Morning does not arrive clean but grainy, as if the day were tuned in slightly off-frequency and the world carries a faint background hiss that no one else seems to hear, and she wakes already aware of her own outline too sharply, as if her skin were drawn tighter than yesterday, and when she shifts the lower half of her body answers in small coded sparks that travel upward before dissolving, and she lies still listening to the inside-noise, the low electric murmur under ribs, and she tells herself bruiseonly bruiseonly because bruises bloom invisible before turning visible and the mind prefers delayed evidence, and outside a car passes and its tires make a long wet shhhhh against asphalt and the sound folds into last night’s bassline and the bassline into breathpressure and she closes her eyes but the darkness does not quiet, it flickers.

  At school the corridors elongate corridoridor corridoridor and every locker-slam ricochets too loudly and voices arrive a fraction too late or too early and she feels slightly mis-synced with the day, like a film where sound and image do not quite align, and when someone brushes past her hip there is a flare smallbright sharpquick and she masks it with a smile that arrives half a beat after the required one, and the rabbitmask does not appear fully now but flickers in peripheral blur—just earshadows where there are only coat collars, just hollow-eyes in the dark space between two laughing faces—and she blinks and the corridor returns to ordinariness, fluorescent and stale, and she thinks maybe it is simply lack of sleep and lack of sleep makes ghosts out of geometry.

  Someone walks beside her and their shoulder is warm and real and they speak about nothing and everything at once—math test, band rehearsal, festival rumors—and the words skim the surface of her hearing without anchoring, and when they say you sure you’re okay there is a soft static under the sentence, not accusation but interference, and she says fine and the word lands and buzzes faintly like wire pulled taut, and they study her face for longer than usual and she tilts it slightly away not dramatically just angleadjust angleadjust so that the light falls differently and hides what she cannot name, and they reach for her hand and her body answers before thought arrives and she withdraws half an inch and then corrects it and takes their hand and the correction feels heavier than the withdrawal.

  Sitting in class becomes choreography and she lowers herself slowly calculating weight-distribution and the chair seems harder than before and the contact-point speaks in quiet pulses and she keeps her back straight and her breathing even and her face neutral and the teacher’s voice drifts in long chalkdust strands across the room, and she imagines the grass again not rising and the thought strikes too cleanly and she pushes it aside by focusing on the word temporary which now appears everywhere—temporary seating, temporary stage, temporary discomfort—and the repetition frays and becomes tempo-rary tempo-rary a drumcount under everything, and she wonders how long temporary must last before it hardens into permanent and the thought glows too brightly and she dims it with logic and logic thins and static fills the gaps.

  At lunch she moves carefully and laughter cracks around her like glassware and someone re-enacts a festival moment exaggerated and harmless and the story contains none of her frames and she listens for any misstep in the retelling any mention of a girl gone missing for a second too long and finds none, and the absence grows heavier than accusation, and the rabbitmask flickers again not on a person but reflected in the metal rim of a cafeteria tray, distorted elongated grotesquely comic and she almost smiles because it looks absurd, ridiculous, a carnival leftover, and the absurdity offers a thin filament of relief and she clings to it for half a breath before the lower ache interrupts and reminds her that the body remembers even when language does not.

  When she walks home the pavement feels different underfoot not softer not harder but deliberate and the sky hangs low and indifferent and the fence at the meadow perimeter vibrates faintly in memorytone and she thinks about signal and noise and which of the two she has become, and the world continues with mechanical steadiness—cars passing, doors closing, a dog barking twice—and she carries the static inside her like a second atmosphere, invisible but constant, and she tells herself it will fade, and the telling is quiet and almost convincing, and the hiss continues just beneath hearing, just beneath speech, just beneath the place where something once felt unbroken.