everyone orbited each other, boxed into their own private worlds, swirling with unnamable emotions. They were looking at each other through glass cages at the zoo or aquarium tanks, together and not. What were they now, she asked, studying how they paced and fretted. Madeline was a horseshoe crab, dragging along the bottom of her tank. Nick was a betta fish, fine alone but ready to attack a mirror. Nothing had changed in two weeks. No news. Her parents were the worst. They were fish who’d forgotten how to swim.
