Jessica sees a few people crying. Under the rain rattling on the roof, she can hear even more. Life-jacketed and lined up on a plastic bench in a bright orange capsule with a hundred other tourists. Couples, families.

A four-year-old boy next to her keeps asking between sobs, “Mommy, why are we in the little boat?”

His mom has her sweaty face against the foam shoulder of her life jacket, and her breath heaves. They were all given seasickness pills when they boarded, but hers isn’t working. “It’s just a little longer, honey. Just sit—” she swallows, “sit tight, okay?”

Jessica sees the “big boat” out the rain-streaked window, many-storied and lit like a skyscraper, its nose sinking into the dark water as if ashamed.

*

Jessica bowed her head at dinner and chewed carefully.

She’d been liberal with the adhesive, because that night she planned to order the steak—her first in two months. She pinned her hair back and made up the scar on her cheek as best she could.

But even cut into small pieces and squished between her molars for a long time, steak was too tough. She was grateful that Chelsea and Trevor—those were their names?—probably didn’t notice her difficulty chewing while they described their cruise around Australia the year before.

Chelsea is pregnant and shouldn’t have ordered the swordfish, but Jessica didn’t say anything.

She felt her front-left teeth start to move. Too much adhesive. Her lip tightened against them. “Mm-hmm,” she said, nodding. She held up a finger and tried to say, “Excuse me,” but the teeth popped out and flipped between her lips, the metal support clicked against her real teeth.

Trevor said, “Oh. Sure,” and looked at his food.

“Oh,” as in, he hadn’t expected a thirty-four-year-old woman to have a denture. “Oh,” as in, now he better understood the scar showing through her makeup.

In her cabin Jessica spat the denture into her hand. Her left incisor stood alone at the front of her mouth, the one they could save. Her molars huddled in the back.

She ran warm water and scrubbed away the adhesive, then added more from the tube in her purse and pushed the denture back in. The false teeth settled around her incisor like strangers at the dinner table.

She decided to order room service instead—mashed potatoes and gravy.

*

Trevor is in the back corner of the lifeboat holding up his phone and frowning. Chelsea’s head rests on his shoulder. She and Jessica meet eyes. Chelsea looks away and puts a hand on her belly. Jessica has to make herself look away.

A crew member screeches open the hatch and fires a flare into the rain. The black water out the window lights pink-orange.

The boy asks, urgent, “Mommy, why is there fire?”

Others snap alert and look out the window.

“Honey, that’s not—” She covers her mouth. Her fingers graze Jessica’s life jacket. “I’m sorry,” she says, “could you wa—” she swallows, “watch him while…”

Jessica wants to say no, but the mom is already standing and shuffling between everyone’s knees toward the open porthole.

The boy screams for her and gets up.

Jessica holds his arm. “Stay here.”

*

Ryan said looking at her reminded him of what happened.

He should have been the one to drive, but he had a drink after dinner. The other car shouldn’t have swerved.

In the hospital, she felt his tears on her cheeks. She felt his lips push hers into the new emptiness behind them.

When he pulled away he didn’t look at her. It felt like he never looked at her again.

The last thing she said was, “Please stay.”

Her sister got her the cruise, for a “fresh start.” She shouldn’t have gone.

But she did. To get away from everyone’s sad smiles and overlong hugs. The house, empty of Ryan’s things. The closed room with the crib and playpen still folded in their boxes.

*

“Your mommy’s feeling sick. She’ll be back.”

His face is wet and red. “Why is mommy sick?”

She wants to say it’s because his mom is weak. “Because we’re in a boat, and there’s a storm.”

“Why?”

She waits for an answer to come. “Sometimes bad things happen.”

Ryan had jumped ship, and their son had drowned in her waters.

She feels the boy’s stare on her cheek. “What’s that?” He points.

She touches the scar. “I got hurt.” Now it’s her turn to cry. Her lips tighten, and she feels the denture loosen. In the midnight rush to get to the lifeboats she’d been hasty with the adhesive.

“How?”

“I was—” Her teeth slip, click against the others. She puts a hand on her mouth.

“What’s that?” His eyes are patient, fixed on her mouth. His little barrel chest rises and falls under his life jacket.

She sucks at her teeth, pushes the metal ridge with her tongue until they settle back into place. Then she smiles. “My teeth,” she says carefully.

“Can I see?”

“Ladies and gentlemen,” a crew member says from his windowed perch, “the coast guard is on their way. Shouldn’t be long now.”

Cheers and applause.

But the boy’s eyes haven’t left Jessica’s tight lips.

She hesitates. Then she parts her teeth and pops the denture loose, holds it for him to see. Four resin teeth in two humps of pink resin gum. Metal wire spans the gap between them and curls at either end to hold them among her real teeth.

His eyes get bigger. This is when he screams, her face forever burned in his mind as the toothless witch in the lifeboat.

Instead, his little finger rises to his mouth and pulls his lip down. He grimaces. His pink tongue squishes through the gap where he’s missing his middle-left incisor.

Jessica’s eyes blur. A drop crawls down her cheek. She asks, “Did it hurt?”

“Yeah.”

The Reverend would recognize his chapel by the bell still rising out of the dunes. The rest of the town had disappeared when, in his words, the Lord shook the earth like a rug and turned the ground to quicksand.

He’d fled with them, sullen, carrying sacks of meager possessions in their carts and over their shoulders. But he carried only his Bible and stared solemnly at the horizon, as was his purpose, his final mission as Pastor of the doomed mining town sinking into the desert behind them, to act as a mirror for their sorrows that they might feel less alone in the Lord’s mystery.

He spoke strong words by their fires, shared their food, drank their water, until they reached the next town. Constant sandstorms pushed many onward. The Reverend stayed and preached to the few left of the inspiration to be found in Jesus Christ. People had no alms to give but were eager to listen, because they assumed he spoke of their Lord and Savior, who could be prayed to and asked to calm the storms and still the earth’s trembling.

But the Reverend’s devotion was for a different Jesus Christ—a statuette made of solid gold and meticulously hand-painted, which stood behind the pulpit in his chapel, now under several feet of sand.

*

The steeple’s white paint had chafed but its iron cross still stood. If his parishioners could’ve beheld it they would’ve given over their first-born sons as acolytes.

He rolled his shirtsleeves and took a sack from the horse cart. Clawed up the shifting sand to the steeple. Took the rope from the sack, tied it to a beam and dropped it in.

“Oh, praise the Lord!” a voice said in the dark below.

He looked down and saw a filthy face appear in the patch of light.

“Reverend Holcomb, is thatchoo? Reverend, it’s me, Kasper Baney!”

The Reverend swallowed a groan. Nineteen-year-old Kasper Baney. Slept in the front row of every sermon Kasper Baney. Picked his nose before dipping into the holy water Kasper Baney.

Kasper shouted, “Oh, you’re truly a real, true savior!”

“My child, have you been down there long?”

“Since the storms. I was milkin’ the cows when the ground started shakin’ and I got kicked. Woke up in the middle of a sandstorm with the barn collapsin’ around me.”

“My, that’s—”

“I figgered it might be the reckoning! Safest place for the reckonin’s the church.”

“Well, you—”

“I been down here for days, huntin’ rats to eat with this knittin’ needle I found!” He held up a bloody wooden rod.

The Reverend shouted, “Kasper, let’s get you outta there, how about? Climb on up the rope, son!”

“Okey!” Kasper tugged the rope and began to climb.

The Reverend leaned against the steeple and waited, watched his horse stand patient in a world of sand. He’d take the Jesus to the city, where no one knew who he was. Where someone with money could do anything.

Kasper’s head appeared. He wrapped his hands over the lip of the chute, grunting.

“My child, let me help you.” The Reverend offered a hand and pulled.

Kasper’s head knocked the bell, he slipped from the Reverend’s grasp back into the steeple and landed with a bang.

“Oooooh, sweet sweet Lord, my leg’s broke!”

The Reverend looked down and saw Kasper crumpled on the floorboards like a spider half-crushed. The patch of light cast perfectly on his red puckered face.

The Reverend sighed, pulled his pistol from his holster and pointed it down the hole.

Kasper whimpered and stared at the gun.

The Reverend pulled the hammer back.

“Ho, Reverend!” said a voice somewhere behind him.

He turned to see Mr. Baney riding up. Mr. Baney’s shape was unmistakeable, almost a perfect circle with arms. While his son snored through sermons, Mr. Baney wheezed. The Reverend had often wondered how someone with so little money could be so fat.

Kasper shouted from below, “Help! Help, please!”

“Ho, Mr. Baney!” the Reverend said, discreetly holstering his pistol. “Your timing couldn’t be better. I’m afraid your son’s in trouble.”

Mr. Baney dismounted his horse and tried to mount the dune. It was like watching a grapefruit try to climb stairs.

“He’s down there—still alive by the Lord’s good grace.” The Reverend crossed himself. “But his leg is broken. I’ll need your help pulling him to safety.”

Mr. Baney found a shallow slope and wobbled up it, kicking sand.

The chapel roof creaked.

Mr. Baney tried to look into the steeple. “Kasper?”

“Pop, my leg! My leg’s broke, and Reverend Holcomb was gonna shoot me!”

The Reverend tisked. “He mentioned a cow kicked him in the head during the quake. He’s delusional.”

“Kasper,” Mr. Baney shouted, “we’re gonna get you outta there! Hold tight!”

The Reverend said, “I’ll tie the rope around him if you can pull him up.”

“I’ll try,” Mr. Baney wheezed.

The Reverend lowered himself into the steeple, and as his eyes adjusted to the dark he saw the Jesus statuette on the dais. “Give me strength,” he said.

Kasper stared. “You were gonna shoot me…”

The Reverend leaned in and whispered, “Down here, I’d be sure not to miss.”

He tied the rope around Kasper and shouted for Mr. Baney to pull.

Kasper screamed, Mr. Baney roared, and the boy rose toward the light.

Then Mr. Baney threw the rope back down. The Reverend tied it around the statuette and began to climb.

He saw Mr. Baney’s face appear above. The chapel groaned, and the roof crumpled. Sand shifted.

“Reverend!” father and son shouted. They both pulled the rope, felt slow progress through the sand and wreckage, and eventually saw Jesus rise from the mouth of the steeple.

The Reverend didn’t answer their calls.

Kasper sobbed and hugged the statuette on his lap in the cart. Mr. Baney led the way on his horse.

They left the endless dunes, where now only an iron cross jutted from the sand.

“I need you to turn me into someone else.” The young man had a quiet voice and earnest eyes.

Henry put his book down on the display counter full of wounds, temporary tattoos, fake teeth, and jewelry, and looked over his reading glasses. “Who do you need to be?”

He had owned the tiny costume shop for over a decade, and had seen a few nervous customers come in for hair dye, clothing, and fake blemishes, who might’ve been evading some kind of capture. But none of them had asked for his assistance so directly. It was just a vague hunch he had about them, anyway.

The young man’s collared shirt was clean but very wrinkled. His shoelaces were almost broken.

“What kind of trouble are you in, son?”

“It’s not like that.” He looked out the glass door, tilted his head to see between the scarecrow and gargoyle in the window. Then he took a paper from his pocket, unfolded it, and pushed it toward Henry.

Henry looked down through his reading glasses and saw in poor handwriting: Please. I am not dangerous. I will not hurt you. I will pay $175 for you to close your store and help me personally for one hour. I have done nothing illegal. Please. -Andrew

Andrew smiled a little through wet eyes.

This was either the strangest trick ever pulled on Henry, or the most direct call for help he’d ever seen. He wished his son Tom had been as forthright about asking when he needed it. When Tom’s baby came, he’d sent Henry an email with a photo, a beautiful little girl. Henry drove out to surprise them, but they weren’t there. The rental agency said Tom and his girlfriend were evicted for months of unpaid rent. Too embarrassed or proud to ask for help. Emails to Tom’s address bounced back as undeliverable. Spending his days in the costume shop, Henry wondered if Tom had disguised himself and was somewhere out there, hidden in plain sight.

This young man wasn’t Tom, of course.

Andrew pulled a ratty ziplock bag from the pocket of his jeans, opened it, and removed two fifties, three twenties, a ten, and a five. Some coins remained when the bag went back in his pocket.

Henry looked him in the eyes and waited. When Andrew didn’t look away, Henry went to the front door and flipped the sign to CLOSED.

“Lock it, please.”

“If you’ve got a death wish, son, I want no part of it.”

“I’d feel safer.”

The back door was a one-way lock; Henry thought to keep that path clear in case something happened. He locked the front door. “Good?”

Andrew looked at the ceiling. “Do you have cameras?”

“Yes, I do. And I’m keeping them on.”

“Good. Do they record sound?”

“They don’t.” Henry regretted this answer without knowing why.

“That’s fine.”

Henry looked at his watch, “One hour,” and stepped behind the counter.

Andrew stared at a basket of glow sticks for a long time. “I hear a voice.”

“There’s no one else here.”

“No, I mean in my head.”

The detail of “in his head” made Henry liken it to Tom’s “depression.” He picked up the bills, rolled them into his pocket, and stayed a step back with his arms folded. “What’d the voice tell ya today? To kill the manager of a struggling costume shop?”

“It’s not like that. The voice only hurts me.”

“If the voice is in your head, a disguise won’t fool it.”

“I want to become it.”

He stared. “That’s one way to take charge. What does this… voice look like?”

A corner of Andrew’s mouth lifted. “I’ve never seen it.”

“Well, that’s a wrench in the gears, isn’t it?”

“It says disgusting things about me. Calls me a creep. Says I’m worthless.”

“Sounds like a bully. Is that it, a big bully?”

“Yes, but not strong I don’t think. Inside he’s a coward.”

“Acts tough.”

“Yes, exactly.”

Henry sighed. “Let’s see what I’ve got.”

They started with clothes. From several costume racks Andrew pieced together a baggy shirt and pants, a thin chain necklace, a wallet chain on his belt loop, a wig of bleached hair, and a baseball cap with the bill curled tightly around the eyes. It resembled an outfit Tom had insisted on wearing to school when he was struggling to fit in. Henry had used the phrase “punk weenie” to describe Tom’s appearance, and Tom didn’t look him in the eye for three days.

When they got to makeup, Henry was surprised to find that despite never having seen the voice, Andrew had very specific ideas about its face. He asked for a long, narrow nose, “As if it’s always pointing a finger at you,” he said.

Henry tried to remember a trick he’d seen back when he had a makeup person working at the shop. He swirled the sponge on the pad of makeup. Andrew twitched when it touched his nose, then closed his eyes and held his breath. Henry dabbed carefully. He became very aware of the whistling in his own nose.

Andrew said, “Make my eyes look smaller, if you can. Like they emit judgment but absorb nothing.”

“I’ll… give that a shot.”

He drew a deep wrinkle into Andrew’s brow, and added concealer to cover Andrew’s slight eye bags and flatten the sockets—far from perfect, but not a failure.

Andrew said, “This is very good. Do you have a full mirror?”

“In the dressing room. Be right with you, I’m going to the restroom.”

Andrew’s eyes welled up again. “Thank you.”

Minutes later, Henry emerged from the restroom and heard grunting. He pulled the curtain to find Andrew standing at the mirror. Blood drizzled from his crushed nose, and fresh bruises glowed on his jaw and cheeks. His eyes wheeled to find their reflection.

“Jesus!” Henry wrapped his arms around Andrew to stop his fists. “Don’t do that, son. You don’t wanna do that.”

Sisters, I have an idea for a trick I’d like us to play.

What is the trick you have in mind, sister?

We find a mark and follow him, learn his comings and goings. Then on the day of the trick, we all wear the same dress—the powder-blue one.

Oh, that’s a very pretty dress.

I prefer the avocado-green. But if it helps us play the trick, sisters, I’ll wear the blue.

Wonderful, yes, it will help enormously. Then I’ll follow the mark onto the subway and make sure he sees me. I can bring along a book or a handkerchief to drop on the ground to get his attention.

You could make eyes at him. That’s my favorite way to hook a mark.

We have such deep, dark eyes, they can never look away.

Maybe you can strike up a conversation.

Perhaps, but only pleasantries. We must keep a certain distance from the mark, or the rest of the trick won’t work.

So then you follow him to his destination?

Yes, but I don’t leave the train. I let him go, and wave good-bye as the doors close.

Then he sees you whisked away into the tunnel. Gone.

Yes, which is why he’ll never suspect to see you on the street, exiting a coffee shop, in powder-blue with your dark eyes just like mine!

Delicious! He’ll think I’m you!

Oh, what a surprise!

Do I speak to him?

You mustn’t speak to him; you mustn’t imply that you know him. But you must pretend to be surprised too, so much so that you spill your coffee on him. And you must scream!

Scream?

Scream bloody murder! Claw at yourself, tumble over a fire hydrant as you back away from him in terror!

He’ll be so overwhelmed!

And then you run away, sister, as fast as you can!

What a marvelous trick that will be.

That is only the beginning. For you, sister, must be lying in wait at his place of work.

Which we’ll have learned from observing him before.

Yes, and you’ll conceal yourself in the women’s restroom.

But if there are multiple such restrooms?

You will put yourself in the one nearest to the entrance, for he will seek out the first available men’s room to clean the coffee from his suit.

And I’ll leave the women’s room just as he approaches, and scream bloody murder at him!

No, you mustn’t scream.

Oh, but I’d like to be a sister who screams.

No, you must remain silent and treat him as a perfect stranger. He may start with fright, or he may scream, or he may attempt to engage you in conversation, sister, but you must resist, pretend you’ve never seen him before. Should he speak to you or reach out to you, you must pull away and react unfavorably to the encroachment.

This is a complex part to play, I’ll relish it!

Yes, it is subtle but no less important. And then you leave, and we allow him to settle, confused, into his workday.

Aha! Then as soon as he leaves for lunch, there I’ll be to greet him!

No, sister, the final trick will be much tastier if we wait. He will have seen the same woman three times already, in impossible places relative to each other. Left to his own devices, this will puzzle him for the rest of the day.

But we must strike at maximum confusion!

Patience, sister. If we allow him to rejoin his routine, his confusion will multiply with our next intervention. You, sister, will frame yourself in a window visible from his office, across the street. At some point during the afternoon, he will pause to ponder and stare out his own window. That is when you wave to him.

With a frozen smile on my face? Slow and creepy?

No, sister, with a look of genuine joy. You should be pleased to see him.

Oh, I will be, anticipating the rest of this trick.

Yes, I suspect it will be good.

So do I.

He will not believe you’re real, and he may leave his office to fetch a coworker back to see you.

But I’ll hide from view!

Right. You mustn’t be seen by anyone but the mark.

So when the coworker leaves and he settles back into work—

With increased confusion…

Indeed, I reappear and wave again?

Yes, and beckon to him. He will think himself insane, but with a bit of luck, he’ll slip away and come to your building.

Do I wait for him there?

Yes, but it must be a building with a glass entrance, so he’ll see you and know which door to enter. You must wait far back enough that you can slip into the stairwell before he catches up to you.

A chase! Do I take the stairs up or down?

You’ll take them up, sister, but only one flight, and then crouch low. That’s when a sister on a lower level will start running downward.

I’d like to be that sister! I can run very fast.

Brilliant! So he’ll follow her!

Just a glimpse of my powder-blue will suffice to lure him down after me!

Indeed, and you’ll be far enough in advance of him to reach the bottom and pass through a door into a dark room. Most likely a storage space of some kind.

He’ll follow me through the door, naturally.

And you’ll wait for him to do so, positioned behind the door so that as soon as he’s entered, you’ll close it definitively behind him.

And turn the lights on?

Yes. And there he will see all of us, sisters. Some of us perched atop shelves, others standing on boxes stacked at various heights, collected in groups here and there, but most gathered in a crowd around him at the door, all two hundred of us, sisters, all in our powder-blue dresses, staring with our dark eyes.

Oh, the look on his face!

Zombie apocalypse time baby! So what’s the issue? Well you are a zombie and even sometimes you are kind of aware of that fact.

If I ignore the blood that had sprayed up the face when his head was cut from his body, and just look at his eyes, I’d guess this person is at the end of a long day.

But your long days are over, friend. Just a head now, you might not even reawaken as a zombie. Deep, eternal sleep for you.

I was not so lucky.

A void churns in me, compelling me to crack this grotesque nut on the tile and eat its contents. I hear a gurgling groan and think it’s coming from another zombie, but they’ve all moved further into the mall. I’m alone, sitting on the edge of the fountain surrounded by corpses in various degrees of wholeness. My stomach clenches. My grip on the head tightens.

Is there a word for simultaneous revulsion and hunger? I’m careful not to touch the slippery neck wound, and the ears and hair are sticky on my hands. Becoming a zombie doesn’t, as is commonly assumed, deaden sensory awareness.

But my attackers made such a mess of my nose and its inner workings that I can no longer smell nor taste anything. Does this make my innate desire to eat brains more palatable? Of course not. Who wants to eat something with the texture of a human brain?

Well, the answer is apparently: many of my cohorts. Some of them relish it. They scoop the stuff into their mouths with their broken hands, or pick at bits with exposed finger bones like chopsticks.

I assume their sense of taste is intact. Maybe it’s delicious.

Our “zombie groupthink,” as I term it, lets me hear the thoughts of others nearby, and I’ve noticed that when it comes to children’s brains there seems to be a universal initial disgust at the idea, followed by a line of reasoning that decides the child in question was probably the type to break things in stores or scream in airplanes, and therefore deserving of its fate.

Following this logic, police, politicians, and military personnel—corruptible authority figures of any kind, really—would make for Dionysian feasts.

None of my own interpersonal conflicts would drive me to do such a thing, not even the provost who denied my tenure and flippantly urged me to “try again next year.” Neither of us knew that in the meantime I would be granted a more macabre sort of tenure.

But I won’t seek her out to eat her brain.

Was this humankind’s destiny from the beginning? What was the point of striving, recording our triumphs, and filling our minds with knowledge only to have them gobbled up?

The edge of my vision glitters.

If the food court is empty, I could try to scavenge a slice of pizza or some chow mein—though chow mein might feel too “brainy”—or maybe some cookies or a pretzel.

I don’t know to which body this head belonged, so I find one without and carefully set the head down next to it. As if offended by my decision, the body jerks to life, struggles to its feet, and runs away.

I leave the head there bodiless.

Alas, poor Yorick, I knew him not at all.

*

I search the map for the food court.

I’d never visited this mall until today. I was first attacked by mechanics in the auto shop—they used a tool to remove my nose before I got away—and I ran across the street to the vast expanse of the mall parking lot, hoping to lose them in the rows of parked cars. But they were very fast. That is one thing movies eventually got right: as long as the necessary muscles are intact, zombies are strong and fast. The pain of their wounds only spurs them on.

Fingers clutched at my shirt all the way to the mall entrance, where the automatic door didn’t open in time and the thing behind me grabbed my wounded face and took a bite from my shoulder. I wrestled it off and entered the doors, dodged through awestruck shoppers and found refuge through an exit door into a dead-end concrete hallway.

Later, I emerged frightened, confused, and still in great pain. The mall was a chaos of shrieks, growls, and anatomy. I stepped carefully and hid when I could, but any zombies who saw me were uninterested, and then I realized why.

*

The food court is a mess, and deathly quiet.

I sit at a table of abandoned food, the first I see that’s still mostly clean. Before I get the burger into my mouth, my stomach pushes back.

But this is meat! Does it not qualify?

My children, zombies or not, would have no problem with this burger and fries. Oh, the children… And Cassandra. So far away, all visiting her mother for the weekend. I hope they are safe.

Perhaps after I’ve eaten I can try to call them, to warn them. I can explain my state and convince Cassandra that she needn’t worry, that I’m not a threat to them. Things don’t have to change. And we’ve no need for money now; the problem of my tenure is solved.

With fresh optimism I bite into the burger, and immediately push forth a spray of bright green bile.

I toss the burger to the floor. The fries are ruined as well.

A body in the seat next to me has its cranium cracked open, but somehow the brain is untouched. It sits in the skull like a Jell-O mold. I take a spoon from a cup of soupy ice cream on the next table, and I scoop. Pretend it’s ice cream. Or Jell-O. Or Cassandra’s favorite, panna cotta with raspberry coulis.

With my eyes closed, I can almost taste it. My stomach groans with satisfaction.

Nothing has to change. If my family accepts, I can ensure their safety. A little nibble here, a little nibble there, and we can stay together.

Panna cotta for everyone.

But there was your bracelet still looped around your wrist, so I knew it was you.

Your hair was full of ants and mites. Two abandoned bird nests. The gardener cleaned and clipped you into a pleasantly unobtrusive sphere, and I wept while staring at a photograph taken when your locks were last springy, golden, and smooth.

The gold is starting to show again, but in places it’s orange and red. Most likely layers of dye you used to keep us from finding you.

It’s been so long, now you are old enough to be called Susan. I use this grown-up name often to familiarize you with it. You took your backpack and disappeared one night, then spent six years in the wild without a name, and now you’re so far removed from the memory of even having a name that you only sometimes respond to Suzy—with a subtle rustle of your hair—and still never to Susan. You will learn with time.

You’ve grown too big to enter the house and sleep in your own bed, and you still refuse to dine with your father and myself. You prefer to sit silent in the yard and take only water and sunlight. I’m having the cook make your favorite Baked Alaska for your birthday this weekend, which I suspect will bring an end to this rebellious teenage hunger strike nonsense.

I’m pleased you conceded to wear the mauve dress tonight, after I made the proper adjustments, and the maid and your father helped me wrap and sew it onto your body—with no help from you. Despite constant washing up, your sap stuck and crusted through the dress in places. Your hardened skin ripped it at the collar as well as down the left side. But tonight I observe proudly that the extra seams are hardly noticeable from anywhere beyond the fifth row.

Despite your atrocious posture, you didn’t fit into the auditorium. All the money your father and I donated to have it built for the academy when you were little—if we’d only known the dimensions wouldn’t allow for our own daughter to stand onstage! It took much arm-twisting to get them to cut the ceiling and lower you through the roof, but money solves all problems, and it is our auditorium, after all. It even bears our name.

The rafters block the hole from view. The room is colder, but everyone has solved that problem for themselves by keeping their coats on.

The orchestra’s playing would help us forget the cold entirely, if it weren’t for the booming dissonance of your notes.

You refused to play your clarinet. I’m unsure whether it’s out of rebelliousness, or the fact that your current state makes holding the clarinet very difficult for you. The handyman drilled down through your trunk, split into several interconnected tunnels, and with the addition of some strategically-placed holes and a gust of wind, you can play again.

But there is an overdramatic, morose quality to your playing, Susan, that I hope will disappear over time. The rest of your classmates are currently attempting a sunny rendition of Tchaikovsky’s Russian Dance, muddied by your petulant bassooning in the background.

That ceaseless howling keeps the audience from knowing when one piece has ended and another begins.

And it’s much too loud. You still haven’t learned to blend, balance, and order yourself with everyone else. I see that six years in the woods only encouraged this ugly showboat behavior. Beyond the reach of civilization, everything is competition and chaos.

Your father and I have seen to it that you never have to compete, but you must learn to conduct yourself respectably if you are to go on to university and make something of yourself.

Your falling leaves litter the stage and distract the other players. Hold them from chattering, Susan, so desperate for applause that you have to provide it yourself throughout the performance.

Now swaying and creaking, such a restless child! I told your father not to unfasten you, but administration complained that the crane took too much space in the parking lot. Let people park in the street! Don’t they see how your unbridled fidgeting is ruining the performance? Keep her restrained, I told them, she’s still too wild, I told them.

Cracking and a boom, and the whole auditorium goes black.

Thumping of seats, shoving. No more music except for yours, Susan—ugly notes, groans, and that self-serving applause.

I put my hands on your father’s back and follow him out of our row and down the aisle, other feet stepping on my toes, screams in the dark.

In the whipping wind of the parking lot we see that the blackout covers the entire street, possibly beyond.

The top of your head sways against the moon, and you’re fingering a power line.

Headlights flash and swerve, horns honk, the whole parking lot is a jam of cars and milling, panicked people. Scrape of metal and crunch of plastic. Shouts.

Congratulations, Susan. You’ve thrown your biggest tantrum yet and ruined another evening. I hope you’re pleased with yourself.

The vineyards stretched healthy green stripes across the faces of the hills, but among them was a scab where the grapes had shriveled on their bunches like little lungs squeezed shut.

From atop a hill, the boy stared down at the blighted vines. His father would be unable to contribute to the royal wine barrels, and the vineyard would be razed.

Crows circled and dove at a shape that walked the withered rows. From afar, the boy heard it speak: “The vines can live again.”

“The grapes are to be offered at the harvest fair tomorrow,” said the boy. “My father is ruined.”

The shape stepped from the rows—a scarecrow in clothes fatigued by years of wind, rain, sun, and snow. Under the rippled hat brim its eyes shone like polished garnets.

“You may have the wealth of a hundred harvests,” it said.

Hope fluttered in the boy’s chest.

“But something must be given before something is received.”

“Anything,” said the boy.

The scarecrow took hold of the boy’s head, and with a small sickle carved a line around his crown, lifted the lid and scooped his brain and his eyes. His vision went black. Cool air blew into the cavity and whistled through his ears.

The scarecrow removed its hat and lifted a fat bunch of red grapes from its cranium, its eyes emptied of their garnets. The sockets were paneless windows, into which nestled the boy’s blue eyes as they lowered with his brain into their new container.

In turn, the boy’s head received the grapes; two bulbous members of the bunch filled his sockets and shone with dark juice in the yellow evening light.

“Touch every leaf,” said the scarecrow.

The boy set to work, blindly anointing each leaf with a sweet tear from his new eyes.

In the morning the father awoke to a field of luxuriant vines, but still not a single grape hung from them. He found his cart was missing. To save his son the shame of arriving cart-less and empty-handed, he walked to the fair alone.

When he arrived, he found his cart and his son surrounded by mountains of luscious grapes that reached even above the colored flags strung across the beams of the stalls. The boy sat among the piles, staring into the distance and wearing on his face the only smile in sight.

Villagers glowered from nearby stalls of gourds, fresh bread, corn of all colors, woven baskets and furniture, handcrafted tools, jars of jam and honey, and barrels of dried beans and herbs. Children approached to marvel at the grapes, but their parents quickly snatched them away as if from piles of moldering corpses.

“My boy,” said the father, stepping over grape-full crates near bursting on the ground. “It is a miracle.”

“Miracle, my eye!” said the butcher, tossing aside the bunches of grapes tumbling onto his table of salted meats. “The child is touched by the devil!”

The woodcarver worried over a toy horse stained with juice from grapes fallen into his chests. He spat into a kerchief and wiped the figurine. “Indeed, from what sulfur-smelling hole have you dug this ‘miracle’?”

The father put a hand upon his son’s shoulder and said quietly, “My son, what terrible magic was summoned for this?”

The boy smiled up at the father and a drop of juice ran down his cheek.

The father trembled. “I have gained prosperity, and lost my son!”

Fanfare chopped his voice away, and a mass of members of the court came down the alley. The King himself stepped to the front. All bowed, including the father and still-grinning son.

The King eyed them suspiciously. Even the jewels in his crown paled next to the light and color of the grapes. “Only yesterday your farm was a spot of blight,” said he. “Now you must answer for this… diabolical reversal of fortune.”

“Your Highness,” said the boy, “before you declare us heretics, please taste of our grapes.”

The King paused. Then he snapped his fingers. A set of bells jingled through the members of the court until a jester emerged.

The King pointed. “Jester, taste a grape.”

The jester approached with caution. He plucked a grape, examined it at length, put it into his mouth, and slowly bit down. “Sire…” He chewed. “My mind can invent neither quip nor jape, so awestruck am I by this delectable grape!”

The King hesitated, then chose and ate a grape. Misgiving melted from his face. He demanded that all of the court’s wine barrels be filled with only the juice of those grapes.

Having won the King’s favor, the father and son spent the fair selling their surplus to the decreasingly suspicious villagers. The boy stared at nothing and felt his way among the bunches, packing more crates while his father counted coins with quivering hands.

When the day dimmed, the last of the customers approached—a man in weather-worn clothes, with a strange old face but familiar blue eyes.

At the sight of those eyes, the father fell to his knees.

The man said, “Your son made a great sacrifice for this fortune.”

“Please, replace his sacrifice with my own,” said the father. “He must not suffer my failings.”

“Very well.” The man removed his hat.

In the following years, the vineyard flourished under the boy’s care. He often stopped atop the hill to admire the healthy green stripes stretched across the land. His blue eyes drank with sadness the plentiful view that his father could no longer see.

The father kept watch among the vines below, night and day, through all weather. Crows gathered like never before, but they left the vines untouched, favoring the juicier grapes of the father’s eyes.

But the first two cars drove right by. No swerve, no brake lights, no reaction, and I couldn’t see their faces so I didn’t know if they even saw it. And then there were no cars for a while, so I spent time trying to find better placement and like crawling trajectory so they’d see it, but not so visible that they could just stop and get out and see it was just a toy. The point was it had to trigger a split-second honest reaction.

You’ve already figured out most of the story. It’s easy to guess just by looking around. But you’re missing the details, the extra thought that went into my plan, the stuff that made it interesting to me.

I saw another light through the trees way off over there—which scared me for a second, because I was using my phone flashlight and I was jumpy about the idea of someone else being out here too. But it was a car, so I put the baby into position on the gravel shoulder, pointed at an angle so when the car came around the corner the baby would be, not facing them, but angled toward them so they’d see its face. Seeing the face made it less likely they’d mistake it for a rabbit or something. And seeing the face is scarier. The expression is funny—it’s smiling, and its eyes are pointed to the side like the baby doesn’t see you or doesn’t care. It was funny to imagine someone in the future trying to fall asleep and having flashbacks of this plastic doll face they saw in the woods.

I have a thing like that with a drawing of a giraffe in a book from when I was really little. The giraffe’s neck is tied in a knot. It’s supposed to be funny or cute, and on the next page the other animals help untie it, but whenever I see or think of giraffes I think of the one with the knot in its neck and I can’t breathe.

That’s not important. I don’t have to remember to tell you that.

With the first two cars I’d figured out a good time to release the baby so it’d be in the middle of the road when the car finished the turn. So I flipped the switch and held the baby crawling in the air, and waited for right when I saw the headlights pass between the two thick trees, which meant it’d be like another fifteen seconds before the car hit the straightaway, which is about how long the baby would take, at this angle, to crawl to the middle of the road. And when the headlights blinked between the two thick trees I put the baby down and it started crawling, and I ran off the road.

When the car started the curve I could tell the baby’d be right on the yellow line when the car saw it, it was so perfect. Around the curve the headlights stabbed through the trees and bushes right across the baby’s face, but of course the driver still couldn’t see it yet. I ducked under the ferns, and I figured since I was hiding on the side the baby was crawling toward, then even if the driver stopped and was brave enough to get out of the car they wouldn’t find me. At least not right away, because they’d first look where the baby was crawling from, and I could run if I had to.

But the baby must’ve caught on a rock or leaf or something, because it turned before the yellow line. When the car came around and saw it, they swerved the way they weren’t supposed to, and they found me anyway without even seeing me. Their headlights spotted me for like a split second, stared right into my eyes.

I remember all of this. I’m trying to remember all of this so I can tell you later when my mouth works again. I can hear you asking questions, and I have the answers. You get that it was supposed to be a joke. “Gone wrong,” you said, which okay, I can’t move or talk now and that wasn’t my plan, so yeah, gone pretty wrong.

Part of me’s glad the driver’s okay, because this wasn’t supposed to hurt anyone, but I’m not looking forward to any lectures or “get well soon” stuff from her. She’s still sitting there wrapped in a thick blanket not saying much more than what happened, so I can’t tell what kind of person she is.

They’re moving me now, carefully changing my position to lie straight on their rolling bed thing. Stretcher. Or gurney, it’s a gurney. So I’m leaving now. Remember the timing of those two thick trees. Remember where I hid. The car is there, wrapped around the tree that was just behind me, which was near the start of the straightaway. The driver must’ve reacted super quick. Impressive.

I don’t see the baby anywhere. Probably stuck in a bush, or you put it in one of those plastic evidence bags. Imagining that makes it hard to breathe.