There were many things we each wanted, but we had all we needed. We continued along Albany, trudging up the steep incline, a leg-scorching task that always signified the last hurdle before relief.

A warm glow from the streetlamps surrounded the swing sets and wood chips of Cadence Park. Pushing on, our pace accelerated, somewhere between walking and jogging. Every few steps became a long sliding skip, each person ready to reach this sacred space of ours. The hot breath of night blew on our backs, egging us on, conspiring with us. Our V turned single file as Aidy led us through the playground and down into the bowl. We coiled around until we formed a circle in the center of the dry grass.

“We made it,” Aidy said, a bit breathless. No car had seen us walking. No cell phone had rung to tell one of us to go home. We were intact.

“Let’s dig the hole,” Bigs said, already breaking ground in the bone-dry soil. The tip of his shovel dug down and flipped back up, more force than he anticipated, creating a firework of grass and dirt, sparks landing on Teeny.

“Xander!” she yelled. She picked up a handful of loosened soil and threw it back at him.

“Sorry, T,” he said. He didn’t even brush her revenge dirt off his shirt. He kept digging, much more carefully.

Harrison picked up the other shovel and joined him. “How deep are we going?”

“Not very,” Bigs told him.

It still took longer than expected to carve out a satisfactory shape. As the rest of us waited for Bigs and Harrison to finish, we huddled together. The closeness was a hug, so tight my busted nose could smell perfumes and body sweat and a trace of all the drinks Harrison had made. Nothing hurt much then, not my head or my nose or my heart.

Bigs and Harrison set down their shovels to wipe their foreheads at the exact same time, which gave me the bizarre thought that maybe twins were twins with everyone, just by nature. As if they couldn’t help but link right up to someone else’s movements because they were so in tune with what it was to share space with someone.

Maybe everyone was a twin, in some way. I leaned closer to Teeny to test it out, just enough for the pressure of my shoulder to seem accidental. She matched me right away, the two of us conjoined at nearly identical heights. Maybe it meant nothing, but even nothing was something, and I liked the idea of her and me as twins of some sort. Twins of circumstance, forever connected.

Aidy opened her purse and took out the flashlights. She passed them out to us, ignoring questions about their purpose. Once we each had one, she sat down a way back from the discarded dirt. “Ruby, do you know how you want to start this?”

“I do.”