“I had a pillow,” her mother corrected her. “I don’t anymore. And it wasn’t made at the expense of the Community.”

“It caught!” Celeste came bounding out of the bushes with a jackrabbit by its ears. It kicked its legs as she skipped, swinging it like it was an extension of her arm. Its pelvis looked crushed, but it was still alive. When Celeste saw Bea, she stopped. She looked at the hare. It gave a plaintive cry to whatever hare friend might hear it.

Her mother appraised Celeste, the hare, Agnes, her proximity to Jake, and Patty’s attempt to secretly chew jerky.

“The pillow is one thing,” she said, “but really, Agnes. Rogue hunting? Keeping food from the Community? That is unacceptable.”

“What do you care about the Community?” Agnes snapped, jumping to her feet. “Drinking your milk, breaking curfew. We were better off when we thought you were dead.”

Somewhere Agnes heard a gasp. She was not sure where it came from, and wouldn’t have been surprised if it had come from her own dry throat.

Her mother’s face arched in surprise. She slapped Agnes.

The birds in the bushes were still and silent. Jake had leapt to his feet, but he stayed back.

Her mother’s face was on fire. “You think because you lead our walks that makes you an adult. Adults follow the rules or face the consequences. You’re still shielded from it all. I won’t always be able to protect you, Agnes.”

Celeste snorted. “When did you ever protect her?” she said. “I’ve certainly never seen it.”

“And just who the fuck are you?” spat Bea.

Celeste clamped her mouth shut. She looked years younger than she was, like a child on the verge of blubbering. She broke the rabbit’s neck urgently, as though trying to reclaim some standing.

“There are ways you can get in real trouble out here, Agnes,” her mother said. “This isn’t a game.”

“I know that.”

“Do you?” A worried look overcame her but was quickly replaced again with anger. What was she so angry about? She saw her mother eye the limp rabbit a split second before she swiped the rabbit from Celeste, leaving the girl’s hands empty, coated in clumps of fur.

“This animal isn’t yours,” her mother said, shaking droplets of blood from the slack rabbit’s mouth at the Twins and Jake. “It belongs to everyone. And you—” She turned to Agnes, her eyes bloodshot. “This place,” she snarled, pointing to the ground, “isn’t yours either.”

A ghostly feeling formed in Agnes’s gut. Something familiar but covered in cobwebs. She stomped her feet. Clenched her fists. “I hate you,” she said, forming each word into a hard stone that rolled off her tongue and dropped dead at her mother’s feet.

Fleetingly, between postures, her mother gave herself away, slumping more desperately than anything Agnes had seen. Their eyes briefly met. Her mother’s held a question, one as desperate as her stance, as needful and longing-filled. Then, like in an eclipse, that vulnerable look was blacked out by one that was hard, intimidating, unloving.

She turned away, throwing that new strange laugh of hers over her shoulder at Agnes. “Of course you hate me,” she barked. “I’m your mother.” With the rabbit flapping against her thigh, leaving blood splats behind, she disappeared back into the brush. She became untouchable again.

*

As Agnes approached bed that night, she found Glen lying stiffly in the skins. Her mother lay next to him. Their hands touched, index fingers hooked to each other, but no other part of them made contact along their length. They stared up into the sky as though paralyzed, comatose, dead. But when Agnes stood over them, Glen smiled with great effort, his eyes red-rimmed. Her mother’s smile was taut and unwelcoming. Still, Glen and her mother scooted apart and made room for her in between them. She didn’t understand.

“Come lie down here for the night,” Glen said.

Her mother had scooted almost all the way off the bed. Probably so she would be as far from me as possible, Agnes thought.

Agnes lay between them. Her mother and Glen held hands over her. Her mother was fidgety, picking at Glen’s fingers with hers, as though preoccupied, or nervous. Agnes wondered if it had to do with what she had said to her. She had never said it before. She didn’t really hate her mother. Yet her mother had laughed it off. She seemed to expect it.

Agnes turned to her mother slightly. She remembered then how she had often crept into her mother’s room in the early dawn. Agnes woke up too early, before the sun was even lightening the sky, but her body, her mind, wouldn’t let her fall back to sleep. Her mother would be asleep in her bed on her side. Always open to her, even in sleep. Agnes would curl into her, and her mother’s arm would automatically envelop her. And like that, Agnes could doze again until her mother’s alarm buzzed.

Agnes scooted toward her mother, but her mother turned away. Her body tense, a barrier, a wall. Glen tried to pull Agnes back, but she reached out, clasped her mother’s shoulder, and tried to roll her back.

“I’m sorry, Mama,” she whispered, trying to get closer, rooting into her neck, her soft cheek.

But her mother was now rolling away and was up, up to her feet. Quiet like an animal.

Agnes sat up. Glen tried to pull her back down.

“Back to sleep,” he sang anxiously.

But she jerked her arm away.

Her mother was slinking across the circle of beds. She stopped at Carl and Val’s bed, then crawled under the hide with them. The firelight flickered over them. Around the circle of beds, eyes peered, curious. A moment later, a confused moan, and then a still sleeping Val rolled out from the skins onto the cold dirt. From her sleep, Val clawed at the air, then awoke fully, became alert and reached toward them, for Carl, under the skins. But Bea emerged again, drew her fist back, and struck Val’s face. Agnes heard the crunch of bones. Heard Val’s cry of pain. Heard the Community’s quiet gasps around the sleep circle. Val clasped her nose, but her mother pried Val’s hand away and punched her again. And again. Val screamed and howled, then gurgling, turned away. She curled, hand to her face, wheezing through a mangled nose.

Agnes saw her mother use her leg to shove Val’s balled-up body away from the bed and farther out into the uncertain glow of the half-moon.

Under where her mother now lay with Carl, there was some commotion, some wrestling; then Agnes heard unmistakable sounds. Animal sounds. Something she’d seen countless times in the wild but couldn’t reconcile with the vision before her. Her mother on top of Carl, bucking as though on horseback. This normal act of life she thought she had figured out becoming strange again. She felt indignant. Around the circle, people brazenly watched the spectacle. Val howled with rage as she crawled away, grabbing Dr. Harold’s pelt from his bed, dragging it with her. He let her have it.

Agnes finally wrung the shock from her eyes and sprang up. To stop her mother. To demand an explanation. To punish her. To console Val. To harm Carl. She didn’t know what feeling was strongest. But as she rose, a hand clasped her arm and roughly pulled her back down. It was Glen.

“Stay here,” he said.

“But Glen—”

“Stay here,” he hissed. His grip felt like a shackle.

“But—”

Before she could say another word, he covered her mouth. She felt him quivering, overcome with some emotion. Anger. Sadness. She couldn’t tell. She’d never seen him overcome with either.

“It’s okay,” he said. His voice came from deep in the reeds of his throat.

She thought of her fight with her mother earlier. Of her mother’s defeated posture before her knowing laugh. Agnes hadn’t spoken to her for the rest of the day. At dinner, her mother had kept her distance. Made small talk with everyone, all the people she used to not spare a thought for. She’d seen her mother throw her head back and laugh at something Dr. Harold had said. Dr. Harold of all people. Then her mother had settled to eat her ration next to Carl. They had huddled strangely close, whispered intensely under the usually light dinner-time chatter. Their conversation serious, sometimes heated. So, so, so close.

Agnes shook her head, trying to dislodge the image, let it fall to the dirt. She felt ill.

“Glen, this is my fault,” she said.

“No, it isn’t.”

“We had a fight.”

“This isn’t your fault,” Glen said. “You can’t understand it now, but I promise you it isn’t your fault.”