorstep. A little brown box. I picked it up, but waited until Billy’s and Liz’s steps faded in the distance to open it. When I knew I was alone, I pulled off the string and lifted the top.

A pair of earrings. Emerald studs.

The next time Blake’s friends came to drink and talk by the fire, I chose to stay away. I lay up the hill in my sleeping bag, with a novel and a flashlight. I was lost in the world of my book, so I didn’t notice when Blake went to bed, too drunk to socialize any longer. Didn’t notice when Peggy tried to stand but fell forward, rose again to find her sweater in flames. I didn’t see her tear off the sweater or hurl it away, into some brush.

It was California in the summertime. The hill was ablaze in seconds.

My mother screamed and I sat up. There it was, below me, orange and white and hot. “Mila!” she yelled. “Blake’s inside! Wake him up!” And then she and Peggy and Matty and whoever else was there that night catapulted down the hill to the street, away from the flames.