Words owe their very existence to distance, although their deepest purpose is to overcome it; this is the most true for words like saudade, hiraeth and even homesick, a word I’ve always loved—but never felt

**

Zoe and their parents pick her up at six to celebrate

Zoe and their parents pick her up at six to celebrate. Amy skips out of the Honors House keeping her eyes on the car. When she opens the door and leans down to peer in at her sister, Zoe’s strained face loosens, and then it opens up into a smile. Amy gets in.

Their grandparents always get everywhere early to get seated in the smoking section before their mom can say no. As they wind their way between tables Amy looks at boys and men. Their mom tries to speak Spanish with their guide; Amy and Zoe exchange a glance and roll their eyes as if on cue. But their mother sees, and blushes, and sinks down into her seat defeated, looking off into the distance at what must be nothing.

Their grandma, on the other hand, is ecstatic, halfway through a margarita, and she takes Amy’s face in her hands and gives her a quick wet kiss on the lips. She keeps repeating the word Wonderkid even after they’ve placed their order. She starts to tell stories the girls have never heard, about when they were too little to remember and Amy was always figuring things out on her own. Their grandma’s cigarette floats above a basket of tortilla chips, perfectly parallel to the table, half ash, and Amy can’t not watch it, waiting for it to snap in half and spoil the chips, knowing just what their mom will do when that happens. But it doesn’t snap, it lingers, as if by magic, and then as she starts a new story their grandma takes it down and taps at the ashtray, and Amy breathes out. There was the time the crazy neighbor climbed the tree in the backyard, says their grandma, and Zoe and their mom were watching the TV. And Amy had been instructed, she was not to move, and yet regardless, just when everything seemed over, and out the window the ambulance drove off, slow, and then the fire truck, just then: bam!

Their grandma claps her wrinkled hands together; Amy jumps. Their dad is smiling like he wants to laugh; their mom is still looking off into the distance like she’s not listening. Zoe looks at Amy. Amy looks back at their grandma, who beams. Amy’d slid right out from underneath that bed and crept around the side of it and grabbed that gun. Their mom always claimed it was an accident, but they had always known different, because it could hardly have been accidental, because Amy was just that kind of kid.

And Amy is left to wonder what kind of kid she’d been, and whether or not she is the same kind now. Their grandma stabs out her cigarette and says, Shot clean through the window! And she turns to look Amy square in the face, looking like she might cry from happiness, clasping Amy’s hand and holding it high above the guacamole.

Amy tries one last time to catch her mother’s eye. Their mother, who is the one they’ve heard this story from so many times, is the only one who has the power to make this total overhaul make sense. Amy with a gun? Amy shooting out a window? What if she had shot her sister? What if she’d killed Zoe? How could she have known what she was doing when she was only four years old, when even now, at the age of fifteen, she has no clue?

But their mother suddenly recoils. That man over there is looking at your legs, she says, looking off still but jerking her head in Amy’s direction. Amy sees that her face has turned bright red. I’m going to go over there, she says, and her voice is thick. You’re fifteen years old. That’s called statutory rape.

Their mother is rising from her chair. The girls glance together, stricken. Their dad reaches out and says, Leslie, but she shakes off his hand and has launched. There is a little pause like everyone’s lurched forward. Oh forget it, says their grandma then. Let’s order more margaritas.

Back in her room Amy peers out the window listening to the music that resounds from downstairs

Back in her room Amy peers out the window listening to the music that resounds from downstairs. It is the moments between day and night, when things are pink.

Because their grandma insisted, Amy has had a little bit of alcohol—her first. There is a slight warmth to her now, as though time were a ball to be kicked around.

And then she is going to the party, hand in hand with the girl from across the hall, who seems to know how everything works. Amy is wearing her own jeans but a tank top that belongs to her new friend, satin spaghetti straps like a bra and lace along the top, trying not to look down to make sure her breasts don’t show because she’ll get dizzy if she does.

When they walk into the Lambda Chi house they are greeted by the boys like old friends and presented with red plastic cups that foam over in their hands. Amy looks at Katie and takes a sip. Inside the Lambda Chi house the music is so loud you can feel it in your feet. Amy’s heart adjusts to it, beats in time. The smoke obscures the slow shapes she can make out in the low light, but Katie seems to see better, and Amy lets her lead her into the middle of the room.

The music is the music Amy’s always listened to, with Zoe, and now she notices in a rush of pride and pleasure that she feels just like she feels at home, and Amy and Katie dance, drinking foam from their red cups, and when their cups get empty, as if by magic, they get refilled. Never before today has Amy been the beneficiary of so much kindness, and she stumbles over thank yous now, unable to convey her appreciation. But the boys don’t mind. The boys just smile. Amy rocks her hips and sips at the beer and thinks it’s like she’s been whisked off by a tornado and set down in Oz, the rules are different, or there are no rules. She smiles and turns to Zoe about to say so, knowing Zoe will nod a bunch of times like whenever she gets excited, an enthusiasm that reveals even the silver fillings in her back bottom teeth, but then she sees that it is Katie, not Zoe, and she takes another drink.

Boys come, one for each, and Amy feels swallowed up, vanished, safe. Although she must have been held as a baby by someone, she has no recollection of it, no conscious knowledge of what it feels like to be inside of an embrace. Except for Sasha, heaving, crying, and she finishes her drink. The boy she is dancing with takes her by the hand to go and get another. She drinks another, dances, drinks. Why did Sasha take her that time on his lap, and why did he hug her, and why had she not seen? Amy drinks. Amy drinks and drinks and dissolves and is happy, being held.

Katie comes and takes her hand and guides her down some stairs. In the basement are more people, other music, bottles instead of cups. Amy is given a bottle and says thank you with tears in her eyes. Oz is amazing; ever since she grew up she has been happy, Amy thinks. Next she will be a woman who lives in Europe, with Zoe, and they will buy a boat and visit all the islands. Katie is talking to someone now, and Amy can’t hear, so she looks around. There is a semi-circle of girls with bottles on the other side of the room, and Amy looks at each of them, having never been a part of a crowd like this before. She knows she must be imagining it, but she thinks they are looking at her, too. A jolt and her eyes dart down to Katie’s tank top, strap to strap, but it’s fine, that isn’t it, and she looks up again, relieved. But now it’s spread. Now there are girls and boys just watching her, talking to each other leaning in like telling secrets and glancing at Amy in the pauses.

Amy wants to run away but can’t without Katie: she isn’t sure she can find the front door from here, and she also isn’t sure she isn’t too drunk to go anywhere because suddenly her legs can barely hold her, and in terror she drinks more. She reaches out and taps at Katie’s shoulder, a light, polite tap, and then when Katie doesn’t answer she yanks her to her by the wrist. Katie tells her it’s just the paper thing, and that they’ll get over it, and then she twists her arm away and returns to her conversation.

Everyone understands everything except for her. Amy strains to decipher Katie’s words. The paper thing? Amy thinks of their grandma’s story. How could she have known what she was doing when she was only four years old? She doesn’t even know now. Now she doesn’t even know what is happening right in front of her face. How can it be too late? thinks Amy, but then the same boy who spoke for her at the Honors House meeting comes up out of nowhere and says, hey, you’re famous.

She blinks at him and then remembers. People are worried the cops are going to come, says the boy, and she thinks his name is Tommy. Tommy leans in very close to her face. Now some other boys come slowly towards them, smiling, asking all kinds of questions like how does it feel to be a genius and will she help them with their homework and won’t her parents get upset with her for hanging out at parties.

Amy answers what she can: her parents won’t know.

The boys ask if Amy has a boyfriend. After she says no Amy wishes she’d said yes. Then some girls come up and say shoo and the boys dart off in all directions like flicked flies, looking back over their shoulders now and then. The girls ask if she’s okay or if she wants to go home. Amy thinks. She says she’s fine, but then she thinks because she does want to go home, but then she also wants to dance again with a boy and get held. But then she thinks that maybe now she’s famous she’ll be too watched to dance, and she’ll feel like a fish in an empty aquarium. Plus now, if they know who she is, she can’t pretend she isn’t who she is, and who she is is a person who shoots out windows and brings bad luck. Who she is is a person whose sister gets sick, whose heroine’s perfectly healthy husband has a heart attack at the age of twenty-eight, and whose—but who was Sasha? What was Sasha to her?

How can it be too late?

So she says goodnight to Katie and lets the girls take her back up the stairs. Tommy comes up again—out of nowhere, again—and says he can take her from there because he lives in the Honors House, and he knows which room is Amy’s. The girls look at each other, but now Amy needs to throw up, and she starts out the door without waiting.