She knew, I presumed Ray had told her, that she was only temporarily free, that she would be remanded at her sentencing hearing. But it seemed indecent to speak of this, and we were all pretending that all of the bad part was over now, that she would never be parted from us again, that the two nights she had spent away were an aberration and that Ray and Swanson had saved the day.

I looked at her pink cheek as she watched the passing buildings through the window, and I wanted to gobble her up. I wanted to consume her. I wanted to tell her that I loved her and hold her tight. I wanted to smell her skin and close my eyes and beg God to let me keep her.

“Can we eat something?” she said. “The food in there was terrible.”

* * *

—

That night I startled awake, certain that someone was trying to break into my room through the window. I fell off the bed, and for just a moment my kidneys and liver flared, every nerve lit up in agony, and I was certain I had exploded them within my body. It had been weeks since I had felt anything more than mild soreness, and the pain evacuated the air from my lungs.

“Are you okay?” Bunny asked, and she was kneeling over me. She was wearing red lipstick and she stank of perfume as sweet and synthetic as new plastic.

“Why are you in here?” I asked. I had never seen Bunny in red lipstick before, and somehow in the dim moonlight it made her unrecognizable to me. Like this was a dream and her face was trying to turn into someone else’s face.

“I was going out the window,” she said.

“Why?” I asked. I already halfway knew, but I wanted to make her say it. Somehow, fury had opened inside me like a parachute, when I had been previously unaware of harboring any rage at all.

“Eric’s waiting,” she said, pointing at the window.

“Don’t go,” I said. “Don’t go fuck that shitbag.”

She shook her head, like she didn’t know what to say, tugged on her ponytail and turned away from me toward the window. I scrambled to my feet and put myself in front of her.

“Seriously. Don’t. Bunny, don’t go.”

“I’m just gonna go for an hour,” she said. “I’m coming back.”

“It’s not that I think you’re running away—it’s that you are not his two a.m. booty call. He can’t just text and then come get you and get a blow job and then let you go to fucking prison!”

“I. Want,” she said, saying the words slowly, with dramatic space in between each one, “To. See. Him.”

“It’s a bad idea,” I spit back at her. But I wondered if I was just pearl clutching. Who was I to deny her the quick thrill of giving a blow job in a car, of gliding through a sleeping town, of feeling that one’s life is one’s own.

“It’s my bad idea,” she said, and she shoved me with her shoulder as she tried to get past me. I stumbled, but caught myself, and walked backward to keep myself between her and the window. “Bunny, Bunny, Bunny,” I was saying.

“Get out of my fucking way,” she said, and I could see the muscles in her neck widen and swell as she stood up taller, trying to intimidate me.

“Please don’t. Don’t go,” I said, begging in a way that reminded me of my mother.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” she said. We were backed up to the window, I could feel the cool glass against my shoulder blades through my T-shirt. There was no farther to go.

“Get out of my way.”

I didn’t move.

“Get out of my way,” she said.

“Bunny, Eric is a bad guy, he’s not nice. He’s not—”

“I don’t want to hurt you,” she said again.

“Just—there are going to be so many other guys. There are going to be so many other—”

“No, there’s not!” she shouted in my face, and then she bent forward and I didn’t understand what she was going to do until she heaved her shoulder into my abdomen and hoisted me like a sack of dog food and threw me hard across the room. I think she may have meant to throw me on the bed, but my velocity was such that I skidded across the satin coverlet and hit the floor beyond it. My organs screamed and I lost my eyesight. Then I started breathing again and I blinked and blinked until I could see the patch of carpet in front of me. I could hear the window scrape open. I could hear Eric impatiently honk like an idiot. I could hear her feet crunching along the roof. I could hear the thump as she jumped down into the yard. I could hear the car door open, a rush of music, then close. I could hear the engine and the tires on the pavement as he drove away, taking the stop sign at a roll and then making the right. I could hear the wind entering the window. I could hear the fibers in the carpet shifting underneath my face. I could hear my heart beating, a disgusting wet sound like the bag of innards in a chicken, but hot, pulsing. I could hear time unskeining like ribbon off a spool, and the fact that it would never stop seemed merciless.

But wouldn’t I have gone if it were Anthony in that car waiting for me?

And I knew then why I didn’t want her to go. It was because I wanted her to stay with me. I wanted our friendship to be enough. I wanted these last days together to somehow be about our closeness. I wanted her tragedy to belong to me.

The day Bunny was remanded at her sentencing hearing was a Tuesday. In the days between our late-night altercation and her court date we were quiet and formal with each other. She didn’t apologize, and I didn’t bring it up. I texted Anthony that I missed him, then immediately texted again saying I shouldn’t have sent that and asking him not to reply. The morning of her court appearance, she knocked at my door. She was already dressed for court in a pink angora sweater and gray skirt that Swanson had picked out and dropped off at the house without anyone having asked. I didn’t see what difference it made at this point, but we all supposed he knew what he was doing. As the doom of her court date came nearer, Swanson became ever more manically cheerful. Anytime anyone said the phrase “three years,” Swanson would chime, “But she’ll get half-time credits! Eighteen months, folks, eighteen months.” He sounded like a game show host.

“Hey,” she said, “I have something for you.” She came in and sat on the edge of my bed. She was holding a thick manila envelope. “So I withdrew enough of the money from that account my dad has in my name and I paid off my Jeep. I’m signing it over to you. Here are the keys and the manual, and here’s the pink slip. So all you have to do is take this form to the DMV to transfer the title, I’ve already signed it.”

“Are you kidding me?” I asked. “Bunny, this is too much.”