“It was a simpler time. Because I personally had less memories and so less to superimpose upon the world, and so it was much clearer, and also I was younger. Thus, the world was simpler. I’m getting lost.

“We had a birthday party for you. There were presents and guests and a banner that said: HAPPY BIRTHDAY.

“Your father picked you up and swung you around. Parents sometimes show love through velocity. I don’t have that picture anymore, but at one point I did. Your father picked you up. It was your birthday. Do you understand?”

“I don’t remember having a father.”

“Well, dear. He left quite some time ago.”

“I don’t just not remember having a father. I don’t remember you ever telling me I didn’t have a father.”

Her mother gripped the avocado and searched Jackie’s face, presumably for some sense that communication had occurred.

“What ever happened to Anna and Gracia?” Jackie asked.

“Who?”

“The other girls from one of my birthday parties?”

“Oh, I don’t know. We all lose touch with friends as we get older.”

There was a sound of movement in the backyard. Her mother lowered her eyes as Jackie sprang up and went to look out again.

Still the backyard, and the lawn, and the plants, and the gravel. But now also a shape in the gravel, against the fence. At first, vaguely man-shaped. Then, specifically man-shaped. Her eyes filled in the details as they were discovered. Blond hair. A warm smile. Was that a smile? It was the man from the kitchen at the Moonlite All-Nite.

“Who the hell is this guy?” Jackie said, eyes and fists tightening.

The Sheriff’s Secret Police were always easy to summon, as quick as shouting “Hey, police!” out your door or whispering it into your phone. The phone didn’t even have to be on. But calling for help was not something Jackie Fierro was likely to do.

What she was likely to do, she thought as she did it, was charge out the back door directly at the man, shouting, “Coming for you, creep!”

There weren’t even footprints in the gravel. That’s how gone he was. She stumbled to a stop. No one. She jumped at a loud hiss behind her.

“I’m not afraid,” she declared, and she wasn’t. She was angry, which is the more productive cousin of fear.

The sprinkler popped up, and the water hit her full-on. And then the rest of the sprinklers, one by one, tossing their burden into the hot desert air to nourish the grass, or to float away and evaporate.

“I have definitely never been out here,” she said, water streaming down her hair and face into her clothes and shoes. “How did I even know how to get to this house?”