Ribafterrib the meadow receives its metalling spine and she sees it—no, halfsees it—through schoolglass smearlight where the afternoon leans and blurs and the men in their neonskins (harehelm hinting, earshadow tilt though surely only hardhats, surely) drive stake-thud into sodsoft underbreath earth and the wire is drawn and drawn and overdrawn until it keens thinthin like a dental-drill mosquito hymn, eeen-eeee-ennnn, and someone says massive this year and someone says fifteen thousand and fifteen thousand folds into lungmass pressmass grassmass and she swallows and something low in her folds folds back and the sky above is a blankblue eyelid unblinking and the field begins to gridgrid grid itself into corridoridor dooridor goreidor and she cannot quite remember how it looked before the lines arrived and perhaps it always had lines and perhaps she never noticed.

  Hallwayclang laughterchaff perfume-fume and Callum’s message blinking smallbright in her palm—both days?—and she types probably because probably is a woolword and woolwords wrap and muffle and do not interrogate and she walks lockerlong through blurfaces blurfaces blurfaces and one of them for a ticktick is rabbitlong rabbitmask blankeye but no it is only theatreposter leftover from spring production and she almost laughs at the brain for its trickery because nothing has happened nothing yet and still the mind splices in wrongfilm reels—grainy carnivalcut where poles rise and rise and tilt toward a girlshape centreframe and the soundtrack is bass-throb under laughterloop and the girl laughs too loud and the laugh tears midair—and she shakes her head smallsmall to reseat the present and the present obliges but not entirely.

  After school she meadowdrifts and the fence stands nearer now silvergrid toothline ribcage-of-air and she hooks her fingers into one square and the square holds her back or she holds it forward and the metal is cold-bite warm-bite both at once and a zzzt runs through the lattice like nervouscurrent and she leans her forehead there and the world misfires—grass flattenflash without wind, a shoe alone-alone in the long blades, microphone stands rising longblack slender and then bending and then no they are only flagpoles only poles only festival infrastructure innocentinnocent and yet the poles tilt tilt in her sight as if listening and the rabbitmask reappears not on a man but hanging from a child’s backpack earflop earflop and the ears grow longer longer become antennae become questionmarks hooked in air and she thinks stopthinking but the thought itself sprouts legs and runs.

  Callum waves from pathside and he is normalboy normalhand normalgrin and for one halfsecond half-lifetime he doublesplit into boy-and-shadow and the shadow wears nothing but blankness and she blinks blinkblink and the split reseals and she lifts her hand a fraction late and the lateness stretches elasticthin and snaps back into nothing and the fence hums and the hum threads into her inner ear and becomes a bassline not yet played thudthud under futurelights and she tastes iron though she has bitten nothing and the word temporary loops tempo-rary tempo-rary tempo-rary until it sheds its meaning and becomes only drumcount and the meadow stands obedient and already-not and she cannot tell if she is remembering forward or foreseeing backward and the sky keeps its blankblue eyelid lowered and does not blink.