Agnes' Thoughts While Hovering above Heads in Bamboo Garden

The summer that Agnes was thirteen, she went to a tennis camp in Stanglwirt with her kid brother and her parents, who'd fantasized briefly that their son held within him the germ of a professional player. While her brother lunged and volleyed, she swam unsupervised in the incredible pools at the hotel: there was a deep lagoon ringed with actual boulders, a saltwater pond, one with an artificial current; even the normal pools were linked by arched bridges and channels. She spent the most time at the lagoon with Melanie, a younger girl whose head reached her shoulder. Melanie was German, and for hours each day they would yell eins, zwei, drei, then leap from the tallest boulder into the water.

Towards the end of Agnes' stay—it wasn't that she remembered it was towards the end, as much as assumed it, unable to fathom the continuation of their friendship otherwise—the two of them were walking towards the dining cabin after a swim when Melanie stopped, reached up, and pressed her hand on the older girl's breast.

Agnes looked down and saw five blue eyes on her swimsuit. There'd been a manicure booth at the carnival the day before. They were all there, those who weren't practicing, and Agnes had been deciding between colors when her father came and pulled her away. The eyes, laying on her in a half circle, chipped and unevenly drawn, looked at her the way the nail-painting woman had looked at her father. His anger had been quiet, delayed for a less public time, but the woman had stared as if he, instead of Agnes, was the undisciplined child coating his hands with poison. She stood on the stone path, still damp from the pool. In the dark, the whites of the eyes seemed to draw her in as they lingered, so that it seemed as if she was looking at herself from below, feeling the alternate evening chill and heat of her skin shining outwards from the memory, even though Melanie had long since run ahead.

________

Shortly after Agnes turned fifteen, she became aware of two things: that her breasts had begun to develop, and that randomly, her forehead and scalp would vibrate as if her skull was running a current, lifting her hair and sharpening into pain. When she mentioned the latter to her parents, her mother thought it might be static, as the thunderstorms were just beginning, but her father told them not to be idiotic; it was a migraine and he had them often.

The former she kept private, as she did not consider them her breasts. Bad posture and backpacks were unsustainable; people still looked. Her school had outlawed sweaters in the summer. In the end, she came up with a regimen to keep them from growing. Whenever she had free time, she'd mash down on the unwanted protrusions with her fists until the already tender parts felt sore. She was adept at hiding this behavior in the shower and behind desks, by leaning gradually into her thumb knuckles or table edge, where she'd feel the cartilage slipping around underneath. It became a strict daily routine, with extra sessions added in during long car rides out to Sai Kung, where the family hiked on weekends, her brother quietly snoring next to her in the back while the adults listened to sermons on tape.

She was in the changing rooms after PE when she saw two older girls in a nook, one of them a much-admired figure, who was sitting on a bench with her sweater and shirt raised, exposing her body. Her friend was carefully pulling a bandage around her chest. One of the ends kept slipping. Suck in, the friend said, hold your left tit. Stop laughing. Agnes saw that a rash the same shade as the room's pink walls had spread across the girl's torso. It's no use, you're too sweaty. Your swimsuit—it works for now.

The moment was brief, but it confirmed to Agnes the...