Jonquil
The girl lies belly-flat in bed.
Scratch that.
The girl lies sphinx-like in bed.
She is fourteen and bored and she is lying in bed propped up into a living rock because it’s too hot to do anything else. And it is. She is right. Heat rises from the pavement. You can see it from her window, a mirage of steam lifting and distorting the air around it. Small waves break on the edge of vision and disappear. It’s dull outside too. There’s the distant sound of cars and the slight hum of overworked condensers, but besides that everything is quiet and still and the same dull quiet that has come from outside creeps into her home and goes through her room and hangs itself on her drapes and curls itself into her shoes.
(The girl’s name is—well I’m not going to tell you what her name is. That would be bad, wouldn’t it, to tell you her name. A major privacy concern.)
Let’s start from the beginning:
The girl lies in bed with her legs crossed behind her. She lies belly-flat, sphinx-like, and does what all girls do nowadays: she stares at her phone. It’s her lover and it stares back with its generous rotation of faces and eyes. They are always saying something funny, the faces, or gesticulating, a tongue-in-cheek made literal. She can watch these videos for hours, flicking her finger across the screen, watching each crash into the next in one loud rush of noise. In the string of videos are faces she recognizes; they are the faces with the most [hearts].
She is on Instagram, Snapchat, Tiktok, even Facebook—though it’s for old people now. Yes, she is on them all. Flicking her finger through time and illusion. And when she opens the camera and sees her own face, she sees a face full of stars. There she is, with chestnut locks and big brown doe-eyes and a cupid’s bow. She has a strong face. Her features, while soft and youthful—her body is lithe, her skin immaculate—has the defined angles of a woman. And she knows in that moment, turning her face from side to side in the screen, that she is prettier than any of those recognizable faces, and that, with just a little effort, she can succeed in amassing her own trove of [hearts].
(The girl looks older than she is. Especially with make-up on. Last year a man came up to her in the grocery store and asked for her number. When she told him she was fourteen he did not believe her. He said she looked seventeen. She thanked him and waited to be left alone.)
*
I want you to do something for me. I want you to forget all about hot girl summers and bikini beach bum summers. Forget all those bygone summers where the girls did the most scandalous thing they could, from rolling their stockings and bobbing their hair to cropping their shirts and donning ass curving short-shorts, where girls walked barefoot in the summer mornings, toes brushing the dew pearled grass, or strode to the mall, charm bracelets jingling from thin, delicate wrists. Forget all that.
This is the summer of short-form video.
So it goes without saying that all summer the girl works at recording and uploading videos onto TikTok. This is what she does: she stands in front of her vanity with her phone placed at eye level. She taps her finger and music erupts inside her bedroom. Aerial strikes of electro pop rise and fall in rhythmic crashes. Then she begins. She lip syncs to the music. She bobs her head. She smiles. She gesticulates. She blows kisses at the camera. She dances a choreographed dance that one of the recognizable faces has already done before. That many other faces have already done before. But she does it too and though she doesn’t do it any better, she is young, she is pretty, and she enjoys watching herself be young and pretty on screen. She thinks she’s cute in her favorite yoga pants and mauve cropped sweater. How cute can one girl be? Very cute apparently. And talented too. As it turns out, the girl has a knack for aligning popular music with the movements of her mouth. Over time the sun curves across her window and slips further into her room. It puts an arm around her and caresses her cheek, and when she doesn’t move from her vanity it withdraws, disgruntled, leaving behind a refractory red glow.
The sun comes and goes and the days extend and then reduce. School is around the corner. And what has the girl done with her summer? She has generated hundreds of TikTok videos, building a following of a thousand faces. This, she proclaims, is the start of an empire.
(What I have not included are her other proclamations. She has grown into the habit of barging into my room with news of her following. You’ll never believe how many I have now, she has said and continues to say, barging into my room.)
*
At night the girl dreams the big dream. She can see herself striding down a sun soaked, palm studded, cobble stoned, confetti stricken street in a sweatsuit that costs a couple grand, a whole team of make-up artists and hair stylists and fashion designers chasing behind her like a mob of school fish. She can see herself signing autographs. The it-boy of the century stands beside her and she breathes him in, feels his gentle yet commanding arm curved around her hip. It rains money. As in, she has money thrown at her—but no, not in the stripper way. In the way where everyone just loves her too much they can’t help themselves. They want to give her everything and she knows she can’t say no. Her dream home is one of the deadly sins, but she’s okay with that as long as it’s hers. For example, it has both an indoor and an outdoor pool, not to mention a lakeside pier.
Her real home is not so bad. It’s a two-story cookie-cutter with a decent backyard and a mid-century aesthetic. Her room is on the second floor and faces the cul-de-sac. Her real life is not so bad either. She is a popular girl by anyone’s standards. When she goes back to school she will have a group of girlfriends to gossip with. She will have an assortment of boys to choose from and a variety of social clubs to showcase her leadership skills at. Still: she dreams about more. More what, exactly? Does she want to be more liked? Loved? Needed? Valued? Or is it just about money, the idea of having wealth at her disposal? Or is it more existential? Perhaps she wants more recognition and why shouldn’t she? She has such a pretty face. And there’s no point in having such a pretty face if there’s no one there to see it, is there?
*
The girl goes into her school year with big plans. The algorithm gods have determined that posting at least three times a day will result in optimal traffic, so she observes their judgment and keeps to a four-a-day regiment. It is not difficult. Most of the work is in the preparation. She has to wake up early to fit everything into her morning. In the partial darkness of dawn she gropes through the hallway, flicks on the bathroom lights, and spends roughly two hours showering and applying makeup and straightening her hair. She squeezes the life out of the pimples that have emerged raw-red and splotchy, and plucks out any outlier follicles that will, if not properly eliminated, seek tenure over her eyebrows. It is with this freshly adjusted face that she records her head-bopping, lip-syncing, hip-swinging videos. And because the girl is a Digital Native brought up by America’s number one household fruit, she is savvy enough to schedule her videos to post throughout the day. They have generic titles such as, have a wonderful day you guys!!! and Love, love, love this song!!! each with their own barrage of [red hearts] and [blissful faces] and [musical notes]. (Though my all time personal favorite is the one with just [index pointing up].)
At school during the lunch break the girl sits with her girlfriends in the back corner of the courtyard. Now this is the spot. Here, the chaos of the schoolyard is kept at arm’s length. Boys shout at a distance and by the time their voices are carried to the chattering girls, they become synonymous with the everyday ambience of the schoolyard. What’s more, this spot has the only workable water fountain in the area. Certainly not the pathetic dribble seen in most water fountains, its stream shoots out into an arc similar to the Manneken Pis. It’s here that the girl and her friends sit side by side on the green thermoplastic bench and talk about their summers. They all agree. It was a dull, boring summer of sitting inside their bedrooms, of stepping outside for a minute before the heat burned into their skin and they’d have to go back inside to dab sweat off their foreheads. But they already know that much. They have shared hundreds of disappearing photo-messages between them reiterating how dull and boring a summer it had been. What they want to do now is compare stats. Have any of their videos gone viral? Which video has the most views? Who is the most liked, the most followed? With their phones outstretched before them, they glance from screen to screen. One of her friends, the one with waist length hair who wears nothing but V-necks, says, Don’t feel bad if I outnumber you, okay?
But the girl doesn’t have to feel bad. She outnumbers V-neck by a walloping twenty-thousand in total views. She almost laughs when she sees this but instead she catches herself, turns the urge to laugh into a strained semi-cough. They begin to focus on the girl’s profile.
Wait, one of her friends says, I remember when you had, like, a thousand views max.
Yeah, when did you start pushing the ten-thousand range? says another.
The girl shrugs, says, I don’t know. It happened overnight, I guess.
Bet you woke up to paparazzi too, didn’t you?
Don’t be such a dick, V, the first friend says. V-neck crosses her arms. Then they all crane their necks to ogle at the girl’s numbers. It wouldn’t be so unimaginable for the four of them to shake hands and nod at each other like little business women. Say, Yes, very impressive. I would love to see your best practice for increasing user engagement. Is it your lovely smile? Have you considered investing in your personal brand—what’s your current ROI?
But they are not little business women. They are teenage girls. In their own language, they convey a similar sentiment: You could totally become an influencer if you want to.
You think? the girl says. She reddens. It’s both embarrassing and flattering. Embarrassing, because it separates her from her friends; flattering, because she already knows she could totally become an influencer if she wants to. Really, it’s already in the cards.
*
There are dozens of them each day, a slab of new comments hinged to the bottom of her videos. There are [heart eyes] and [fires] and [smirking faces]. There are drawn out, occasionally profane affirmations—Hello gorgeous; Fuckkk ur hot—and strings of conversations within the comments themselves discussing where she might have bought those Lulu-like yoga pants, that beige sherpa bucket hat.
This is what the girl does at night, sifting through these sleepless commentaries. There are owls calling to one another in the darkened trees outside her window but she does not hear them, or if she does she gives no such indication. The noise inside her, the comments that say she’s stupid and vain, that she can’t lip-sync for shit, are there, snaking through the compact circuits of her brain. Scrolling through her phone, she gauges in partial consciousness what the negative to positive ratio is. There are four I love yous to every you look like a twelve-year-old whore. She attaches herself to the I love yous. She finds solace in them. They are a mother’s affection, a boyfriend’s newfound commitment. Each one a kiss, a cool wave that laps at her feet, and she returns the feeling, typing away at her phone’s digital keyboard, telling her fans, Hey, I love u too!!!!
*
I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, Where are this girl’s parents? You think I’ll believe a story without parents? Listen: I wouldn’t believe it either. Parental factors are too often left out of the story. Parental factors are often sidelined. I understand your frustration about this. I’m getting there.
First, though, I need to tell you about the girl. Our little micro-celebrity.
Yes, you’ve heard right. The summer and fall months have flown on and left, in their wake, a dazzling fortuity of popularity. Routine wise, not much has changed. She records videos, uploads them, surrenders to the algorithm, is cast a bounteous supply of commentary, responds with [winky faces] and heartfelt pleasantries, reaps her [hearts], then starts the cycle once again. She has garnered over a hundred thousand followers. She now has a million in overall views. It has gotten to the point where she cannot respond to every comment flung at her feet.
For the most part, she enjoys this moderate fame. Life goes on. Videos are made. She is someone to a total stranger. She feels she has earned something for doing what she is good at, which, for her, is just being herself. And really how wonderful is that? To be recognized just for being yourself? It feels earned, too; she takes extra care during her morning and nighttime beauty routines which are now longer than her mother’s. (The girl claims you can never start too early on anti-aging cream. The first time she said this I told her it would be much simpler if she just paid to get cryogenically frozen. She wasn’t very amused by that at all.)
The one thing she hasn’t figured out is what to do with all this sudden attention. Namely, her school. Namely, the kids at her school.
She is used to being looked at. She grew up a pretty little thing and still is one. As a small child she was encouraged to climb into people’s laps, to bat her eyelashes at them and smile a full mouthed grin and thank them when they told her what a doll she was. She has been noticed by boys. She has had her share of high school flings, has found herself having to turn down the ones who just don’t make the cut—I’m sorry, she says, but I’m already with so-and-so…or, I’m just very, very busy right now with my academics… or, Can we be friends instead?
But even that was just a handful. She was unknown to the larger masses. Now, it’s the opposite. She is known by all. Eyes follow her down the hallway. Boys she does not know come up to her locker to tell her that she’s looking good. Girls tell her that she’s popping up on their feed at near constant. I’m sorry, she says. You can try blocking me if you want.
Oh, it’s not like that, they say. It’s just weird seeing you all the time, you know?
It’s like you live on my phone, another explains. Funny, right?
Sure, she says. Hilarious.
But none of this stops her from forging ahead. This is where her parents enter the story.
Her parents already know about her videos. Of course they know. They are her parents after all. No, they don’t have TikTok, but they know enough about it to gauge a general understanding of what it is and how it works. In their minds it is just another app that the young folks are using. No different from the rest.
They talk about it at dinner one night. The three of them are sitting at the kitchen table: the girl, her mother, her father. (It’s better to remain absent in a story like this.)
Where was I? That’s right: talking about it over dinner.
It’s not the parents who bring it up, it’s the girl. She has begun to experiment with going live and in doing so, she has begun to accept venmo requests. Donations from her viewers. So far she has made over four hundred dollars. This is what she tells her parents.
It’s kind of like Christmas, the girl says. Except I can make it happen whenever I want.
The parents are dumbfounded. They put down their cutlery. They look at each other. What do they say? Is this a good thing, or is it something they should be concerned about? The father decides to speak on the side of concern.
I’m not sure I like this idea of people giving you money, he says.
It’s just Venmo, dad.
Yes, but we don’t know who these people are.
That’s the internet for you.
She could have as easily said, That’s life for you, instead. Because really isn’t the internet just a reflection of life, a symbolic extension of ourselves?
Let me see your phone, the father says.
The girl parts with herself. She is nervous, jittery, when he goes through her profiles. But they are the same videos she’s been making from the get-go, nothing to be worried about, and he hands it back to her with his paternal nod of approval.
Just don’t give out any information, sweetie.
The girl scoffs. Oh, I’d never, she says—she’s not an idiot!
But it’s cool right? she says, scrolling through her many faces. I’m making money just by having fun.
Her parents nod and say that it’s a nice thing for her to have. And really that’s what they think. They’ve discussed this before, privately, when they first discovered that she was posting videos online. They have considered the people who are watching her from the other side. The polarized demographic—the dark side of the web. But so what? If their daughter enjoys it and does not do anything too damning, which they know she will not do, then what does it matter? And wouldn’t it be wrong to take away such a privilege? Besides, it could turn into something more. Already at fourteen she has an income. What other future prospects loom on her horizon?
*
This is the part when things get hairy. And for the exact reasons you would expect.
But first, the flowers. They are in bloom. It is springtime here in the San Joaquin Valley. The tulips and daffodils emerge from the ground, pushing out their bodies in spry buds; their flower-heads are shy and vibrant, bashful in bonnets of green. Each fall I forget how wonderful spring will be. The bloom that happens outside my very window is a magnificent thing to witness. There’s a small patch of daffodils blossoming right underneath.
The girl, though, does not concern herself with these blossoms. She is in her own bloom.
All day she retreats into her head where the flowers are brightest. School is remote. Voices enter into her periphery. A teacher’s sermon comes and goes, a student’s warbled recitation. Then they fade, evaporate into rising particles. A directorial chime carries the day to three o’clock and the student body saunters out at long last. The girl and her friends meet at their courtyard bench and walk beyond the school grounds. They stop underneath the shade of a sycamore. This is their after school spot, because of course they have another spot all to themselves. The girl kicks off her flats and, barefoot, she lowers herself onto the damp grass. The small needles prick her skin on her arms and legs and even under her skirt near her underwear. She laughs and adjusts it. She lies down and watches the tree sway above her, and there is the sun, the scoundrel, peeping in, stretching its effulgent rays, trying to wrap itself around her. She lies there watching it watch her. Her friends talk beside her and for a while she is awash with warm pleasure. An exhaustive pink glow runs through her length and into her toes, and she sits up at once and opens her phone to see if what she feels can be caught on camera. The face that looks back is smooth and polished, a thing of marble. She leans back into the grass and holds her reflection at arms length so it is positioned on top of her. A small vacuum is created. Nothing exists outside it. A whirling sensation engulfs her. That’s me, she thinks. That girl is me.
That’s when the text slips down from the edge of her phone. She sits back up, palms pressed into the grass. The blades slide through her fingers.
Hey, it reads. Her phone does not recognize the ten digit number.
Hey, she says to her friends. Anyone know who this is?
The girls cluster around and check their contact lists. There is a rush of excitement, and the girls gasp, say, Oh, it’s not what’s-his-name, do you think?, looking over each other’s shoulders and placing bets on who this mysterious caller could be. But nothing matches. The secret sender is not an ex, is not someone’s trickster family member. They check acquaintances too and still, nothing. The list starts to look grim. It’s too inexhaustible. Boredom sets in. Groans of mild frustration ease them back into the grass. Whatever, the friends say. Just ask. The girl isn’t too keen on asking. But her friends no longer seem to care, back as they are in their own worlds, and so she asks anyway. She types, hits send, and immediately a speech bubble forms at the bottom of the chat. Look, she says, he’s writing back already, and they all rouse back up and watch the ellipsis trail after itself in a never ending game of self-formation. The bubble disappears then reappears as solid text.
Im ur secret admirer, it says.
The response arouses a wild cry of revolt and amusement. What a thing to say! They point their fingers to their mouth, stick out their tongues.
Thats a weird thing to say, she writes.
Again, they must wait. The three dots fill them with irresistible anxiety. They hold their breaths.
Not if its tru, doe.
Who the hell is this guy, her friends say.
Who the hell are you, she writes.
Already told u. But I can tell u more, if u want.
What does all this mean?
It’s flirtatious, one friend says.
It’s gross, says another.
Don’t text back. It’ll only encourage him.
The girl can feel her breath shortening. Yeah, she says, you’re probably right.
Just to get some peace of mind she deletes the message chain, turns off her phone. She settles back into the grass and looks at the empty phone screen. Her reflection is still there, pinned to the glass, a blurred translucent shape against the dark of the screen. She tilts her head from side to side and the shape appears to hover and blaze with each simple movement and, at the same time, it appears to diminish into the soft light that shapes it. Whether the blazing or the diminishing is the stronger effect, she does not know. The only thing she knows for certain is that she is all the lovelier for it.
But of course she can’t leave her phone off forever. In her bedroom back at home, she turns it on again to an onslaught of messages from that same unknown caller.
Hey, you there?
Hello?
You better not be given me the silent treatment [pouting face]
Text me back
Hey
Answer me
Hey
Did you block me?
Hey, don’t be sucha bitch
Seeing this gives her a bout of vertigo and her legs buckle, sending her to the carpeted floor below. Again, she feels her breath shortening; she has to remember to breathe.
Please stop texting me, she writes.
The response comes instantaneously, as it did before. U know I cant do that right? it reads. Im ur biggest fan. Then from the silver-like screen comes one big purple [devil face].
The girl blocks him. Reports the message as junk. It’s just a troll, she tells herself, standing again and reassuring her body with expanding breaths. It’s just somebody who probably lives across the country, who she’s probably never met before. Nobody personal. Nobody she knows. Just some freak of a man who gets a rise out of making girls like her shiver. Some Tiktok follower gone rogue.
*
At first, she doubts this will work and for a couple days she stops posting videos. She considers deactivating her account temporarily—though this would be totally unfair. Why should she be silenced—isn’t she the one getting harassed? But the messages do stop, and she lets the odd exchange sink down to rest, her thoughts cleared of such uncomfortable suspension.
Days go by. Her normal life resumes. Her following, though not the exciting upshoot of yesteryear, rises steadily, unfurls a new frond every now and then. At school she is still a sensation. She has people coming up to her all the time. Some girls have even copied her videos, an annoying but harmless gesture.
It’s late April when a boy approaches her at her schoolyard bench. He’s on the skinner side, tall in that lanky boyish way, his arms sticking out of an oversized graphic tee, no doubt he’s been stretched out by a rolling pin from last year to now. Curls are gathered into a small mop atop his head, and there’s a blonde streak of fuzz lining his upper lip like a milk stain. He has let his eyebrows run amok to the point where it is most certainly a unibrow.
There is something familiar about the way he looks. She must have met him once and yet she can not for the life of her remember his name.
Hi, he says. He stands before her and clutches his arm.
(Tim? Eric? Steve?)
Can I, uh, uh—the boy fidgets, looks past her, releases his arm, rubs his nose—Can I talk to you?
(Ethan? Kyle? Sam?)
Like, somewhere private? he says.
Okay, she says.
She gets up from her bench and walks with him to a nearby tree. The boy walks ahead of her. One of his legs is rolled out a little more than the other so that he stumbles forward and catches himself in a makeshift hobble. The tree is ahead of them and the girl sees, looking back, that he’s taking her to the side that’s hidden from view. There are a few kids sitting at the curbside, and she stops ahead of them, crossing her arms.
Hey, she says. What’s this about?
The boy stops, slouches, doesn’t face her entirely; there’s a far-away look in his eyes. Something is wrong. She can still turn and run. The adrenaline is there, pounding her chest—she can kick his crotch, make him fold, and run back to her bench.
I got a text asking for your address, he says.
What?
Someone was asking for it.
What are you talking about, she says.
He shows her the text message and yes, there it is, someone asking for her address. It’s an unrecognizable number for the boy too. There is desperation in the messages. The sender asks, then demands, then pleas for her address. He is willing, he writes, to pay up to two grand for it. It’s all he has left in his bank account. Originally, the sender reached out to the boy on Venmo. No name other than AvidNinjaWarrior66. He had already donated a hundred dollars to her enterprise. The boy himself had donated a hefty fifteen. In the comment section, the boy wrote: See you at prison JKJKJK see you at school [grinning face].
Just give me her address. Ill pay u right now.
The girl looks back at him. She fidgets. She feels herself shake.
Not that you’d know where I live, anyway, she says. Unless you’re stalking me. She laughs though it’s really not funny. Then she says, You’re not, right?
No, he says. He blinks a few times. Of course not.
Then he gets angry. He looks her dead in the eye. He’s no longer sheepish, no longer a slouching awkward kid, but is, with his shoulders drawn back and his chest puffed out, something of a menace, and he rises above her and looks down at her with a cold hurt like he’s about to spit on her or throttle her by the neck.
Really? he says, You think I’d do something like that?
I don’t know, she says. How would I know?
*
This is everything I know so far. The girl in question has been pacing around my room, detailing out the last chapter of what she is calling Her Situation. Back and forth she goes, her voice quavering into a shrill pitch then breaking, dropping, back into a mutter. She pivots at the window then again at the door, then back again she goes, to and fro in clockwork pendulum. Then she stops with a face full of panic, Should I tell dad?
What do you think? I say.
I don’t know, she says. I guess I should. I don’t know.
She starts pacing again. There’s still time to deliberate. It’s only four in the afternoon. Mom won’t get home until a little after five, and dad will walk in just in time for dinner.
Oh I hate this, she says. She sits down on my bed. She says, You think they’ll be mad? What she means by this is, Will they take away my freedom?
I shrug but she’s not looking at me. She’s looking out the window. There’s a car pulling up into the driveway and I can hear the rubber wheels scraping against the concrete. It’s an old beemer, a beat-up one too, with the original black paint stripped back on the hood so that the dull metallic coating underneath is showing. We’re both thinking the same thing—someone has turned into the wrong driveway. We watch it sit there rumbling. Then the ignition dies. Nobody gets out of the car.
Did you lock the door, I ask, but it’s more of an admonishment than a question and I’m already downstairs, pushing the deadbolt further into its socket, when the window shatters. Glass crashing in like someone’s punched through a mirror. There’s a screaming all around me, somebody shouting the girl’s name. A whip cracks and more glass flies in. The girl is there at the top of the staircase and I shout at her to get back into the bedroom, to call the police, and I don’t look behind me, I don’t hesitate, I push up the stairs and into the bedroom and lock the door.
She’s screaming into the phone, There’s someone in my house. Someone’s broken into my house!
There’s a thumping underneath us and laughing too. Boots making their way up the stairs. I wedge my chair underneath the doorknob and just as I do, the doorknob rattles.
Please. There’s someone—!
Listen to me, a voice yells from behind the door. I’m gonna blow this door down.
It’s a man’s voice. Or a boy’s. No one I know. It’s baritone in pitch and swollen with rage. It stabs through the closed door and I imagine that it belongs to no one in particular but is itself a hovering entity, a great mass of sound.
I’m going to blow this goddamn door right off its hinges. You understand?
It’s a flimsy door and he knows, just as I do, what blowing down the door would mean. The girl knows too. She has stopped screaming. She has stopped everything. She is standing there with the phone at her ear, silent as a lamb.
The operator on the other end is deliberate and persistent: What’s your location? Ma’am, you need to tell us where you are.
Behind the door the sound is panting.
I’m going to blow it down, it says again. Unless you drop that fucking phone.
The voice says this cool-like, the way you’d slick back greased hair.
Around us the walls seem to shimmer and expand with the filtered light from the window. The girl lets her phone drop from her hand and there’s a slight thud and the operator’s ongoing voice is muted by the carpet below. The girl’s face is shiny and wet as though she’s fallen into a pond.
Now, the voice says. I want you to open this door, okay? That’s the only way I can get in without busting up your room. So you need to open the door otherwise I’ll bust in here and you don’t want that. I don’t want that. We both don’t want that, right? Which means we want the same thing. Don’t you think? We want the same thing.
But that’s not true. Of course it isn’t. What the girl wants is herself. She has wanted herself from the very beginning. But everything she is has been taken up, and she feels herself filling with water, each breath a sharp twinge, and she thinks violently about what to do, what she can do, with a body that is no longer there.
We both want the same thing, it repeats.
She stands, gasping for air, and instead of going to the door and following the echo to its end, she opens the window behind her, pushing out the screen until the frame breaks open. The breeze is cool and the daffodils below her are bobbing their brilliant heads and I know, just looking at them, that they will take her in and deliver her to where she cannot be found.