Sometimes Greta knew the world was perfect, as perfect a Mozart concerto, and she wanted to feel it that way forever, like a tune inside her, or like a warm haze she sometimes felt when her mother stroked her back with Witch Hazel. But something always happened. Her mother crying, her father, leaving, her body falling. It reminded her of the day she watched Terrence Uchino playing with a magnifying glass, holding it over a dry leaf. At first it was nothing, then there was flame, tiny and yellow, eating the fringe, following its edges until it curled inwards towards the center in a gesture of helplessness. But what bothered Greta wasn't the end, the moment of blackening, of giving into the flame. It was that instant between flame and no flame. That split second when she held her breath, and then watched the first burst of fire, leaping, dancing, burning. How could she predict it? That moment. When everything changed.