The early-evening air cools around me as I move. I cross the yard, old growth crunching under my feet. I’m relieved when I spot the self-driving car to my right, parked beside some garbage cans. I look up, and the Arakit house greets me from an uncanny new angle, this one plastered with crimson glory vines, their trilobed leaves deep green with hairy undersides. In the fall, they must set the cabin aflame.

I pause before I enter the car, because on top of the garbage cans, a familiar stack of discarded neon pink flyers catches my eye. I pick one up, and the text almost singes me: MADAME MIRAKI, BRINGING YOU BUTTERFLY KISSES EVERY NIGHT IN MAY. ONLY AT WHITE FOX CLUB.

And I remember.

TAI

In Teddy’s teddy bear room, the walls, the floor, and the furniture are constructed from the bodies of multicolored, multitextured teddy bears. It’s a kid’s dream. The coziest and gruesomest place I could imagine. Most of the dolls are robbed of their stuffing and eyes. I adjust myself a few times so a teddy bear’s face isn’t planted directly under my butt. One small blessing in the teddy bear room—there’s no plushy-themed en suite bathroom, like there are in the gajillion other rooms, because, per Teddy, It would’ve been too hard to stay on theme without sacrificing hygiene, so this is just a room for chilling. At least I won’t have teddy bears watching me with dead eyes while I pee on a furry toilet seat.

Teddy brings me hot tea in a teddy bear–shaped mug with teddy bear–shaped sugar cubes, and he turns on the fireplace in the room (with teddy bear–shaped briquettes behind a teddy bear–shaped grill) and I try to pretend that I am at peace, when really I’m a girl-shaped bundle of live wires.

“So cool, huh?” he asks, grinning wide. The boy at heart. The man in the Jigglypuff costume, who boxes his wants up into these fun rooms he can touch and feel whenever he likes, who tries more than anyone I know to live in his fantasies for good.

“I’m glad you called, Tai,” he continues, when I say nothing. “I hated how we left things. It was weird, right? So emotional.”

Weird. Somehow, this is worse than him not mentioning yesterday at all.

“Yeah. Learning just how little I know about Mama has been … really fucking weird.” I sip my sweetened hot tea. It tastes like pure honey. I can feel it coating my insides. It’s so thick I can’t breathe well.

You will become him one day, if you keep avoiding the dark. If you keep distracting yourself with new toys.

“It’s been devastating, actually,” I add, the truth of it cracking my words.