In the last moment before she jumped, she saw her mother’s face twisted into a scowl of disgust (and her father, behind her mother, staring past Malena as though she were not there, as though she didn’t exist, had never existed) and she saw Romina too, blank-eyed, indifferent, the faces blurring into each other as one united truth, a thesis confirmed, this is this, this is not that, will never be. Spring, release, away from all that, into the ocean, the living ocean, the great blue arms of the only one she knew would never hate her, and she’d been planning for so long that
