The girls’ signals reached us and no one else, like a radio station picked up by our braces. At night, afterimages flashed on our inner eyelids, or hovered over our beds like a swarm of fireflies. Our inability to respond only made the signals more important. We watched the show nightly, always on the verge of discovering the key, and Joe Larson even tried flashing his own bedroom light in answer, but this made the Lisbon house go dark, and we felt reprimanded.
