She was not a presence at high school. If someone thought to include her, Phoebe was included, but if she stood up and left mid-party, as often she had, phoning a taxi home among the bright potholders and fruit-shaped magnets of someone’s kitchen, few people noticed. Handed a hit of acid once, she’d slipped it into her pocket (kept it to this day), but nobody caught the move. “Hey, were you okay with that?” they’d asked days later, for apparently it was powerful, someone had flipped out. Phoebe pictured herself in the eyes of her peers as half ghostly, a transparent outline whose precise movements were impossible to follow. During free periods she had no place to go. Often she simply wandered the halls, feigning distraction and hurry, afraid even to pause for fear that her essential solitude would be exposed. A glass case full of old trophies stood near the school’s front doors, shallow silver dishes from state swim meets, faded ribbons; they were dusty, inconsequential, no one looked at them. As an excuse to stop walking, Phoebe sometimes would pause before that case, pretending a trophy had caught her attention—I’m nothing, she would think, I could disappear and no one would notice—her face reddening in shame as she stared at the meaningless trophies and waited for the bell to class.