I see it, then, in between the back bookshelves, the only shining, well-preserved thing in the room: a giant rack of white wine bottles, crowned by a silver tray with two etched crystal wineglasses on top of it, like she’s been waiting for a special date for ten years.

“You’ve seen her?” Daria’s eyes harden, and she clears her throat. She adjusts her silk dress, and I notice the ash marks on its fringes, on its hem. She sets her jaw. “Where is she?”

This is the disruptive power of the belief that Mama is alive on Viloxin.

What the fuck what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck, I breathe, as soon as we step outside, our nails crimping into each other’s arms so hard I swear I taste stars and see blood.

We run together until we’re out of breath on a quiet bench by the side of the canal. Two young girls spot us—I see them whispering, out of the corner of my eye—so I pull Noni and we keep running until I find an emptyish tea shop. I drag her into a dark back booth covered in stickers.

We stare at each other, breathing hard, trying to see the Lady Fleischman, from Elizabeth, New Jersey, in each other, and when an elegantly tattooed waiter approaches, I order two hot teas to go in ten minutes.

“To go in … ten minutes?” he repeats.

“Thank you so much!” I chirp, handing him twenty euro with a grand smile I don’t even feel.

“Are you already googling it?” I ask Noni, as she scrolls on her phone. “Tell me you’re already googling it.”

“No results,” she says, turning the screen to face me. Lady Fleischman, from Elizabeth, New Jersey. “Tai, you were … a force of nature back there. That was really, really impressive.”

She pauses, and we lock eyes. I let the compliment warm my bones, and—

“Especially for a high school dropout,” she adds, completely unnecessarily, turning back to her phone with a shit-eating smirk like it’s some kind of joke.

I pick at my split ends like they’re the insult. My fingers tremble so badly I accidentally rip two whole strands out of my head. At home, when I was littler and worse at perspective, I always did dumb things when one of Noni’s insults threatened to stick. Like picking my split ends, or tweezing hundreds of hairs, or squeezing too-new pimples, or holding planks until my legs quivered. I knew the momentary pain would make me prettier, lovelier in strangers’ eyes, and that could be one realm where I would always win. I want to scream, Screw you, you don’t understand anything at all, but instead I say:

“Do you think Daria was messing with us?”

Because Mama’s more important.