The dogs had torn through her sneakers years ago, but Texas was dry enough most days that Marcie never really needed them intact anyways. Today she sat perched in the lower branches of an oak tree, chewing through her fingernails like tough gristle.

The mosquitoes were circling like they always did in the late afternoon, in low angry clusters, swarming her face and ankles. Her denim jeans scarcely covered her knees, leaving the meat of her calves exposed to their wrath. Marcie did not think about this as she watched the rope below her twist, carrying in its knot the thick rubber of a worn out tyre.

She tried not to think of Sierra.

The name alone made something hot and sour curdle in the pit of her stomach.

She leant against the trunk and looked out over the lake then, laid out in front of her like green glass, bathed in a syrupy yellow light. She ran an ink stained hand through her choppy hair and tried to imagine what the pace would look like if it was colder, like it was up in Wisconsin: frozen over and blue-white, with kids skating across the lake like it was sewn into their skin, snow banks and snowmen lining the ice like sentinels. She’d definitely need proper shoes then, chunky snowboots with spikes on them.

She tried not to think of Sierra.

Her cousin, Grace, had said that up in Madison, women held hands all the time. Her friends: Sabre and Melanie, could kiss and hug and call each other babe and go ice skating and fall into each others arms in a laughing lump of tangled arms and legs, and no one would look twice.

Sierra had said the same thing about Austin.

She tried not to think about that now.

She thought about it anyways: the college campus both girls had only just allowed themselves to dream of, Sierra’s sweating dark hand enclosed in Marcie’s, nail polish chipping. The way the sun made the grass look unreal, too bright and plush like a fairytale. The way the jock in the quad had glared at them, and Marcie had brushed it off as nothing because this was Austin and her future and she was supposed to be free here.

The sound Sierra made when he broke her ribs. The way Marcie had just stood there. The way everyone had, and the world went still for a full minute, punctuated solely by Sierra’s gurgling blood and that guy’s wicked smile, and that word, that unrepeatable word that fell on Sierra like a knife and cut Marcie up anyways.

The sound of the sirens afterwards.

The way Sierra had never looked Marcie in the eye since.