The rollercoaster was purely scaffolding, a gleaming, coiling assemblage of hot-rolled steel, like the mechanical skeleton of some prehistoric serpent whose spine smaller dinosaurs abused for their entertainment. It was by far the largest, most perilous amusement ride at the carnival. People could be seen riding the circuit all day long, making the agonising crawl up its mountainous peaks just so they could hurtle into the valleys below.

Rebecca turned to her friends in a last-ditch attempt to persuade them. "Are you sure you don't want to?"

"Of course I do," Elliot said. He tapped his chest. "It's just not good for the ticker. Supposed to be avoiding high-stress situations, like rollercoasters and paying for my girlfriend's implants with my wife's credit card. Hana's tall enough to ride with that hat though, so..."

"I'm staying down here too, thanks," Hana said, her ten-gallon hat firmly emplaced.

"But why?" Rebecca pouted. "Look at that monster, it goes upside-down!"

"Exactly. I'm not a fan of gravity rides. I'm always afraid something will break while I'm on them."

Rebecca squinted up at the rollercoaster again, shading her eyes with a hand. As far as embellishment went, the ride was the architectural equivalent of a hit-and-run—hastily erected, without a facade to conceal the narrow steel supports, little decoration beyond a couple of flyers taped to the sides. Bracing the trestle-style base were fat yellowing sandbags, some leaking sand, some turgid enough to burst like grapes beneath the blazing sun.

"That's just me being paranoid," Hana added quickly. "I'm sure you'll be fine."

"What if it's not fine?" Rebecca entwined her thumbs and flapped her hands in imitation of a butterfly's wings. "Worse, what if it was supposed to be not fine but is? How will we prevent a Final Destination situation from unfolding if you guys cheat Death?"

"Well, are you getting a premonition?" Hana asked.

Rebecca paused to check, pointing at her temples and striving for future sight. "I don't think so. But it could happen."

"You just gotta watch extra closely for ill omens," Elliot told her. "That was the problem in those movies. People were all like, doing acupuncture and getting pool drain rimjobs instead of paying attention to their surroundings."

"Yeah, but to be fair, we get foreshadowing and metafictional information that the characters aren't privy to," Rebecca replied, getting animated. "Diegetic and non-diegetic audiovisual cues, like changes in light, colour, temperature…"

Elliot slid between Rebecca and a passerby to keep her from swatting their paper cone of cotton candy. Her hand bounced harmlessly off his shoulder instead.

"Chances are I won't even notice the auguries of my imminent demise," she said, "because there won't be cinematic close-ups of banana peels and malfunctioning hydraulics before it happens."

"Maybe there are," Hana said. "But they're for someone else's viewing."

"They should cancel their subscription already," Elliot said. "We're knee-deep in seasonal humus, nobody's with anybody, and all we do every episode is talk about irrelevant crap."

The queue moved up.

"Hummus?" Hana asked, frowning.

"Not hummus, humus. Like in soil. I was playing off rot, but I didn't want it to sound bad."

"I don't think that worked."

"Rollercoaster," Rebecca said intensely, and they moved forward as a group.

Instead of hard cash, the carnival used a prepaid credit system. They'd had to buy a card at the front booth, filled with the minimum amount and periodically top it up at a machine when they ran low on funds. Elliot handed their FunCard over to the lady manning the booth. He squeezed Rebecca's hand. They'd hashed out where they would meet up later, but he and Hana hung around as Rebecca walked up to the railing.

When the last train finished up, the lady opened the gate to let a pack of dizzy, laughing customers out and usher the new ones in. Rebecca clambered into the second row, managing to scald her palms on the parts of the safety bar that weren't mummified in duct tape. Nobody joined her; two young couples settled into the seats immediately in front of and behind her, while a big party of rowdy teenagers lay claim to the rows further back.

The linked cars lumbered steadily along for a few seconds till they reached the first, intimidatingly steep hill. As her car climbed, her fingers tightened around the safety bar and the belts of metal that looped over her shoulders like the straps of a backpack. The car felt far heavier and the tracks far more rickety when she was almost vertical. She couldn't focus on scenery. She was too conscious of the machinery—the rough purchase of wheels on track, the bulk of the undercarriage beneath her as it hummed its age into her bones, the rubber mats that scuffed the floor when she moved her shoes.

Only at the crest of the hill was she able to drag her awareness to the view outside her car. Her heart skipped at the enormity of all she could see.

From this vantage Rebecca could see the track swooping above, below and ahead of her, and the billboard in the middle of the fairground blinking out the words Sponsored by Life Insurance Mutual. If she looked to her right, she could see the rust-mottled tangle of girders and support struts, and—

"Contessa?" Rebecca said. She raised her voice. "Contessa?"

The girl was standing on a distant beam, one that didn't look particularly sturdy. She didn't look particularly concerned. Even with the shadows of the latticework crisscrossing over her face, that stern countenance was unmistakable—as were those shoulders.

She stepped towards Rebecca's car. The late afternoon light embraced her, clung to her lithe suited figure like a jealous lover. It traced her contours, the gentle slope of her waist to her hips, that stout curve of her hips to her thighs.

She glanced up and to the side, then made the snap decision to keep going.

Other people's bodies were what they'd been born with and had grown into. Contessa moved like hers had been made for her. She was smoke in human form, slipping fluidly from one moment to the next. She danced from girder to girder, her fingers only just grazing bars for balance.

Rebecca was so entranced by the surrealness of the moment, she almost didn't register Contessa jumping into the unoccupied seat next to her.

The train lurched. Rebecca's impulse was to grab Contessa to keep her from somehow falling. She held back, getting out of the way as Contessa seized the safety bar behind her, hauled it over her head, and jammed it against her own waist.

"What are you doing?" Rebecca shouted.

The train dove, and her question was lost to the wind. It whipped past as the train careened over the track, completing several corkscrews in rapid succession. The opening credits of her life flashed before her eyes. Her mind didn't quite make it to the first act twist before the car banked left, slithered up a low hump, zipped down to a level stretch of track, and finally, achingly stopped.

Contessa straightened her lapels.

"I was rescuing a baby bird," she said. "That fell from its nest."

She reached into her pocket for her phone, so calm, subjugating fear and vertigo to an inner steel that exploitative dinosaurs could only dream of. Rebecca's own nerves hardened in the face of such sangfroid.

"That's so sweet," Rebecca cooed. "Do you have pictures?"

"No."

"Who're you texting?"

"Philip. I am entrusting the baby bird to his care." Contessa finished typing and put her phone away. "He isn't happy."

"Why isn't he up here too?"

"He's afraid of heights." She leaned forward, temporarily blocking Rebecca's view. "Part of why he's not happy."

"Still, a bird in October? What kind was it?"

Contessa paused. "A woodpecker."

"Huh? But—yeep!"

Air rushed into Rebecca's lungs like ballast as the train whooshed back into motion. Suddenly she was upside-down, and instead of coasting back down the loop, the train clanked to a stop at the apex.

The people around her screamed and whooped while she sat frozen and trembling, the safety bar in her white-knuckled grip. Her heartbeat became a solid wall of percussive force, a Saturday night bassline pounding in her chest. The vibrations echoed out from there, conducted through catgut strings in her arms down to the impossibly thin wires branching out inside her wrists and hands.

Her hair dangled, falling like the rest of her felt. Gravity coaxed her downward, whispering around the taut skin of her face—down down down—as she confronted the inverted world.

Grinning, she slowly turned her head to meet Contessa's eyes.

Contessa held down the crown of her fedora with one hand. Her dark hair poured from brim, swaying around her face. Her normally pale cheeks glowed a fierce pink. So much of the severity that Rebecca had come to associate with her face had melted away.

She was staring at Rebecca's hand, and not the one clutching the safety bar.

The one clutching Contessa's arm.

"Sorry," Rebecca said, not sorry at all.

Chapter 9: Through a Funhouse Mirror, Darkly

Beneath the brim of her gargantuan brown Stetson, Hana furrowed her brow. "Sorry?"

"It makes total sense," Rebecca said. "Wait, no, better than that—it's art."

"Yeah, you're not seeing the subtext, Hana," Elliot said, bringing up the rear.

Oil vapour mingled with the sugary air as they passed another cluster of concession stands selling the usual deep-fried suspects and powdered regret in all its tempting forms: apple fritters, beer-battered mushrooms drenched in cheese, bacon cinnamon rolls and, because it was October, chicken-fried pumpkin hand pies with crispy bubbles swelling from the golden crust.

Right beside Rebecca, a vendor was serving up paper plates of banana funnel cake drizzled all over with glistening lines of chocolate and caramel. She lingered at the stall, making up her mind to sample one later.

She turned back to Hana. "I took a single bite. Now I am recontextualising this irrevocably altered sausage by placing it inside the trash can. It's classic détournement."

"I think you're only saying this," Hana said, "because you put too much mayo on your corndog and now you don't want it."

Rebecca raised her eyes to the heavens, spreading her arms as though yielding to crucifixion. "I didn't know it was mayo!"

"How could you not know it was mayo?"

"I thought it was like, white cheese or something," she said, miserably twirling the stick. "They should have had cheese. Why did they have mayo?"

"You need to eat your corndogs with ketchup and mustard like an American." Hypocritically, Hana waved her own plain corn dog.

"Cheese is a pretty American condiment," Elliot said. "Hey Han, can you even see anything with that on? Because I can't."

"I can see perfectly. It's not the size of the hat, it's the shape of my skull," Hana said wearily.

"Is mayo American?" Rebecca asked, before they could veer into another argument over the size of Hana's head vis-à-vis universal hat sizes.

"Eh. French." Elliot shrugged. "Just throw it away, Becks. You don't have to turn it into a performance art thing."

"But I don't want you guys to think I have no sense of civic responsibility."

"You don't have to worry about that," Hana said.

"Thanks for the peer pressure! Hold up, I think I can get most of it off..."

They stopped walking so Rebecca could rapidly discover the futility of trying to squeegee mayo off deep-fried batter onto a waxpaper wrapper using nothing but said wrapper.

"New million-dollar IP," Elliot said, raising a finger as she gave up and glumly dropped the stick into a trash can. "A single sauce that is all the condiments in one."

"A recipe for mud, you mean," Hana said. "There are so many condiments, not to mention the maple syrup problem."

"Three condiments in one, then."

"Any three you wish, so you can call it djinn mustard," Rebecca added. She made a face at the sticky white goop smeared over her fingers. "This is so gross. And there's so much of it! It's like the time David accidentally ate sushi with cough syrup instead of soy sauce. He finished the whole bottle before he realised."

"Must've had just as much trouble as you scraping it off," Elliot said.

Hana gave her a tissue. "I still can't believe you thought a corndog stand would have white cheese. That isn't a thing."

"That was just contextually most likely," Rebecca said defensively. "I thought of other possibilities."

"Like what?"

"Cream, custard, béchamel sauce, semen…"

"Ha," Elliot said, "how did I know your mind would go to that from David? Fakeout cheese dispenser isn't his M.O, though. See, what he does is he keeps a cooler of frozen sperm in his backpack and rolls around with a spray bottle spritzing women he senses are fertile."

Hana abruptly decided that she did not want her corndog anymore and handed the stick off to Rebecca, who fell upon it with a passion.

Just as she stuffed her face, though, Rebecca spotted Contessa up ahead. She was with someone who looked like Philip from the back.

"First of all, what in pollination. We agreed he wasn't a bee," Hana said, tilting her hat up to give him a withering look. It promptly slid back down over her eyebrows. "Second of all, why are you more okay with eating that than m—"

In front of them, Philip was speaking to Contessa. "—considering the fragilityof the contents, we should—"

Rebecca's mouth was too crammed with delicious mayonnaise-free corndog to issue either warning or greeting. Hana collided with him.

Philip himself didn't even stumble, but his chest jarred the crate he was holding, causing the contents to scrape the insides. He sighed and surrendered it to Contessa. She took a few ginger steps to the side, a hand already unsealing the top flap.

"I'm so sorry." Hana stepped in front of Philip, hat in hands. "I wasn't looking where I was going."

"It's fine," he said.

"It's not her fault. Her head size doesn't coincide with universal hat sizes," Elliot explained. He jerked a thumb at the crate. "Anything alive in there? Thought I heard something."

"Nothing," Philip said, "that wasn't slated to die anyway."

"Oh, well, I really am sorry. I'm Hana." Easing her hat back on, Hana gestured at her friends in turn. "Elliot, Rebecca."

Rebecca waved excitedly. She was still chewing.

"Philip." He didn't introduce Contessa, who was inspecting the contents of the crate.

Hana watched her out of the corner of her eye. "I've met your friend there."

"Yes," he said. "She's mentioned you. She also mentioned that if you still needed assistance, you have her number."

"Assistance?" Elliot cut in. "For what?"

"Class," Hana said, staring at Philip. "It's a class thing."

"That's what I've been saying," Rebecca said, choking down the last hunk of corndog in her haste to interject. "I've literally been saying that for literal years. It's always a class thing. You're all just too bougie to understand. Or not bougie enough. Hi Philip!"

"Rebecca," he said.

Though he was a stone-face at the best of times, Philip still managed to project an aura of profound human suffering. It was the discomfort in his eyes and shoulders; they laid bare a noble internal struggle to conjure invisibility and escape even the slightest chance of prolonged social interaction. He also looked like he hadn't slept.

He glanced at Contessa.

"I need to make a call. Stay here," Contessa said. She strode off with the crate, holding it much less delicately than before.

Philip opened his mouth, then closed it and turned fully to regard the group.

"Hi!" Rebecca said again.

"Hey," Elliot said, with a little wave.

"You should hang with us today!" Rebecca said. More nonchalantly: "And maybe Contessa could also join us. If she wants."

"I'm sure she does," Philip said, "but we couldn't possibly."

"Might as well, since you're already here," Elliot said.

"Not for long. We're quite busy."

Hana nodded in commiseration. She'd had to be dragged from her books too. "Midterms."

"Midterms," Philip agreed, a bit too readily. "Facts to memorise, ancient rituals to perform. These squirrels won't eviscerate themselves."

"What was in that crate?" Hana asked, eyes suddenly sharp.

Rebecca scoffed. "Midterms. We all have midterms. We're just not acknowledging them yet."

"Easy for you to say," Elliot said. "You wrote most of your papers already and you have like, two exams."

"One thousand words isn't a paper, it's a sneeze!"

"My hay fever isn't acting up," Philip said.

Sensing the awkwardness, Hana made the tactical decision that was best for everyone present: fleeing. "We should go refill the card. I think we have maybe five dollars left."

"I wouldn't recommend it," Philip said.

"Why?" Hana asked.

"I assume you're sharing a card?"

"Yeah," Elliot said.

"The way the price system works," Philip said, "you will usually have a few dollars in your card left if you bought the standard sixty-four dollar card. Since there are no food items, games, or rides that cost less than five dollars, you are forced to top up your card with the minimum amount if you want to use up the remainder."

Elliot frowned, obviously trying to add up prime numbers in his head. "That can't be right. There should be many ways to get maximal value."

"Most people don't ride the rollercoaster four times," Philip said. "The least wasteful course of action is for you to just let that five dollars go."

"You really have been here for a while," Hana said. "Do they have a price list on their website? I didn't see one."

"I have a list. Among other things." Philip pulled his phone from his pocket and looked at the screen. It was black. "My apologies. I'm needed absolutely anywhere else."

He made his brisk retreat, and the three of them immediately ravaged him with their eyes.

"That's BDE if I ever saw it," Elliot noted.

Hana doffed her hat, placing a hand on her forehead to feel her temperature. "Someone's been doing squats."

"Look at that subtle off-white colouring. The tasteful thickness of it." Elliot pointed at the brand on the pocket and groaned, making a grasping gesture. "My god. It even has a watermark."

"Yeah," Rebecca said, less keen to partake of the lustfest. She was thinking about Contessa, whom she hadn't seen since the previous evening. "I didn't expect to see him—" She snapped her fingers. "Oh, right. I got the flyer from his place."

"You were in his dorm?" Elliot asked.

"His apartment."

"Oh. Did you two…"

"Yep! We baked cookies."

They continued on their way. After refilling their card, they ambled in circles without any real purpose or direction. Their conversation mostly revolved around the sweltering heat, how they were walking simultaneously too fast and too slowly, and whose fault that was.

When Rebecca paused to catch her breath, her eyes and throat were scorching with smog. This unquenchable thirst called to mind other unquenchable thirsts. She bumped Elliot's hip.

"What?"

"Why were you so interested?" she asked. "I thought you were off the market."

Elliot's gaze turned shifty. "I mean… maybe? Clarence and I have been hanging out more but it's just been as friends. We never talked about exclusivity."

"I didn't think someone like Philip was your type," Hana said.

"No, taxidermied tax attorney is not my type."

"Hey," Rebecca said, jostling him again. "Maybe you're not his type!"

Elliot laughed. His head was down, so it came out as a huff. "Yeah, I know," he said. "I'm not anybody's type."

"That's not what I said, you goof." She pointed at a little stand that was serving frozen virgin margaritas. "You guys want drinks?"

"No thanks," Hana said, which wasn't a surprise. She had committed to the ascetic regimen of the soldier, meaning that she scrutinised everything she put into her body for vitamin and caloric content and compared them to the tables in her head. Carnival mocktails were not to be trusted, and thus anathema to her long-term goal of peak fitness.

Corndogs were exempt from judgement.

"Uh… hmm." Elliot stared at the menu, but Rebecca knew it wasn't the choice of flavour he was pondering.

Like herself, Elliot was slightly less consistent when it came to monitoring his dietary intake, claiming that he strayed from his nutritional plan only as often as he imbibed.

Luckily, such indulgences only occurred when he could no longer find solace in the inspirational platitudes that his well-intentioned parents had pasted along the borders of his bathroom mirror, or in his doctor's assurances that healthy eating and regular exercise were the key to happiness, or in his own shameful fantasies about someday ascending to a physical state that not only didn't threaten to tear him apart from the inside out but might also be appealing to society at large, and he became certain that only the sweet instant dopamine relief provided by candy, fried food and alcohol could plausibly thwart despair's inexorable advance, at least until he could sink no deeper into the churning viper pit of dysmorphia and lethargy. This was about once every three weeks.

In the end, Rebecca ordered a raspberry margarita for him too. They were non-alcoholic, she reasoned, and raspberries were packed with antioxidants.

They waited under the clamshell awning, where they could watch the lone vendor shovel ice into a blender.

"Clarence made it pretty clear he didn't want a hookup," Elliot said, his eyes fixed on a stream of bright red syrup dribbling into a bed of ice.

"Do you?" Hana asked.

The owner switched on the blender. Elliot leaned against the counter, taking advantage of the loud whirring to stay quiet a while longer.

Hana wasn't deterred. As soon as the noise ended, she repeated, "Do you?"

"I said I could roll with that." His evasive manoeuvre didn't go unnoticed. "I don't wanna be that guy, you know? I don't wanna mess it up by pushing. If something happens, it happens."

Hana nodded. Rebecca sipped her very refreshing margarita and nodded too, though she didn't understand how something could happen if you didn't make it happen.

"But it's been weird," Elliot said, "and I'm not sure we have all that much in common. We're in this ambiguous friendship zone." He drew a horizontal line with his hand.

"Describe exactly what it is that you do together," Rebecca commanded.

He accepted his freshly made margarita. "Can we move? It's getting kind of crowded."

A queue had indeed formed. The vendor became increasingly harried, scooping and pouring and sometimes missing the mark. Chunks of ice skittered over the slick countertop.

The three of them shuffled to the furthest corner that still offered some shade.

"Like, we'll grab tea if there's time between class." Elliot took a gulp of his drink. "I'll wait around for tennis practice to end, but not if I know it's gonna go on past six. We text a lot. Just normal stuff like what movie to see or where to eat, nothing serious. He took my virginity last weekend in his parents' croquet shed. And yesterday, when we were showering, he—"

"What in revelation?" Rebecca shouted, almost knocking Hana's hat off with a flailing arm. "He did what?"

"He told me I had the same silhouette as his mother."

"No, no, what did he do in the croquet shed?"

"That," Elliot said pointedly, "is between me and his mallet."

Hana didn't seem particularly shocked, rearranging her Stetson on her head. "I thought that ship had sailed. With, well—"

"Who?" Rebecca demanded.

"That didn't count." He paused to chew on the raspberry garnish. "And it wasn't… it didn't feel like that at all."

"Like what?"

He talked over her. "Besides the part where neither of us came and we both cried after. That was practically a re-enactment."

"I'm so confused," Rebecca complained. "This is the first time I'm hearing any of this. How could you tell Hana and not me! Why am I the last ball going through the wicket?"

"I'm telling you now, aren't I?" he said, in a tone that very much meant, drop it.

Rebecca frowned, but she dropped it.

They walked in silence through the fairground's games corner, surrounded on all sides by the activity booths. Some of them had signs or flags, but hardly any were more than frames of metal and wood that hardly looked stable, as though adhering to the carnival's theme of 'civilised husk'. A faint breeze rippled the frayed pennants on the pole above a hoop toss stall, not quite strongly enough to wave them.

They reminded Rebecca of the first Nude in The Glass Essay, shreds of flesh flapping and peeling off a column of bone and muscle. She wondered too if these were the naked glimpses of her soul, but thought her soul could do better than ochre and primary blue. The colours of the flags were more reminiscent of a bank function than a carnival.

They arrived at a bumper car arena. All of them had been on bumper cars before and agreed they weren't as exciting as they seemed from the outside, which made the arena a good place for sitting around and talking.

"Share?" Elliot asked Rebecca.

She shrugged. "Sure."

"Two, please," Elliot said to the man at the booth. To Rebecca, he added, "You can drive."

"Don't let her drive," Hana said, as the man went to unchain two cars for them. "She gets competitive."

"How dare—" Rebecca planted her hands on her hips. "Just for that, I challenge you to a Battle Royale. Winner takes all."

Hana claimed the green car for herself. "All of what?"

"All of the satisfaction."

"On second thought, I'm driving," Elliot said, slotting himself into the driver's seat of the blue car in a hurry. "The last time you won all of the satisfaction, I lost all of my eyebrow hair."

It was a little hard to talk to Hana when she was in a separate bumper car, especially with rock remixes blaring from the surrounding speakers. They tried to stay close to each other anyway.

With Elliot at the wheel, the experience felt more like a leisurely cruise through a smaller, more circular countryside—albeit one where other drivers intentionally T-boned your vehicle and cackled about it afterwards.

"Sorry," Rebecca said, when another car glided away from an impact neither of them had seen coming.

"It was my fault," Elliot said. "Didn't check my left."

"Sorry for just now. I just… I just kind of thought I'd be the first person you'd tell."

"That's..." He flashed her a sidelong glance and half of a smile, without turning his head.

Rebecca mentally completed the thought for him. Self-centred. She chided herself for the lapse. "I know. I'm sorry. It was stupid."

"It's whatever. Not a big deal."

"You said it wasn't great," Rebecca said.

"I didn't," he said, his voice taking on an edge. "You said that, actually, about your first time. Those words. 'It wasn't great'."

"I mean..." she said. "It wasn't."

"How great can it get? It's just... you rub two bits of skin together, sparks fly, he calls his mom, then it's over. It's really whatever. Nothing to write home about."

Rebecca didn't disagree, but she felt like agreeing out loud would somehow dredge up the memory and all the feelings associated with it.

Elliot sighed and drummed his fingers on the wheel. "I wasn't going to tell anyone about the first time."

"You told Hana."

"Hana found out by accident."

"I remember it, though," Hana confided.

"Me too."

"It just dwells at the back of my mind, always, like the time I almost stepped on a landmine. Nightmares sometimes."

"Yeah." Elliot smiled the way he did when he found something very funny or very painful. "Yeah, I think I'm just not very good."

Hana found a change of subject before Rebecca could. "How are your projects going?"

"The usual. I have three running right now," he said. "Two due on the same day, and my groupmates are being alternately useless and antagonistic. Look at this." He showed her the group chat on his phone. "This fucko just asked me whether the presentation is next week or the week after. It's literally tomorrow morning. Did you not see the timeline I emailed you all weeks ago? Also, how did you even find a computer that still has Word Art in the fonts options, and why would you use it in a twenty-first century slide?"

"That sucks," Rebecca agreed. "I guess you'll be staying up tonight?"

"Have to. For some ungodly reason, they all picked me to be project leader. I'm not a leader, Becks. This is the face of someone who loses at Settlers of Catan. At this point I am capering in the flames of my academic career." He leaned back and took one hand off the wheel to scratch at a red weal on his other arm. "Anyone got bug repellant?"

Hana fished a little box of citronella-scented patches from her haversack and tossed him a pack.

He affixed two patches to his sleeves, and deftly dodged an incoming vehicle. "Never get how these are supposed to work. They're so small, like do they only protect this tiny area?"

"You're supposed to put them on your skin so the scent permeates it," Hana said.

"Thanks," he said, sticking another on the back of his neck. "I swear, these mosquitoes are killing my crops and pillaging my villages. You'd think the heat would discourage them but they're freakin' everywhere."

"I know, right?" Rebecca said. "Last week Contessa started putting up screens in our windows and installed this huge insect electrocutor trap outside. I told her it was kind of alarmist because there weren't even that many bugs around then. But yesterday, I saw a whole swarm of them. They were all buzzing around the first floor dorms. I was trying to sneak past them to get to the staircase, but I swear they looked directly at me."

"What did you do?"

"I ran away! I could hear them right on my tail. So I ran around for a bit and then I jumped in the pond to escape, because people do that with bee attacks all the time, but the pond was full of their larvae. Some of the water got in my nose. It was so awful."

"But you escaped, right?" Elliot asked, just as a teenage boy rammed into their side. "I mean, you must have. Can you flip that kid off? Hands kinda busy."

Dutifully, Rebecca raised a middle finger in the howling little punk's direction, but he wasn't facing them. "I hid in a closet and texted Contessa to warn her. She was supposed to be in class."

"But she wasn't?"

"This was after the baking. I actually don't know where she went," Rebecca said. She hadn't thought Contessa would come for her. She'd seemed so down yesterday. "But after I texted her, she walked in with a pesticide sprayer and just ripped through their ranks. I kept asking if it was DDT but she wouldn't say. She just said not to let it get on my skin or mucous membranes, not that it mattered because I was watching through a crack in the door."

"Then what happened?"

Rebecca shrugged. "Then we went to study."

She left out that they'd studied for less than twenty minutes. Contessa had left in frustration and not returned.

"Well, she can't very well let that ass get bitten, can she?" He elbowed her.

"Huh? What's my ass got to do with it?"

"You didn't see Contessa checking out your butt?"

"What? Really?" She twisted around to examine her hindquarters, but couldn't hoist it more than an inch or so in the cramped space without having to stand. "Oh no! What's wrong with it?"

"Dunno. Too round, maybe."

"She thinks I'm fat," Rebecca said, her voice hollow as she sank back into her seat. "I know she does. She stared at me when we were at the mall and she was definitely thinking it."

"What's wrong with that?" Hana asked. "I don't begrudge anyone their idle and sedentary lifestyles."

"Contessa does! Contessa doesn't want a Rubens! She wants someone who can play hide and seek behind a Giacometti."

Hana darted forward to rear-end the car in front of them that had been stationary for almost a minute. "I see," she said gravely, when Elliot pulled back up to her side. "Alas. She is so sickened by your disgusting voluptuous body, she just can't bring herself to stop judging it."

"Hana's right. I was listening to Contessa's podcast at the gym the other day," Elliot said, tapping his ear. "You know, Heterossessments of Other Women's Butts. And she said, 'Let me give it to you straight, ladies: Rebecca Costa-Brown is a gluttonous ricecake. Total fuckin' manatee in yoga pants. Her BMI is like, way over the national average. Waist-to-hip ratio 1.6. I eyeballed that number. I eyeballed it all day.'"

"Shut up!" Rebecca shoved at his shoulder, laughing, and he steered to the right. "She glanced at my butt, so what?"

"She didn't glance at your butt. She was like one of those haunted mansion hallway optical illusion portraits. Her eyes just followed. Seriously. She doesn't even try to hide it. Go bend over in front of her, you'll see."

"No."

"Go do it!"

"Never!"

"'Let me give it to you straight, ladies—see, she always starts off like that, it's like her catchphrase—Rebecca Costa-Brown has a huge butt.'" He batted away Rebecca's attempts to wring his neck. "'Can we all take a moment to appreciate how nauseatingly wide it is? The historians, they listed her birth as one of the top ten most significant events in Posteriors for Posterity. The scientists, they couldn't use her butt as a case study in The Ass was Fact: Veracity of the Booty because they all agreed it was an outlier that couldn't recur in nature. Fact is, it's just beyond all measure. Jazz break.'"

"Why do you hate me!"

"Becks. Leaving aside your obviously perfect proportions, you know you have a face for movie posters, right?"

"No I don't." Rebecca thought for a moment. "And Hana?"

"What about her?"

"What does she have a face for?"

"Military recruitment ads."

"David?"

"Political cartoons. You gonna run down the list? Because I could do this all day."

"Last one. Contessa."

The ensuing pause was pregnant with triplets. Elliot put his foot on the accelerator and pushed past Hana's car. He reared it back, and slammed into the side of the car belonging to the teenager who had gotten them earlier. "Sorry not sorry, you little bitch," he said to the boy.

Rebecca prodded him. "What does Contessa have a face for?"

"Uh…" he said, finally. "Pass."

"What? Elliot!"

"Wanted notices, okay?"

"Wanted—?" she said, and squinted at him. "Wait. Do you… not like Contessa?"

"I didn't say that," Elliot said, with uncharacteristic delicacy.

He crept up to the fence encircling the rink. Hana followed.

"You don't think we'd be good together," Rebecca said.

"Okay, I definitely didn't say that." He looked to Hana for backup. "Did I say that?"

"He didn't say that."

"You don't think so either," Rebecca accused her.

"I only met her the one time," Hana said, diplomatically.

"And? What do you think?"

"She's… sharp. A little cold."

"What, like a needle that was left in the freezer?"

"Like a Mafiosa," Elliot said.

"She is not in the Mafia," Rebecca snapped. "She told me so on five separate occasions."

"Rebecca..." Hana hesitated, again choosing her words carefully. "Can you really picture a date that doesn't start with her chloroforming you and end with your likeness on the back of a milk carton?"

"What the—that is not even something an organised crime syndicate would do." Rebecca tossed her hair, irritated by her friends' chronic and probably debilitating deficiency of faith. "And yes. We have been on several such dates, in fact, only two of which involved chloroform. We're practicallyalready together."

"Does she know that?" Hana and Elliot asked at the same time.

"Worst," Rebecca grumbled. "Worst friends. Fine. I'll just have to seduce her at the earliest opportunity to prove it to you."

Concern crossed both of their faces.

"I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna unleash my feminine wiles all over the feminine wilds and there's nothing you can do to stop me."

"We weren't about to," Elliot said.

"As soon as she walks in tonight," Rebecca said, "I'll be like, 'what say we make it a little more romantic around here' and she'll be all, 'oh Rebecca, nothing about us has ever been platonic, except your butt which is the Platonic ideal of butts.' Then she'll grab my hand and whisk me off on a magic carpet adventure. But instead of showing me a whole new world she'll be climbing all over me and she'll be so turned on, she'll accidentally slash my trachea with her erect nipple!"

"Wait," Hana said. "You think she'd grab your hand after saying that?"


Rebecca took her sweet time letting go of Contessa's arm. She hadn't counted on seeing her again so soon, but she wasn't complaining.

Contessa made a show of pulling down her sleeve and massaging the marks left in the wake of Rebecca's fingers. "You have given me permanent grooves."

"Sorry," Rebecca said again, even less sorry than before. She leaned against Contessa's shoulder and sighed theatrically. An opportunity was an opportunity. "I'm so lucky you're here to protect me."

"I doubt my presence affects the velocity of the ride."

"Well, we're pretty high up. It's a good thing you're here."

"We're both in the same position," Contessa said. "Should there be an unexpected fatal accident, I wouldn't be able to prevent either of us from plunging to our deaths."

The train swooped. Rebecca clasped the safety bar again.

"Well," Contessa said, and Rebecca looked at her. "Perhaps me."

The rollercoaster was not an ideal venue for seduction. Perhaps it was all the diving and inversions and previews of autobiographical films, but she felt a change of location was in order.

To the ferris wheel it was.

It counted as a date, because she had asked and Contessa had agreed, and now they were strapped in together on a revolving wheel high above the rest of the fairground.

What was a date, after all, but a request and an answer in the affirmative followed by a series of related events? The environmental symposium had been a date. The puppet pageant had been a date. The play had been a date. The mall visit had been a date. Through this lens, Rebecca couldn't think of even one outing she'd had with Contessa that hadn't been a date.

The giddy flutter in her chest became a twitch in her knees and then her elbows, before migrating to her left hand—thankfully out of Contessa's sight. She needed to kick things into high gear, which meant she had to translate the nervous energy to élan.

You can do this, she told herself. You've done this before.

The safety bar was positioned further away from them than it had been on the rollercoaster. Rebecca smoothed her skirt over her leggings, inwardly lamenting the thickness of her thighs, the lack of tone, the cellulite she was sure had to be visible even through the fabric. Then there was the whole perspiration situation.

I'm so sticky. I'm disgusting and she's right next to me, she can see it all over me, she can feel it.

She allowed the negative thoughts to saturate her head like so much raspberry concentrate, then dug deep to find her reliable old well of baseless confidence and flushed them all out.

I am like, the second hottest girl in this car right now. When I'm done with her, she'll be morally opposed to closing her legs.

Rebecca crossed her own legs, and tugged at the hem of her surplice top to flaunt her décolletage.

Despite the extra room, Contessa sat with her tailbone up against the back of the seat. She glanced at Rebecca, her lips compressed into a thin line and her hands clasped firmly on her lap.

Rebecca found it weird and endearing that Contessa was more nervous on a ferris wheel than a rollercoaster. "Ever been on one of these before?"

"No," Contessa said, her posture not relaxing an iota. "I've only been to a few county fairs. They were much smaller."

"What do you think?"

"It's very odd," she said. "So many machines built to take you to the same place over and over. Transportation that transports you nowhere. I don't see the point."

Rebecca's fingers curled around the bottom of her seat. The perforated metal was hot against the flat of her palm. "There's a thrill. The constant danger of falling."

"I'm aware some people enjoy an element of risk in their activities," Contessa said. "But this? Cycling slowly through the air, seated, secure…"

"Intimate," Rebecca said.

Contessa's expression hesitated at the crossroads between bewildered and flustered, eventually setting up camp at unsettled. She turned her gaze to the approaching ground.

Too fast. She was moving too fast. Rebecca turned away for a brief moment to silently contort her face and mime punching herself in the nose.

Shoving the mistake out of her mind, she turned back and nudged Contessa's ankle lightly. Let's see how she likes her incidental contact.

At the third nudge, Contessa glanced down. "I distinctly recall that you were footsie retrenched just a few days ago."

"Well, where's my footsie severance package?"

"Something's getting severed if you keep that up."

But she nudged Rebecca's ankle back.

That was it. Contessa liked her playful.

Playful came more naturally to Rebecca than any other persona, for some reason. She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. As she did, she teased a few strands loose over her collarbone.

So much of flirtation relied on appearance adjustment, but the act mattered more than the outcome. It was all about the coquetry of self-conscious gestures that didn't tip over into fidgeting yet drew the eye, movements that said she was done censoring her intentions, especially if she batted her eyelashes like so, and slid against Contessa's arm like so…

Contessa tensed. Her gaze travelled down Rebecca's neck and beyond.

"It's okay," Rebecca said, her voice a throaty purr in Contessa's ear. "You can look if you want to."

"Look at what?"

"You know. This… general area." Rebecca sketched out a rough oval over her chest, with a wedge down the middle.

"I'm already looking," Contessa said, her eyebrows knitting together. "You wear your bras too tight to be comfortable."

"Oh." Rebecca flushed a little in spite of herself, and her hand shot up to touch her cleavage. She forced it back down again. "Are they? I didn't, um, notice."

"I notice. If you adjusted them properly you would spend less time—" Contessa's eyes flicked down again. "—readjusting. And exposing your xiphoid process. I know I don't have as large a… I mean yours is..."

"Yes?"

"Sports bras are better," she said at last. "Are you cold?"

Before Rebecca could question the non sequitur and answer that no, the weather was actually obscenely hot for fall, Contessa shed her jacket. She draped it over Rebecca's shoulders.

Rebecca realised she was to wear it. Her thoughts stuttered, devolving into an incoherent jumble. She grasped the black silk with sweaty hands and tried to pull it on. "Um, the armholes—they—"

"It's a jacket, Rebecca. You wear it like a hoodie."

"I know, I'm just—"

Contessa reached over and took hold of the sleeves, determined to help Rebecca perform the intricate task of putting on a jacket she didn't really need.

A little manoeuvring and sliding around later, it was on. They were left gazing at each other.

"Thanks," Rebecca said. She bit her bottom lip, the corner of her mouth curling up in a half-smile she hoped would be construed as sultry. An expression she'd just invented. An expression she'd call 'intent to be kissed'.

Contessa drew closer, oblivious to the space between them as it shifted in obligation, until Rebecca could feel the warmth radiating from her.

Their noses bumped. Contessa jolted back as if stung.

Rebecca's smile widened.

"My apologies. I miscalculated the distance between our faces," Contessa said in a low voice. "I will endeavour not to do that again."

"Or, y'know," Rebecca said, "you could do that again."

Contessa arched an eyebrow. "You're behaving strangely today. More than usual."

"Mmm. Am I?"

"Very."

"Do you like it?"

"Rebecca," Contessa said, her voice tight. "Are you intoxicated?"

"What makes you think that?" Rebecca asked semi-innocently.

"Sluggish movement, dilated pupils, lowered…" Contessa clenched her jaw when Rebecca fingertips 'accidentally' came to rest on her knee. A moment passed before she managed to continue. "...inhibitions. I don't think it's a good idea for you to be on this ride if you're not in full possession of your mental and emotional faculties."

"Your pupils are looking a little dilated there, too."

Contessa stared into Rebecca's eyes with such smouldering menace that it became a glare.

Rebecca held the glare with her own hooded gaze. When she was satisfied she'd proven her mettle, she closed in on Contessa's ear and murmured, "And you're burning up."

Contessa's ear flushed red and she brought a hand up to shield it from the caress of Rebecca's breath. "The weather. I haven't been drinking."

"Me neither. That would be illegal."

"And even if I had, I don't…"

"You don't?" Rebecca let her lips just barely graze the back of Contessa's hand.

Contessa jerked her hand away. "...get drunk. I just remembered. I need to meet Philip. For a work-related matter."

"When?"

"Now." Contessa leaned over the edge and looked down. "How much longer is this?"

"I dunno, maybe two more revolutions?" Rebecca grabbed her arm. "Contessa, wait, are you mad at me?"

"No," Contessa said, disengaging the safety bar with brute force. "Fifteen minutes. I'll find you."

She stood up, extricating Rebecca's hand from her arm. Then she slipped out and made her departure.

Had Rebecca not been wearing Contessa's jacket, she might have been more unsure of whether her seduction had succeeded or not. She might have been worried that her date had just literally leapt over eight feet to the ground and sprinted away into the distance.

But she was wearing Contessa's jacket.

She spent the remaining two revolutions basking in the memory of nose-to-nose contact and the feel of fine black silk.


When the ride was over, Contessa still hadn't texted her or otherwise come to find her, so Rebecca decided to look for her friends in the meantime. They were at a bottle-shooting stall.

"Where are the iron sights?" Hana was asking the vendor.

"If you're not going to shoot the bottles," he said, "then stop wasting my time and just shoot me."

Rebecca swept her hair back and strutted over to Elliot. "Hey, friendo."

"Hey, how was the ride? We're blowing our estate on rigged games." His eyes landed on her newly acquired apparel. "Nice."

"Shhh," she said, doing her best to hold off on the preening.

"Did you seal the deal?"

"What deal?" Hana turned her head towards Rebecca, her rifle trained on the pyramid of bottles. "Why do you look like a Charades player whose word is 'courtesan'?"

"Hana, shhh! Contessa will be back any second!"

"She's not here now, so spill the tea," Elliot said impatiently.

She buffed her nails on her chest, letting him simmer.

"Tell! To Tell a Mockingbird. The Handmaid's Tell." He grasped her forearms. "No Country for Told Men. Tell now."

"We didn't do anything," she said, and paused for effect. "I mean… unless you count riding the rollercoaster together."

"That's so—" His grin faltered. "Wait, when did she get on the ride? We didn't see—"

"I don't know!" she said, hugging her Contessa's jacket-clad self. "It doesn't matter. Because then I asked her to come with me on the ferris wheel, and we rode that too!"

"Oh shit."

Unable to restrain herself any longer, she jumped up and down. "I think she might actually be into me! What do I do?"

"Shoot some bottles," the vendor suggested.

"You know exactly what you should do," Elliot said, releasing her forearms. "Ask her out to dinner."

"You're the one who told me to wait!"

"Well, aren't you glad you did? Look where you are now."

Rebecca spun to address Hana. "What do you think?"

Hana was staring morosely at the rifle in her hands. "I want a real gun."

"Hana!"

"Oh." Hana looked up and plastered on a smile, convincing no one of her attentiveness. "Congratulations, either of you."

"Hana," Rebecca said. She fixed Hana with an expression of utmost solemnity that was somewhat undermined by how much she was bouncing. "You're super practical, and the only one of us who has been in a relationship that lasted more than like, two months. So do you think I should ask Contessa out on a date when she gets back? Yea or nay, circle one."

"Yea? I don't see why not," Hana said.

Rebecca frowned at her.

Hana rolled her eyes, then drew a 'y' in the air and circled it. "The worst that can happen is you get rejected because there is an overwhelming volume of applicants this year and your skills aren't a perfect fit for this position even though your resume clearly lists your prior lifeguarding experience."

Rebecca stopped mid-bounce, instantly paralysed by indecision.

"Can I see that real quick?" Elliot asked Hana, and took the rifle from her. He fumbled with it for a few seconds. Then he threw it at the ground next to Rebecca, earning a dirty look from the vendor. "Wow, I'm clumsy. Help me out, Becks."

Rebecca bent over to pick it up. As she did, she felt her behind brush against something solid.

She turned around.

Contessa stood there, staring.

In an instant, Rebecca was put in mind of the time she'd been on the ground and Contessa had loomed above her. The difference was that there was no pity in Contessa's eyes now. There might have been, had there been room for anything but pure, unadulterated want.

She rose slowly but did not turn. She could feel Contessa's gaze raking up and down her body, the hunger in it dark and palpable.

Elliot had been right.

"Hello, Contessa," Rebecca said coyly, finally turning.

She stepped forward so there was only a sliver of space between them.

Contessa drew a sharp breath and parted her lips, on the verge of speaking. Then she exhaled and shifted to the side, her eyes going to the pyramid of bottles.

"What's this?" she asked.

Rebecca stepped back, disappointment welling up. The moment was lost.

"Knock over many bottles as you can," the vendor drawled, "and you just might get a prize of your choosing."

The prizes, Rebecca noticed, were all plushies of dubious quality. Admittedly, Rebecca's standards of plushie quality had risen since the toy store.

Contessa saw Rebecca looking at the prize shelf, and placed her FunCard on the counter of the stall. The vendor loaded an airsoft rifle and handed it to her.

She appraised it. "The sights have been removed."

"It bothers me too," Hana said.

"Hm." Contessa's attention turned to Hana for a second, before being drawn to Hana's hat. "What in accuracy modification."

Without pausing to aim or even stabilise the gun, Contessa fired once at the pyramid. It struck the top bottle just below the lip, but the bottle only wobbled.

"Oof," Elliot said. "So close."

"This game is rigged," Contessa said, matter-of-fact.

"That's what they all say," the vendor said. The corner of his lips quirked. "Well, what the losers say. At least you use the thing for something other than fondling and flinging."

"I said it was impossible to win with this weapon," Hana told Contessa. "Don't waste your money."

"I already paid," Contessa said, turning to the vendor, "and I have nine shots left. You loaded the bottles. I'm going to guess lead."

"Don't blame the bottles, girl," he said.

"I blame you. But it doesn't matter." She took a step to her right. "A bottle is only as strong as its weakest point."

She aimed and emptied the clip at the flimsy particleboard stand supporting the shelf, knocking it over so all the bottles toppled down.

The vendor looked at the bottles on the ground, then at Contessa. "That was unnecessary," he said.

"I'd like my prize now," Contessa said.

"You know how long I spent setting up that shelf?"

"Evidently not very, or it would still be up. My prize, please." She scanned the shelf of prizes. "The pangolin."

"Armadillo," Rebecca corrected.

"The brown stuffed animal that resembles a rock."

"No way," he said.

"You said if I knocked over as many bottles as I could, I would get a prize."

"I said you might. But you sure as hell aren't getting anything from me."

"Would you rather pick a bottle and share its contents with the rest of the class?"

The vendor laughed. "Ball bearings, magnetised so they don't fall out."

"And you're fine with deceiving your customers," Contessa said.

"With that gun? At this distance? These bottles are easy as shit to knock over if I don't load them. Come on."

"She did knock them all over," Hana said.

"But you saw how she did it," he said. "I can't just give prizes out to every kid who finds a loophole. I gotta make an honest living."

"You call this honest?"

"Relatively?" he said, shrugging. "'S not like I'm in the Mafia."

"Neither am I," Contessa said.

Rebecca gave her friends a 'told you so' look.

Contessa mirrored his shrug, and raised the rifle again. "Have it your way."

She hurled the gun itself at one of the poles holding up the tarp over the stall and it collapsed, burying the vendor in aluminum frame and canvas. Contessa lifted the corner of the tarp, reached past the vendor's flailing arm and collected the armadillo.

Elliot nudged Hana. "You know that when I say the Second Amendment scares me, it's because of things like this, right? What if that was somebody's house?"

"Like tears... in rain," the vendor said, his arm growing feeble as Contessa dropped the tarp back on his face. "Time to—"

"Hang on, I'll save you," Hana said, walking up to the collapsed stall. "I have prior experience."

Contessa presented the armadillo to Rebecca. "This is for you," she said woodenly.

Rebecca lit up. She grabbed it and crushed it to her chest with a squeal. "I love it! I love it so much! Thank you Contessa!"

"It's cute," Hana said politely, kicking the poles aside.

"No, it's not," Contessa said.

Elliot stared at her, baffled. "Then why did you get it for Rebecca?"

"I didn't want to get the stuffed ebola virus. It looks like a duodenum."

Rebecca squeezed the armadillo harder. Whatever its stuffing was, it wasn't very pliant—ebola would have been snugglier. The shell was also covered in a field of metallic studs, preventing her from comfortably brushing her cheek against it. Even the unprotected parts of the armadillo were coarse. Its marble-eyed face was dour, like it disapproved of her holding it at all.

It wasn't cute.

But cuteness was an aestheticisation of powerlessness, a demand that a creature submit to affection against its will or knowledge, ignoring its rich interiority. By adopting this texture and resisting compression in defiance of its primary function, the armadillo had been transformed into something unrecognisable—something indomitable.

"Classic détournement," she whispered.

"What are you calling her?" Elliot asked. "Or him, I guess."

Contessa shook her head minutely and mouthed, not me.

Rebecca could see the resemblance, and she could name it after her, but that would get confusing.

"Colin." She raised the plushie to the sky, reverently, like a mandrill christening a lion cub before the exultant congregation of its future prey. "His name is Colin."

Elliot snorted. "That'll get confusing."

"Two 'l's," Rebecca decided, and texted Colin to inform him immediately.

Rebecca: Contessa got me an armadillo and his name is have to meet him he's just as grumpy as his namesake

"He says 'why would you message me now, I'm busy'. Typical. 'I don't know, Colin'," Rebecca said loudly, typing the words as she spoke. "'Maybe I thought that, in this hustle-and-bustle world, amidst the tumult of, of—'"

"Globalisation," Elliot supplied.

"'—globalisation, a girl could share her triumphant spoils with those friends of hers who elected to be absent on such a momentous occasion. You armoured dildo!'"

"He won't get it," Hana said. "He'll think you're actually angry at him."

"I know," Rebecca said. "That's why we're going to send a picture. Contessa, over here. Huddle time."

They had a passerby take the photo. Elliot put an arm around Hana, who held hands with Rebecca, who nuzzled up against the shoulder of a very bemused Contessa. Contessa carried the armadillo.

"He says 'you thought wrong'," Rebecca read, when she received Colin's reply. Another message popped up. "'And I don't look like that.' Ha! Excelsior!"

"I'm relieved to find you here, on solid ground, playing games with company."

It was Philip, sidling up to Contessa. He didn't look happy.

"I was afraid that you might have chosen to while away your copious leisure time doing something less pleasant," he said to her, "like dangling from an unstable metal structure without your harness or the belayer who was supposed to provide it. How thoughtful of you to assuage my concerns in a timely manner."

"Sorry to steal her away," Rebecca said. "But you kind of stole her from me."

He turned to her, eyebrows raised. "...pardon?"

She broke out into a smirk, to show she was only teasing. "When she left me to go see you!"

"She—" Philip swallowed whatever he was going to say, looking at the jacket Rebecca was wearing and the armadillo in her arms. A strange expression flitted across his face, but it was gone before she could parse it. "So she did. Reality is after all flexible."

Contessa stepped over to Rebecca, and slipped her hand into her jacket. Rebecca stood stock still as she removed an opaque plastic case, a phone, and a tube of Tums from the inside pockets.

"I could give it back now," Rebecca said, without any intention of doing so. The heat was still oppressive and the jacket was too tight around the sleeves and armpits, so she felt like a potato being baked in silk instead of foil. But she would never take it off.

"But then you would resume being cold," Contessa pointed out.

"I keep her auxiliary jackets in my car," Philip assured Rebecca, "along with her auxiliary shirts, auxiliary trousers, auxiliary hosiery, and auxiliary millinery."

"Why so much spare clothing?" Hana asked.

"In case she needs to loan her mains out to those unfortunate young dames who happen to be freezing in the dead of Los Angeles autumn."

"Leave it on my bed," Contessa said, returning to Philip's side. "I'll be back tomorrow."

"What?" Rebecca snapped alert. "Where are you going?"

"Business." Contessa reached into Philip's hair, her fingers weaving in and out, and retrieved a wispy little covert feather.

"But you've only been here, like, five seconds!"

Philip looked slightly annoyed at either Contessa's hand or the feather. Contessa let it float away.

"Tempting though it may be," he said, "we can't all abandon our responsibilities to cavort around on carnival rides with any pretty face that catches our eye. Speaking only for myself."

"But," Rebecca said, "but tonight..."

"Rebecca," Contessa said, not even looking at her as she dusted off Philip's shoulder. "I'll be back tomorrow."

Then, before Rebecca could protest any further, Contessa and Philip walked side by side into the crowd.

"Well, bye then," Elliot said.

Hana picked up the rifle on the ground.

Everything came together. Rebecca understood then that she could not have moved too fast or waited too long because Contessa was already spoken for.

Hana fired the rifle. The bullet could have punched through Rebecca's chest and she wouldn't have noticed.

Contessa was not uncomfortable or awkward around Philip. She didn't blush when he murmured in her ear, or stiffen when he closed the distance between them. Maybe they didn't hold hands in public, but there were the meaningful glances, the placating gestures—a semiotic system of affection and care that was born of a years-long mutual bond. There were other clues: the fact that Contessa didn't come back to the dorm some nights, and the fact that Philip seemed irritated by Rebecca spending time with her. The fact that they had left together.

To go where?

To do what?

Business. The crate they'd been carrying had probably had ten vibrators in it. Ten prostate massagers? Five vibrators and five prostate massagers, she thought with a chill. Or any other permutation of marital aids. But then she remembered that Philip had said the contents were alive, which left… a road she didn't want to go down.

"Oh my god, Hana," Elliot said, crouching in the grass a few paces away. "You killed a woodpecker."

"I did not." Hana joined him in crouching. "Woodpeckers aren't even native to this area."

"Can you blame them, with you on the loose?"

"It's a warbler."

"Even worse. You ended his fledgeling singing career. Yeah, nope, that is a woodpecker. They're a protected species!" He stood, flicking the brim of her hat. "What in conservation."

"I wasn't aiming at it," Hana said. "It flew in front of me."

"The bird? Or your hat?"

"It has nothing to do with the hat! I'm sure I just clipped a wing—"

"And with it, his dreams of going pro."

"—with a pellet. Not a deadly projectile."

"Probably took its eye out." He tutted at her. "What are the rules of gun safety again? 'Always be aware of your target and what lies beyond'?"

"You know…"

The traits that Philip had and Rebecca didn't unravelled in a steady vertical scroll. Of course Contessa would choose to be with someone like herself—more worldly, less trivial, more careful, less bumbling, more stoic, less emotional. It had been silly of her to believe she could compete on any level, as if the momentary hormone-fuelled lust that flared inside her could compare to what they had.

Yet she had forced herself on Contessa, thrusting her chest out and rubbing against her, clumsy, artless, like a dog in heat. Contessa had been so embarrassed on her behalf that she'd given Rebecca an out, and Rebecca hadn't taken it.

A hand waved in front of her face. "Ground control to Major Rebecca."

Rebecca blinked at Elliot, keeping her smile wide and eyes bright, as though she had been lost in a daydream she'd just now snapped out of.

"So we should leave before the feds arrest Miss Sandpiper Sniper over here for a murder of crows," Elliot said. "I'm thinking we head back, grab our junk, camp out in the library till closing time, then move to the com labs."

Hana cast an uneasy glance at the grass. She folded her arms, a gesture both indignant and self-soothing. "The labs will be full of compsci people doing their hackathons and technomancy."

"Your dorm?" Elliot asked.

"It's a single. It might be a little cramped."

"There's mine, but both of you would have to sneak past the RA and I can never tell when my roomie's on a bender or if he's going to crawl in at 1am. What about yours, Rebecca?"

"Good idea," Hana said, "since it'll be empty."

They both turned to Rebecca expectantly.

"Yeah, sure." Her breathing quickened. "Actually, is there a restroom around here? I have to—well, corndog, rollercoaster. You know."

Elliot gave her a sympathetic look. "Saw one earlier at the food corner. Maybe you should've bummed a Tums off Contessa."

"We'll walk you there," Hana said.

"Nah, it's far," Rebecca said. "The line'll probably be long. You guys go on ahead."

"I can hold onto Collin for you." Elliot reached for the armadillo she was hugging.

She relinquished it with some reluctance, but no less brilliant a smile as she broke away. "Take care of the little guy. Where can I find you?"

"Card booth, probably. Not the machine, the one at the entrance."

"Sounds good!"

Rebecca skipped off towards the food corner, but did not go to the restroom in case her friends came looking for her and caught her leaving the tent.

With the mellowing heat came the evening crowd. The fairground was teeming with families, students and couples in full postprandial daze. Rather than work her way through the noise and bodies, Rebecca cut a path behind the concession stands. She made it as far as the bushes behind the funnel cake display before she tugged off Contessa's jacket and began to cry.