No one expected her to compete in the science fair. At least, not seriously. Her projects in previous years had all been more poetic than scientific. For example, a photo essay on the phases of the Moon and how the Earth’s balance depended on the gravitational relationship between two bodies (nicknamed Luna and Tara—a clear reference to her ex) or a yearlong exploration into the ravages of root rot, which cost the life of several dozen little jade plants propagated in jars on her windowsill, their little leaves withering, like hearts in a line. Her classmates all mocked her when word got out she had entered the competition again. What’ll it be this year—an exegesis on pubic hair? Microscope slides with drops of your own blood? Many of them were convinced she was a vampire and pretended to jump at the sight of her in a bathroom mirror. She found it tedious, like the instructions for making a volcano available online. Add baking soda, dish soap, then red and yellow food coloring to your volcano, then pour vinegar into the cone. Anyone could do that, and other students did, fashioning their cones out of dough and dirt wrapped around a bottle poised to explode on command. Cue foaming. Cue clapping.

By the time the judges reached her table, they had tired of the theatrics and formulated an idea of who the winner could be: Tara, with her zero-energy flashlight, which captured heat from human skin to power a biofeedback loop of the hand heating the light heating the hand. Between projects on cloud formations and why the sky is still blue, her flashlight was magical—a piece of advanced technology designed to trick people into believing they needed nothing and no one. No fireflies or lightning bolts. No campfires or glowsticks illuminating your first kiss (on a class trip sophomore year, after their group hiked Mount Rainier, then stood, breathless, under a waterfall). Her whole body was on fire then. Her skin flush, smoke gathering over Eastern Washington from wildfires in British Columbia. She remembers thinking, So this is what tongue feels like.

Now they’re just two bodies moving further and further away from each other, pretending the distance has no meaning. She feels the rift open before she even pretends to pour the vinegar, hears the dirt sizzle and the wood begin to singe. Magma will eat through the table, she knows. It will set the tablecloth on fire and burn holes through the wood. Eventually, it will drip down into a bucket of water hidden under the booth, and the molten lava will harden in great clumps, which she’ll hold over her head, like prizes. Right now, though, the flow is just beginning. It bubbles up the volcano’s cone until it erupts in a wall of lava, shimmering and incandescent, like the surface of the Sun. Only she can touch it, her hand dipping into the lava like a scoop and pouring it, back and forth, between her palms. Cue wonder. Cue awe.

Tara’s face in the crowd. Their hands lifting over their heads. Both glowing. Both hot.