I dance to Charlie’s music, spin and spin and forget about my cousin screaming and my mum pissing me off and how sick I am of this town. She loads songs onto my laptop and I need her to be like that, to want to be my friend, but I’m thinking at the same time, Why would you do that? Why give yourself away to someone who said the things I did in the backyard this afternoon? I said them by accident; I didn’t mean to hurt her, but I still said them.

“This song was my gran’s favorite,” she tells me, and I’m expecting some old guy to come on but instead “I’m gonna smash up the world” screams from the speakers. “We didn’t play it at the funeral,” Charlie says, and almost laughs.

I wouldn’t go to her gran’s funeral and it was practically next door. “I barely know the Duskins,” I’d told Mum when she asked, and it’s the first thing she didn’t push me on. I guess she figured she couldn’t make me care. Dave went with his parents and I gave him shit about wearing a suit.

Charlie and her dad stayed for about a week. Dave and I were sitting at the bus stop when they left. We weren’t waiting for anything; we were filling in time. She kissed her grandpa goodbye. He barely kissed her back. I looked at Dave to say something, but he was staring at his shoes. “Let’s find Luke,” he said, and took off ahead of me up the street.

Old Mr. Duskin still ran the shop after that, but there wasn’t much you could buy in the place. Mum sent me in for things like cans of tomatoes and pineapple that we didn’t even need. I started sneaking into the supermarket when Mum sent me for things. The only time I went back into the Duskins’ shop was when Dave wanted something. “You can get that at the supermarket,” I told him.

“I know,” he said, and went inside to buy it from Charlie’s grandpa.

“Thanks,” I say before Charlie goes. “For the music. For hanging out.”

She acts like it’s no big deal. “I’ll burn you some more stuff,” she says.

“You should bring your guitar next time. Sing me some of your songs.”

“Nah. They’re just things I write to make me and Dahlia, my best friend, laugh.”

“If Dahlia laughs, then I probably will.”

“Dahlia’s not hard to make laugh,” she says. “She still cracks up when you say ‘butt’ to her.”

I think Charlie might be lying. I don’t think she plays at all. “Well, I’ll listen when you feel like it.”

After she’s gone, I play the music she left me. I watch the tiny protistan shells, and I think about her telling me I’ll leave here. The light makes them look like old blue Fords and guitars drifting through the ocean. The last song on my laptop is about a night with no moon. The singer’s voice is velvet and sad. “Silver dots in darkness,” she sings. “She’s miles away from morning. Midnight blood is thick with longing.”

I drift, almost sleeping, and the voice drifts around me. A thought about silkworms drifts as well. Mum bought me some a long time ago. They spin silk inside the cocoon, but to get at it you have to boil them alive before they hatch. One of my teachers told me and I came home and asked Mum if it was true. She nodded. “But we just won’t use them for silk,” she said. “We’ll keep them as pets; that’s all.” I ran my hand over the rough cocoon. I wanted so bad to see the silk.

The singer spins the chorus one last time.