Kara was the receptionist at the Aboriginal housing co-op in Launceston. She was the face, the voice, the first point of contact. She was used to copping shit, but that didn’t make it any more palatable.

Leonie and I were twelve years old when the first girl in our grade had her Adventure.

Most people well enough to work with their bodies have left the village by now, headed for higher ground. I hear stories of what is out there, not so far away, closer to the sea—miles and miles of rusted, peeling, broken structures strewn across the land, hulking shapes like beached whales, their webbed plastic flesh torn away from their ribbed metal frames. Into the giant fruit of industry, the natural world is moving. It disassembles and it fills everything.  

“You jealous people don't know me well!” Marisela said, clapping her hands. The adults asked what was wrong. Marisela shook her head. “You wicked people have stolen my underwear!”

Noh Eunbi dies in a ditch in Delaware, and you will see her ghost.

I got the feeling everyone we knew was partially in love with her. That the two of us were alone and naked under the stars seemed to me like the most fortunate of coincidences.