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Eighteen years and most of a shoulder, and two women in a school hallway have decided which parts of him are theirs.

“What you can see on television is yours. The rest of him is mine.”

I smile at her. Then I lean in and put my mouth beside her ear.

“You are a bitch.”

I say it pleasantly.

Then I turn and go.

Tova is at the end of the row of black paper with a cookie in one hand. I do not know how long she has been standing there.

Behind me, loud enough for the corridor and the coffee urn and the child at the water fountain:

“I, am not a bitch.”

Then the corridor does not say anything at all.

This time I do not turn around. I keep walking.

In the truck she hands me nothing, because she has eaten the cookie, and puts her bag between her feet.

“That was so bad.”

“Yes.”

“That’s the worst thing I’ve ever seen you do.”

“Probably.”

“Her face.” She pulls her belt across the front of her and does not put it in the buckle. “Did you see her face?”

“No.”

“She did this.” Tova does something with her mouth that no human face has ever done. “For like a whole minute.”

“That seems long.”

“It was long.”

Then, out of nowhere, in a voice that is not hers:

“I, am not a bitch.”

She does the comma. She makes a noise into her sleeve that she has been holding since the corridor.

“Tova.”

“Sorry.” She is not sorry. “Can I tell Lina?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because then it becomes a story about me instead of something that happened.”

“That’s the same thing.”