But Rebecca cannot be dissuaded. On Sunday we pile in the truck and drive to the skating rink. We park at the back entrance and bring the decorations inside. The rink appears to be owned by a happy family. Not one of them is over five feet tall. The father tries to be friendly as Eric is calibrating the helium tank, but this task has become so complicated that Eric’s laughter, which is meant to be polite, comes out more as an honest indication that he would like the man to go away. Though this was her idea, Rebecca is not much better. She bites her nails as one of the family’s teenage children explains the regulations of the party room. While I set out the napkins and paper plates, she is on the phone. She is talking in a low, threatening voice with the mothers of Akila’s guests, who all seem to have called with last-minute news. All the while, Akila is there, helping with the crepe and streamers. Her wig shifts when she bends down to put on her skates. Eric goes over to her and helps her tie them, and though my relationship with my father was not ideal, I recognize the look that passes between them, a look that is conspiratorial, that temporarily eschews the boundary between parent and child for the recognition of some mutual misery, in this case, a birthday party that neither of them wants to attend. The by-product of this alliance is that it often throws the other parent under the bus as a matter of course, though as a kid, this is what makes it great. When I was young, I didn’t understand it was cruel. My father’s remarks about my mother’s moods and Bible studies felt innocuous and brought some air in the room, his ambivalence about God appearing to be a welcome bit of levity as opposed to what it really was—a profound vacuum in the place where God used to go. During the years he killed for his country, he’d killed God, too, and he came back home inspired to make one of his own.

* * *

Only two kids show up. They arrive at the same time and look at each other as it dawns on them that they are the only ones. And they are late. Rebecca runs out of the party room with bloody fingernails and confetti in her hair and ushers them into the room where Akila is waiting in a blue party hat. There is another party across the hall composed entirely of senior citizens, and they are extremely loud. When Rebecca goes over to ask if they can keep it down, they say that no, they cannot. Members from the happy family keep popping in to ask if we are expecting more guests, and after a query from the smallest son, Eric emerges from his dark corner and says This is it, okay, and he doesn’t yell, but he is large and the optics are not great. The two guests make a valiant effort to talk to Akila, but the conversation always seems to fizzle out. The guests begin talking only to each other. And no one can tell what the pi?ata is supposed to be. Akila spends three minutes making direct contact, and though I have watched her break through boards with ease, the pi?ata won’t give. Eventually Rebecca just rips it down from the ceiling and tears it open with her hands. As she is doing this, the mother from the happy family comes in with the cake and the number of candles is wrong. At this point, everyone in the room has become so attuned to Rebecca’s growing fury that, upon the revelation about the candles, the room holds its collective breath. Rebecca stands motionless before the cake. For a while nothing happens, and then Eric laughs. And then Akila laughs and the room follows suit. High on having dodged that particular bullet, we all put on our skates and head out into the rink. The neighboring party is already out and having a time. It is three in the afternoon and they are all drunk. Akila goes out and skates by herself, and I roll up beside her so she won’t be alone, but she feels my charity and skates away. The neighboring party keeps giving the DJ candy bars, and so between the Spice Girls and Drake there is Paul Anka and Nat King Cole. Rebecca is making a show of having fun. She skates circles around Eric and tries to get him to play along, but he is very unstable and sticks to the sides. And of course, there is disco. The big ones—“YMCA” and “Bad Girls” and “Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now,” songs that have transcended genre into concept, songs you don’t so much listen to as project your memory onto the wax, songs so fascistically joyful that when “That’s the Way” comes on I have no choice but to look at Eric to see if he is remembering with me, and he is not. He is on the side of the rink, looking at something on his phone. As “Whip It” emerges out of “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes,” a chipped disco ball descends from the ceiling. But something is wrong. The motorized arm strains, and when I look over to the happy family, they are all craned over the dashboard by the register, readjusting the dials. Everyone pauses to watch, and so when the chain snaps, it does not feel like a technical failure so much as a deference to our collective will. Akila is waiting with outstretched arms. The force of it buckles her knees. She cradles the ball against her chest and looks into the glass. A stunned murmur ripples through the crowd, and everyone is still as she moves, her face dappled in the ball’s recycled light. It makes me think of the first time I saw her, the way she seemed slightly unreal, like a glitch, with her dark eyes and shiny, synthetic hair. Now, the dissonance feels dire. It weighs me down as I watch her glide to the edge of the rink, set the ball down, take off her skates, and ask if she can go home.

* * *

At home, we disperse to our separate rooms. Akila’s gifts, which were hauled out of the party room and back into the truck, sit unopened in the dining room. At midnight, Akila knocks on my door. She says she has reason to believe that the woman who is trying to put out the fire is the mail clerk’s mother. Since the mail clerk doesn’t engage in direct combat, his HP depends entirely on the successful management of his mood. To keep it stable, we visit the mess tent and talk the NPCs to the end of their script, though bad selections can be more damaging than doing nothing at all. If we have coffee instead of tea. If we engage the lieutenant and he shows us a photo of his dog. I suggest that we try opening the mail, but his mood is not high enough to absorb the illegality and it kills him instantly. I get up to leave, but Akila calls my name. She considers me and then removes her wig. She puts it down on the floor inside out, and there is a tag sewn between the weft that says Party Supply. Then I look at her, and for a moment, I assume she is wearing a wig cap, but it is her scalp, exposed and covered in chemical scars.

“You let it stay in too long,” I say.

“I thought it was supposed to burn,” she answers, and this too is part of that common tongue. Sodium hydroxide and the real estate of the scalp. The first time I lost my hair, I was ten and no one was home. My hands were too small for the gloves that came in the box, and the relaxer, bought in secret at a sparse, upstate Beauty Supply, singed the back of my neck. I hid the hair I’d lost in a bin near the community pool, and once my mother realized what had generated my new interest in scarves, she didn’t talk to me for a week. I go to my room and find my shea butter, jojoba oil, and silk scarf. When I return, I have her sit between my knees so that I can have a closer look, and I notice that in the hair she still has, her curls are still intact. She says that she panicked. That she wanted to be different for the party. As I wrap the scarf, I am too aware of her head. I am aware of her skull, of the vulnerability of her thirteen-year-old bones. I leave the oil and shea on her dresser, and for a while I am unable to sleep. Because she is thirteen, and I remember how it felt from the inside. I remember what I thought I knew about people, and the pride I took in being alone. But from the outside, the loneliness is palpable, and I think, She is too young.

* * *