How It Feels To Float

It is 3:00am, and Biz cannot sleep. She thinks about different kinds of hearts—candy hearts, hearts carved in trees, her own heart—and the “rhythm inside us we don’t get to choose” (3). She is not alone: Her father, dead now nearly 10 years, sits at the edge of her bed and gently urges her to try to sleep.

The next morning, Biz heads to school. Now approaching the end of high school, Biz understands she needs to get serious about her education. She lives with her mother, a dental assistant, and her two younger stepsiblings, who are twin brothers. At school, she struggles with how, just days before, she kissed her longtime best friend, Grace, at her house after they swam in her backyard pool.

In school, Biz’s English teacher asks the class to write an essay on their alter ego, i.e., who they are inside. In her essay, which is fragmented and more like a poem, Biz dismisses the idea of having a “matterless self” (15) as something beyond her ability to imagine. At lunch, she sits with her usual friends, whom she calls The Posse; among them is Grace.

In gym class, Biz meets up with Grace. Grace is Biz’s oldest friend.