Chapter 1

The garden is cold where I have pooled against the grass, and the whole world is a circle I can see without turning. I can feel the wet blades beneath me and the drip from the gutter by the back door and a moth batting against the porch light, all at once, while the house sits ahead, quiet and dark except for one window upstairs.

Harper's window.

I've been waiting for this. Not nervously—I've done this enough times that the hunger has smoothed into something like patience—but the pull is still there, low and sharp, a wanting that doesn't care about the grass or the cold or the fact that I'm a puddle of goo in a garden when I should be a person.

I move. It's not walking, exactly. It's more like letting go of the ground and letting the ground decide where to put me. I flow across the lawn, through the gap under the back door, and into the kitchen, where the linoleum is cool and smells faintly of lemon soap.

Harper sleeps upstairs. I know this because I chose her. I know the shape of her room from the porch roof to the window screen. But I don't know it from inside her yet. Not yet.

The stairs are nothing. I slide up the painted wood, along the hallway, and under the door to her room without touching the edges. The space inside is dark and still, lit only by a pale square of moonlight through the window.

She's there. On the bed. A heap of sage green duvet and dark hair, one arm flung over the pillow, her mouth open the smallest amount.

I don't hesitate. I pool on the floor for a second, watching her from everywhere at once—her face slack with sleep, her hand curled near her jaw, the slow rise of her chest under the duvet—and then I flow up the bedframe and onto the sheet.

The warmth of her skin is the first thing that feels like a body. I settle near her mouth, against the soft give of her lower lip, and the heat of her breath comes out in slow, steady puffs.

This is the part I always want. The moment just before.

I pour into her mouth.

It's warm and wet and still, and for a second her throat tightens around me in a swallow she doesn't wake from. I push deeper, past the resistance, and the sound she makes is tiny—a small, startled click at the back of her throat—but she doesn't stir.

Her body doesn't know I'm here yet.

Then I spread.

I don't have bones anymore, not in the way I did, but I can feel hers, the hard cage of her ribs and the soft give of her belly and the long, smooth curve of her spine. I fill her slowly, cell by cell, until the edges of me start to vanish and the inside of her starts to feel like the inside of me.

The old him—the solid, heavy boy who walked into this garden—is gone. Not stored. Not waiting. Just gone, dissolved into the bloodstream of this girl's sleeping body. If I want him back, I'll have to build him again. I don't want him back.

I open Harper's eyes.

The ceiling swims for a second, dark and unfamiliar, and then the room snaps into focus: the fairy lights hanging still around the window, the faint silver outline of a desk cluttered with paper, the smell of lavender and old paper so thick I can taste it.

I breathe in.

It's the first breath, and it comes all at once—chest lifting under the duvet, lungs filling with room air that's stale and warm and faintly sweet, and the weight of the body settling over me like a blanket I can't take off.

I can feel my heart. Her heart. A soft, quick rhythm behind the ribs, beating like it's been waiting for me.

Okay, I think, and the thought comes in her voice, soft and breathy even inside my own head. Okay. I'm in.

I lie still for a minute, just breathing. The duvet is heavy across my hips. My legs are bare underneath it, smooth against the sheets, and when I move one foot, the slide of skin on cotton is so light it makes me smile in the dark.

The first thing I do—before the mirror, before the voice, before anything—is touch my face.

My fingers are smaller. They know the shape of this face the way they know how to find the switch for the bedside lamp, and they move without me telling them to: along the jaw, over the cheek, against the small, smooth mole just under my left ear.

My face.

This is my face now.

I sit up slowly, and the duvet falls away. The cold air hits my chest and I shiver, and I can feel the weight of my breasts shift against the thin cotton of her sleep shirt. My hair falls over my shoulder—long, heavy, smelling like lavender and sleep.

I want to say something. I want to hear her voice in the room, not just in my head.

I open my mouth and the sound comes out before I plan it.

"Harper."

It's soft. Breathier than I expected. It sits in the back of my throat in a different place than my old voice did, and when I say it again—"Harper"—the word feels round and warm and mine.

I swing my legs over the side of the bed. My feet don't reach the floor the same way they used to—the angle is wrong, shorter—and when I stand, the nightgown falls to my thighs and my center of gravity is somewhere new, lower and forward.

I catch myself on the windowsill, and the moonlight is bright on my hand, and for a second I just stand there, looking at the smallness of my fingers against the painted wood.

The mirror is on the closet door.

I walk to it, and the floor is cold under my bare feet, and the girl in the glass is already looking at me.

She's pretty.

That's the first thought, and it feels small and obvious, but I can't get past it. The dark hair tangled around her shoulders, the hazel eyes wide and still, the flush on her cheeks from sleep, the way the nightgown hangs just slightly off one shoulder.

I lift my hand. She lifts hers.

I touch my mouth. She touches hers.

"Holy shit," I whisper, and her lips move with mine, and the sound of it—her voice, my voice, the two of us folded into one body—sends a shiver through my chest.

I am in here. I am her. I am her.

The laughter comes up before I can stop it—a bright, breathless sound I've never made before—and I spin once, fast, the way I used to when I was a kid and something was almost too good to be real. My hair swings out, and my breasts move with the turn, and the nightgown rises, and I stop with one hand pressed to my stomach, gasping.

I can feel my heart pounding against my ribs. I can feel the soft yield of my own waist under my palm. I can feel the cool air on my legs and the heat of the room and the wet shine in my eyes.

This is real. This is actually real.

I spend longer than I should at the mirror. I turn my face from side to side, watching the light change along the slope of my nose, the freckles scattered across my cheeks, the small mole under my ear that Harper's fingers already know to touch when she's thinking.

But I'm the one thinking now. And my fingers are still Harper's, and they move without asking, the way they always have, and that's the part that feels like the bottom of a warm pool—the way the body just keeps being itself, with me inside it.

By the time the sky starts to gray, I know the room the way Harper does. Not because her memories are a list I'm reading—they're not—but because I already know where everything is the same way I know my own hand. The sketchbooks on the desk. The potted plant by the window. The pale pink scarf draped over the chair.

The scarf. Her grandmother knitted it before Harper moved away. The feeling attached to it—a soft, distant ache—settles in my chest before I can decide if I want it.

I let it stay. It's part of the body, like the lavender smell and the shape of my hips.

The sun comes up slow and gold through the window, and I sit on the window seat with my knees pulled up and my arms wrapped around them, watching the light move across the garden.

My legs are smooth against each other. The bones of my knees are small and round. My toes curl against the cushion, and I notice the polish on them—a soft, pearly pink—and for some reason that's the detail that makes me laugh again.

Of course she paints her toenails. Of course she does.

I need to get dressed.

The thought arrives with Harper's own routine attached to it, and I stand and go to the closet without having to think about where anything is. The dress is there, in the front, because she planned to wear it today: a sage green wrap dress with tiny white flowers, hanging between a cream cardigan and a soft denim jacket she never wears.

I pull it out. The fabric is light, a little cool, and it moves in my hands like water.

I undress slowly, because I want to feel it. I pull the sleep shirt over my head, and the air touches my skin everywhere at once—my breasts, my stomach, the small of my back—and I shiver.

The underwear is in the top drawer of the dresser, exactly where I know it is. I step into the pale pink bra first, hooking it behind my back in one motion because my fingers already know how. The straps settle on my shoulders, and the band sits snug around my ribs, and the weight of my breasts lifts into the cups like they belong there.

The panties are white cotton with a tiny satin bow at the waistband. They slide up my legs and sit against my hips, soft and worn, and the elastic leaves the faintest line against my skin.

I stand there for a moment in just the bra and panties, looking down at myself. The curve of my waist. The soft tops of my thighs. The narrowness of my shoulders.

This body was made for soft things.

The dress is next. I step into it and pull it up, and the fabric slides over my legs and settles against my hips. I wrap the front across my chest, tie the belt at my waist with a small bow, and adjust the neckline so it lies flat.

When I let my hands fall, the dress stays. It fits. It fits because this is Harper's body, and every one of her clothes knows it.

I turn to the mirror.

The girl in the sage green dress is me. The dress skims my waist, flairs softly over my hips, and falls to just below my knees. My legs are bare. My sandals are still by the bed, but I'll put them on before I go downstairs.

I look like I'm going to breakfast. Because I am. As Harper.

The sandals are soft from wear, and when I slide my feet into them, the straps settle against my skin like they've missed me. I take one step, and the small heel taps the floor, and the dress moves with me, and I stop at the top of the stairs to listen.

The kitchen is awake.

I can hear the clink of a spoon against ceramic, the low hum of the coffee maker, and Eliza's voice, bright even through the floor.

"Piper, did you eat the last of the granola again?"

"Maybe," Piper calls back. "But I left the box, so it still counts."

I smile, and the smile comes the way Harper's does—slow, a little closed-lip, the corners of her mouth lifting before I decide to let them.

Time to be her, I think.

The body already knows how.

I go down the stairs the way Harper goes down them—soft-footed, one hand on the rail, skirt brushing the backs of my thighs—and when I step into the kitchen, Eliza looks up and grins.

"There she is," she says. "I thought you were sleeping in."

"I was," I say, and my voice comes out warm and a little rough from the morning. "But it's too nice out."

That's true. The kitchen window is open, and the breeze carries the wet, green smell of the garden and the faint sweetness of the first blossoms.

Piper is already at the table, cross-legged on a chair, shoving granola into her mouth. Sienna is at the counter, pouring coffee with her back to me, perfectly straight.

"Morning, Piper," I say, and slide into the chair across from her.

Piper looks up with a grin, crumbs on her chin. "Morning! You look so cute today. Is that the wrap dress?"

"Yeah." I smooth the skirt over my knees without thinking. "I haven't worn it in a while."

"Wear it more," Piper says, and points her spoon at me. "It's giving garden fairy."

Eliza snorts. "You say that about everything she wears."

"Because she always dresses like a garden fairy," Piper says. "It's a compliment."

Sienna sets a mug of tea down in front of me—peppermint, the way Harper likes it—and I feel a small, warm pulse of surprise. I didn't have to ask. She just knew.

"Thanks," I say.

Sienna doesn't answer. She sits down with her coffee and a thick biology textbook, and the first sip she takes is slow, deliberate, like she's measuring the morning.

Eliza catches my eye and mouths grumpy behind Sienna's back.

I press my lips together to keep from laughing, and Harper's dimpled, close-lipped smile comes out instead—soft, private, exactly the expression the body makes when it's trying not to be caught.

Breakfast settles into an easy rhythm. Eliza talks about a group presentation that's falling apart, her hands moving too fast, her ponytail swinging. Piper chimes in with terrible suggestions. Sienna corrects something Eliza says, and Eliza says, "Okay, pre-med, thank you for your service," and Sienna's mouth twitches almost into a smile.

I watch them from inside Harper. I know exactly how Harper would sit here—elbow on the table, chin in her palm, laughing softly at Piper's chaos, murmuring something ive to Eliza. So I do that. I rest my elbow on the table, feel the smooth wood under my forearm, and tilt my head the way she does.

And I feel it. A quiet, electric click, sitting at this table with three people who think I'm their cousin, while inside the girl they love is asleep somewhere behind my ribs, and I'm the one holding her tea.

It's not guilty. It's not sad. It's a small, fierce click, warm as the peppermint in my mouth, and it settles in the place where Harper's heartbeat lives.

Then Sienna looks up from her book and fixes her eyes on the other side of the room.

"Harper," she says, without looking at me. "Are you going to move your portfolio from the coffee table today, or should I add it to the pile of things I'm apparently the only one who notices?"

The kitchen goes quiet.

I feel it land in Harper's chest first—a sharp, hot pinch under my sternum, like a small hook catching. My face flushes before I can stop it, and my eyes sting, and the back of my throat tightens.

I know exactly how Harper would answer. She'd say I'm sorry, I'll move it, and then she'd shrink a little, and the whole morning would tip sideways.

But I'm not Harper.

I set the mug down carefully. The sound is soft, deliberate.

"I'll move it after breakfast," I say. "But you could have just said it was in your way instead of making it sound like I burned the house down."

The words come out in Harper's soft, breathy voice, but the edge in them is mine.

Sienna's head snaps up. Her green eyes are sharp behind her glasses, and for a second she just stares at me, like I've spoken a language she didn't know Harper could.

Piper freezes with her spoon halfway to her mouth. Eliza says, "Whoa, okay," under her breath.

And I hold Sienna's gaze, feeling Harper's pulse flutter at the base of my throat, and I don't look away.

Sienna blinks first. She sets her jaw, looks back down at her book, and says, "Fine. Just move it."

That's it. No apology. No softening. But her shoulders are tighter than they were a second ago, and I can see the faint pink rising at the tips of her ears.

I nod once, then reach for my tea, and my hand is shaking, just slightly, from the adrenaline and Harper's body's leftover sting. But inside, behind the flush, I'm smiling.

This life is easy to live. But it's also mine to steer, and that's the part I like most.

After breakfast, I do move the portfolio. It's a heavy black case, bulkier than I expected, and I carry it upstairs to Harper's room and set it by the desk. The weight of it leaves a red mark on my palm, and I rub at it absently, standing in the middle of the room with the morning sun all over me.

The house below is still alive—Piper running water in the kitchen, Eliza laughing at something, Sienna moving around with that quiet, efficient step.

I should go to class. Harper has art history at ten, and the campus is a fifteen-minute walk, and I already know the route the way I know the route to my own kitchen.

But I don't move yet. I stand here, in her dress, in her room, with her portfolio mark on my palm, and I let the whole thing settle over me again.

I am Harper Whitfield. For as long as I want to be.

And I want to be her for a while.

The walk to campus is soft and green. The sidewalks are still wet from the night, and the trees along the street are budded with pale leaves that tremble when the breeze moves. I a girl on a bike, and she rings her bell and calls, "Morning, Harper!" and I lift my hand and smile without having to think about it.

The campus gate is open, and the quad beyond is busy with students and dogs and a guy throwing a frisbee. I walk through the middle of it the way Harper does—head up, shoulders relaxed, tote bag over one shoulder, sandals tapping the paved path.

My hips move. I don't tell them to. They just do, a gentle sway that the body has been doing for years, and it feels like riding a current I didn't know was there.

The lecture hall is cold, and I sit in the middle row with my notebook open on the little fold-down desk. The pen in my hand is a cheap ballpoint with a barrel Harper chews during exams, and the teeth marks are smooth under my thumb.

The professor talks about Renaissance line and form, and I take notes in Harper's neat, round hand, and somewhere around the forty-minute mark I realize I've been drawing tiny stars in the margin, the way she always does.

I smile down at the page. My chest feels warm, the way it does when you catch your own reflection in a shop window and who you are.

But this time, it's not the mirror. It's the stars. The pen. The cold air. The whole ordinary, perfect morning.

The rest of the month es like a piece of music played at half speed and double speed at once.

I go to Harper's classes. I sit in the studio with charcoal dust on my fingers and the smell of turpentine in my hair. I walk to the park on Saturdays and sit on the same bench she likes, and I eat the same sandwich from the same cart, and I watch the same pigeons fight over the same crust.

I cook with Eliza on Tuesdays—she's the better cook, but I know where everything is, and we make a mess and she sings along to the radio and I laugh at her because she never gets the words right.

I do laundry with Piper on Sundays, and she folds her dresses into careful squares and talks about a junior recital piece she can't decide on, and I tell her to pick the one that makes her feel bravest, and she hugs me so hard the dryer shakes.

I avoid Sienna as much as Harper would, which is not entirely, because they share a house. But the edge from that first morning stays. Not ruined—just present. A tiny splinter neither of us wants to touch.

And all through it, I am Harper. Not performing Harper. Just living here, in her body, in her clothes, in her life. The clothes rotate the way clothes do: the floral midi skirts, the cream blouses with lace trim, the soft cardigans, the pleated skirts in muted colors.

Each morning, I choose an outfit from her closet, and each time, the fabric settles on my skin like a promise kept.

I start to notice the small things. The way the shower handle turns easily under her fingers. The way the kitchen faucet sprays if you push it left. The way the barista at the campus coffee shop already knows my order before I open my mouth.

The way Piper's head on my shoulder feels like it belongs there. The way Eliza links her arm through mine when we walk to the corner store. The way Sienna's eyes soften, just barely, when she thinks no one is looking.

I notice all of it. And underneath, all month, there's the other noticing—the one that belongs only to me.

I am a guy, inside this girl, and no one sees it.

And I love that. I love it the way a thief loves a locked room he's learned to open.

I'm sitting at the desk in Harper's room, working on the portfolio. The due date is close now—a few days away—and two pieces are still unfinished, and I've been avoiding the harder one because every time I start, my hand hesitates.

Harper's hand. Her hand is the one holding the pencil.

I've been drawing for an hour. The paper is thick and toothy, and the charcoal leaves dust on the edge of my palm, and the smell of the room—lavender, paper, the faint rose perfume—closes around me like a room I've always known.

Then I hear it. A small, tuneless hum.

My mouth is closed, but the sound is coming from me. From my throat. From the back of Harper's chest, where her concentration lives.

I stop. The humming stops.

Okay, I think. That's new.

And it's not bad. It's not scary. It's just another thing Harper's body does without me, like the hair-tucking and the teeth marks on her pens.

I pick up the pencil again and let it hum.

The nights are when I let myself have the room to myself.

Harper's door locks from the inside, and the lock is small and brass and turns with a satisfying click. When the house is quiet—Piper asleep, Eliza in her room with headphones, Sienna reading downstairs—I close the door and turn the lock and let the body breathe out.

I open the closet like a book. The clothes are Harper's, but they're mine now, and I go through them the way a person goes through their own past—slowly, greedily, with a kind of tenderness I don't have a name for.

The floral midi skirts. The cream blouses with lace trim. The soft cardigans in sage and dusty rose. The pleated skirts that swing when I turn.

I take out a cream blouse with tiny pearl buttons and hold it up. The fabric is cotton, light and airy, and the lace at the collar is soft against my fingers.

I put it on.

I put on everything. Not all at once—night after night, piece by piece, until I've touched every garment in the closet and learned its weight and its fit and the particular way it moves when I move.

I try on the silk blouse with the delicate embroidery at the yoke. I try on the wrap dress again, and this time I leave it on while I brush my hair. I try on a knee-length pleated skirt in a dusty blue-gray, and I stand in front of the mirror turning back and forth, watching the pleats open and close like gills.

And every time, the same thing rises in my chest: this is better than the body. This is the body plus the clothes. The body is soft. The clothes are the softness made visible.

One night, I find the scarf.

It's the pale pink one, draped over the desk chair where Harper keeps it. I've seen it a hundred times, but tonight I pick it up and hold it to my face.

The yarn is soft and a little nubby, and it smells faintly of rose perfume and, under that, something older—a woolly, sweet smell that must be her grandmother's house.

The feeling hits me low and quiet: missing someone I've never met, wanting a home I've never been in.

I wrap the scarf around my neck and stand in front of the mirror. The girl in the glass has wet eyes and a pink scarf and a face that looks like it's been loved for a long time.

I don't wipe the tears away. They're not really mine, but they're coming out of my eyes, and that makes them mine enough.

The slip dress is at the back of the closet, folded under a pile of winter sweaters.

I find it because I'm looking for the one thing Harper wouldn't have shown anyone. The one thing she bought and never wore.

It's dusty rose, silk, with thin straps and a low back and a hem that falls just past mid-thigh. I hold it up by the straps, and the fabric pours through my fingers like cool water.

She never wore this.

I know it the way I know her own hand.

She bought it on a hard day, maybe, or a brave day, and then she brought it home and hid it where no one would ask about it.

And now I'm the only one in the world who knows it's here.

I don't put it on right away. I wait.

I wait until a night when the house is so quiet I can hear the refrigerator humming two rooms away, and the moon is high and silver through the window, and Piper has left the kitchen light on downstairs so the stairs are half-lit and soft.

Then I close the door, turn the lock, and take the dress out.

The dress is cool when I step into it, and the silk slides up over my hips and settles against my skin like a whisper. I slide the straps onto my shoulders, and they are narrow enough that I feel almost bare, and the back hangs open, and the air touches my spine in a long, shivery line.

I turn to the mirror.

The girl in the glass is not the one who wears sage green and lace trim and soft cardigans. She's someone sharper. Someone braver. Someone who bought a silk slip dress and never let herself become the kind of girl who could wear it.

I smooth my hands down the front. The silk follows the shape of my waist, my hips, the tops of my thighs.

I feel beautiful.

Not cute. Not pretty.

Beautiful, in a way that makes my chest hurt.

I stand there for a long time. I turn a little, and the dress moves with me, catching the fairy lights, turning the dusty rose to something warmer. I lift my hair off my neck and let it fall, and the straps slide a fraction of an inch, and I watch the girl in the mirror watch me.

She knows.

She knows I'm here. She knows this is the night before I leave.

Not yet. But soon.

And the knowledge sits between us—me and her and the silk—like a secret we're all keeping.

The last morning is warm. The window is open, and the garden smells like cut grass and the first real heat of spring, and the sun comes across the floor in long yellow s that touch the edge of the bed.

I wake the way I've woken every day for a month: with Harper's hair in my mouth, the weight of her body pulling me down into the mattress, the slow, familiar process of ing where I am.

But today I lie still for longer. I press my palm to my stomach and feel it rise and fall with my breath. I rub my thighs together under the sheet, and the skin is smooth and warm from sleep, and the sensation is still new enough to make my eyes close.

I'm going to leave tonight.

The thought is quiet and certain, like a train already on its tracks.

Harper's life is soft and good. The body is lovely. The clothes are a dream. But the quiet at the center of her—the hesitation, the swallowing down—it's not mine. And a month is long enough to know I don't want to borrow it forever.

I want to find the girl whose quiet feels like a garden, not a held breath.

That girl might be Eliza. She's next door, sleeping with her blonde hair spread over a pillow that smells like vanilla.

Maybe.

The day es the way last days : too fast and too slow at once. I eat breakfast with my cousins. I go to the campus one last time, to the studio, and I stand at Harper's easel with a piece she'd been too unsure to finish, and I work on it until my wrist aches.

I come home and fold a load of laundry. I eat dinner at the kitchen table while Eliza talks about her internship decision and Piper plays footsie with me under the table and Sienna says, "You've been more focused lately," and the surprise in her voice is almost a compliment.

I don't say goodbye to them. They don't know I'm going. They just think I'm tired, or quiet, or lost in my own head.

The body knows how to be tired. It's the easiest thing in the world.

That night, I wait until the house is dark. The clock on Harper's phone reads 1:47. The room is warm and still, and the fairy lights are off, and only the moon comes through the window.

I don't turn them on. I don't want the gold light tonight.

I go to the closet and take out the slip dress one more time.

I step into it in the dark. The silk is just as cold as the first time, and it slips over me the same way, like it's been waiting.

I don't look in the mirror yet. I walk to the window, and I stand with my arms loose at my sides, and the silk moves against my thighs with every breath.

I want to this. The weight of the dress. The way the straps press into my shoulders. The cool air on my bare back. The garden below, silver and motionless.

This is what I came for. This body. This dress. This one, perfect, ordinary moment.

And I got it.

Then I turn to the mirror.

She's there. The girl in the dusty rose slip. Her hair is loose, falling over one shoulder, and her face is calm, and her eyes are bright with the moon.

She looks like a painting of someone who is about to leave.

I lift one hand and press it to the glass. She presses back.

"I would have stayed," I whisper, "if you'd been a little louder."

And the words are true, and they don't hurt, and the girl in the mirror doesn't answer because she doesn't have to.

The answer is mine.

I undress slowly. I slide the straps down my shoulders one by one. I let the silk fall down my body and pool at my feet, and I step out of it.

I stand there for a moment in just the dark, feeling the air on my skin, feeling the body's automatic shiver.

Then I fold the slip dress carefully, the way Harper folds the things she loves, and I put it back at the back of the closet, under the winter sweaters, where I found it.

She'll find it someday. Maybe. And she'll wearing it the way she re all the other things I did as her.

She won't know it wasn't her. That's the part I like best.

I climb into bed. The sheets are cool, and I lie on my back with my hands folded over my stomach, and I close my eyes.

The house is silent.

I let Harper's breathing slow. I let the room blur behind my closed lids. I feel the solid edges of her body start to loosen, the way they did a month ago but in reverse.

And then I flow.

I slide up out of her mouth in a long, easy thread, pulling myself free of her like water finding a crack in a glass. Her body settles back into the mattress, and her breathing evens out, and her face goes slack and peaceful.

She's still asleep. She'll wake in the morning and my month as her own—the classes, the sketches, the slip dress, the way she finally told Sienna to stop it.

She won't know I was ever here.

I pool on the floor for a second, seeing the room from everywhere at once. The window. The desk. The closet door. The bed where Harper sleeps.

The room is the same as it was. The lavender. The paper. The faint rose perfume.

And I'm not the same as I was. But that's the point.

I flow under the door, into the hallway. The house is dark and quiet, and the only sound is the hum of the refrigerator downstairs and the soft tick of the clock in the living room.

Eliza's room is at the end of the hall.

I move toward it, and the last thing I feel before I slip under her door is the faint, sweet pull of wanting beginning again.

She's next. Maybe she's the one.

I'll know soon.