The grey light was barely threading through the blinds when Ivy felt Hazel’s fingers twitch against her ribs.
She hadn’t moved in maybe an hour. The rain had stopped somewhere in the last stretch of dark, and now the silence was the wet kind — gutters dripping, the occasional car hissing past on damp asphalt. The room smelled like them. Sleep and salt and the faint rubber sweetness of the balloons still swaying from the headboard.
The amber one rested against the pillow beside Ivy’s head. She’d reached for it without thinking, sometime in the night, and now her thumb traced the warm latex in slow circles. The surface had gone slightly cloudy where her skin had been against it. She pressed her palm flat and felt the air inside push back — soft, giving, alive.
Hazel’s breath came in long, slow pulls. Her cheek was mashed against Ivy’s collarbone, one leg thrown over both of Ivy’s thighs, and her hand — the one curled against Ivy’s ribs — kept flexing. Reaching. The fingers stretched toward the rose balloon where it hung from the headboard, spinning in the faint draft from the window.
Ivy watched her dream. The twitch in her eyelids. The way her lips parted and closed and parted again, like she was trying to say something but couldn’t find the breath.
She wondered what Hazel’s dreams looked like. Whether they were full of balloons in colors that didn’t exist. Whether Ivy was in them.
The latex gave under her thumb. She thought about last night — Hazel’s body shuddering against the mattress, her voice cracking when she said I needed to see it for myself. The way she’d crawled into Ivy’s lap afterward like a ship finding harbor.
They hadn’t fucked. They’d come close, Ivy’s fingers slick and deep, Hazel gasping against her mouth — but they hadn’t crossed that last line. And somehow that felt right. Like the promise was bigger than the act. Like holding it open was the point.
Hazel’s fingers found Ivy’s hip and curled. Her brow creased. She made a sound — small, searching — and Ivy shifted to press her lips to the crown of her head.
“I’m here,” she murmured into Hazel’s hair. “Still here.”
Hazel’s breathing evened again. The crease smoothed.
The phone rang.
Ivy’s whole body locked. The ringtone was Hazel’s — that chirpy pop song she’d set months ago and never changed — and it sliced through the quiet like something falling. Hazel jerked, her knee catching Ivy in the thigh.
“Wha — ”
“Easy.” Ivy was already untangling, reaching across the bed to where Hazel’s phone buzzed on the nightstand. The screen blazed: Mamá.
Hazel sat up. Her hair was a wreck, sleep-creased and wild, and she blinked at the phone like it was a live thing. “What time is it?”
Ivy glanced at her own phone. “Seven. Seven on a Saturday.”
“Nobody calls at seven on a Saturday.” Hazel took the phone. Her fingers were unsteady. She swiped, pressed it to her ear. “Mamá? What’s — ”
Ivy watched her face change. The sleepy confusion sharpened into something else — brows drawing down, mouth pressing thin. Hazel swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood, one hand gripping the phone, the other waving in a helpless gesture Ivy recognized from every time Hazel was trying to process too much too fast.
“Slow down,” Hazel said. “Mamá, slow down — no, I — ”
Then she was pacing. Naked. The sheet fell away and she didn’t even notice. Her free hand went to her hair, then to her hip, then to the air like she was trying to catch the words.
Ivy sat up. She pulled the sheet over her own lap, not from modesty but from the sudden cold of the room. The amber balloon slipped off the pillow and rolled against her knee.
“Sofía did what?” Hazel’s voice pitched high. Then lower: “No. No, I understand, I just — she’s eight.”
A pause. Hazel’s shoulders went rigid.
“And Emilia?”
Ivy’s stomach dropped. She reached for her glasses on the nightstand, slid them on. The world snapped into focus — Hazel’s back, the two balloons on the headboard, Pebbles stirring at the foot of the bed with a sleepy quack.
Hazel turned. Her eyes found Ivy’s and they were wide — hazel-green catching the pale gold light, and in them something that was half apology and half panic.
“Put me on speaker,” Ivy said quietly.
Hazel hit the button. Her mother’s voice filled the room — rapid Spanish, the accent thick with exasperation. Ivy caught fragments: globos, no puedo más, demasiado.
Then a second voice cut in, sharper and in English: “Hazel, it’s Ivy’s mom. We’re calling together. The girls are — they’re not — we can’t keep up.”
Ivy’s mother. Sounding ten years older than last month. Sounding like she’d been awake all night.
“They keep sneaking balloons into their room,” Hazel’s mother said, switching to English with the jagged fluency of someone too tired to translate. “Every night. We take them away, they find more. Sofía hides them under her mattress. Emilia reads — she reads about them on the computer, she knows things she shouldn’t — ”
“What kind of things?” Ivy asked. Her voice was steadier than she felt.
Silence on the line. Then Ivy’s mother: “Sexual things. She looked up — Ivy, she’s eight. She looked up videos. I don’t know how to have this conversation.”
Hazel sank onto the edge of the bed. Her hand found Ivy’s knee and gripped.
“They’re not doing anything wrong,” Hazel said, and her voice had that careful quality — the one she used when she was terrified of saying the wrong thing. “They’re just — it’s normal. For them. It can be normal.”
“It’s not normal for eight-year-olds to — ” Ivy’s mother stopped. Sighed. “Their bodies are changing. The doctor confirmed it. Precocious puberty. Both of them.”
Ivy felt that land in her chest. Emilia. Her baby sister. Eight years old, with a body moving too fast and a mind that could find anything on the internet.
“We can’t be home all day,” Hazel’s mother said. “We work. They’re unsupervised and they’re — Hazel, they’re hormonal. Sofía keeps popping balloons to feel the — the — ”
“The release,” Hazel said quietly. Not a question.
“Yes. And Emilia hates it. Every time Sofía pops one, Emilia cries. But Sofía can’t stop. She’s learned to blow them up herself, she uses the pump from the closet, she — ”
“She’s chasing it,” Hazel said. Her hand tightened on Ivy’s knee. “The pop. She’s a popper. And Emilia isn’t.”
Another silence. Ivy could hear both mothers breathing on the other end — long, exhausted pulls of air.
“We’re sending them to you,” Ivy’s mother said.
The words hung in the room like the balloons on the headboard. Swaying.
“What?” Ivy’s voice came out flat.
“We’ll pay you. A monthly stipend. Enough to cover their expenses and then some. You have the space — Hazel has her own room, you can — ”
“I sleep in Hazel’s room,” Ivy said. “Always. For a while now.”
She didn’t look at Hazel when she said it. She didn’t need to. She felt Hazel’s fingers tighten, felt the small intake of breath beside her.
The mothers paused. Then Hazel’s mother said, softer: “We know, mija. We’re not stupid. That’s — that’s fine. That’s your life. But the girls need someone who understands. Who can… explain. Who can keep them safe while their bodies are doing this.”
“You’re the only ones who can,” Ivy’s mother added. “You’re the ones with — with the balloons. The knowledge. We’re drowning here.”
Hazel opened her mouth. Closed it. Her eyes were wet.
“When?” Ivy asked.
“We’re on our way.”
“Right now?”
“We’ll be at your door in twenty minutes.”
The call ended. The phone screen went dark.
Hazel stared at it. “Twenty minutes.”
Ivy was already moving. She pulled on underwear — a pair of Hazel’s, she realized, the soft cotton ones with little sunflowers — and reached for the first shirt she could find. One of her oversized cardigans, the sleeves too long, hanging open over her bare chest.
“Ivy.” Hazel’s voice was small. “They’re eight. They’re eight and they’re — they’re like me.”
Ivy stopped. Turned. Hazel was still sitting on the edge of the bed, still naked, the phone dangling from her fingers. The morning light caught the flush spreading across her chest, up her throat, into her cheeks. She looked like a girl who’d just been told her deepest shame had a name and it was coming to live in her apartment.
Ivy crossed back. Knelt in front of her. Put her hands on Hazel’s thighs and looked up into her face.
“They’re like you,” Ivy said. “And that means they need you. Not a stranger. Not someone who’ll laugh. Someone who knows.”
Hazel’s chin trembled. “I’m not — I’m not qualified to — ”
“You’re the most qualified person on the planet.” Ivy’s thumb traced a freckle on the inside of Hazel’s thigh. “You survived it. You built a whole self around it. You’re still here.”
“What if I mess them up?”
“What if you don’t?”
Hazel leaned down. Pressed her forehead to Ivy’s. Their breath mixed — morning-sour and warm.
“We don’t have time,” Hazel whispered.
“Time for what?”
“Any of it. The morning. Us. The — ” She gestured at the balloons on the headboard. “I was going to — we were going to — ”
Ivy kissed her. Soft. A press of lips that said I know and later and I love you anyway all at once.
“Get dressed,” she said against Hazel’s mouth. “We have eight-year-olds to catch.”
They moved fast. Ivy pulled on leggings and the cardigan, still braless, still feeling the phantom warmth of Hazel’s body against hers. Hazel yanked a sundress over her head — pastel yellow with tiny white flowers, something that swirled around her calves when she moved. Her hands were shaking as she ran her fingers through her hair.
The balloons on the headboard. Ivy looked at them. The rose one and the amber one, still filled, still swaying. The promise Hazel hadn’t yet claimed.
She untied them. Held them in one hand — the ribbons tangling around her wrist — and carried them to the closet. She laid them on the top shelf, next to Hazel’s box of deflated balloons, where they’d be safe.
“Not hiding them,” she said, catching Hazel’s eye. “Just… keeping them from getting squished.”
Hazel’s laugh was wet and short. “Right.”
Pebbles waddled into the living room ahead of them, quacking with the particular indignation of a duck who had not been fed at his preferred hour. Ivy scooped him up, pressed a kiss to his feathered head, and deposited him next to his food bowl.
“Breakfast,” she told him. “Be good. We’re having company.”
The apartment looked lived-in. Too lived-in. There was a half-deflated balloon on the couch from two nights ago, and the throw pillows were still arranged from when Hazel had been propped against them, watching Ivy watch her. Ivy grabbed the balloon — a blue one, stretched soft — and stuffed it under the couch cushion just as the buzzer rang.
Hazel froze. Her hand on the intercom button.
“Together,” Ivy said.
Hazel pressed the button. “Come up.”
The footsteps on the stairs came fast — two sets of small feet, a tumble of voices, and behind them the heavier tread of exhausted mothers. Hazel opened the door before they could knock.
Sofía burst through first. She was small for eight, with Hazel’s coloring — fair skin, auburn hair pulled into two messy braids — but her eyes were darker, sharper. She was carrying a deflated orange balloon in one fist like a grenade.
“Hazel!” She threw herself at her sister’s legs. “Mamá said we get to live here now! With the balloons!”
Emilia followed more slowly. She looked like a miniature Ivy — dark hair in a neat bob, wire-rimmed glasses too big for her face, a stuffed duck tucked under her arm. Her other hand was dragging a small suitcase with pink wheels.
She stopped in the doorway. Looked at Ivy. Then at Hazel. Then at the apartment behind them, where Pebbles was now quacking furiously from his food bowl.
“Is that a duck?” Emilia asked.
“That’s Pebbles,” Ivy said. “He’s our duck.”
Emilia considered this. Then she nodded, once, and wheeled her suitcase inside.
The mothers stood in the doorway like refugees at a border checkpoint. Ivy’s mom — tired eyes behind similar glasses, her bun coming undone — held out a manila envelope.
“The stipend details. Bank information. Their medical records. School enrollment forms — we already started the transfer, they’ll start at the elementary school three blocks over on Monday.”
Hazel’s mother pressed a kiss to Hazel’s forehead. “I’m sorry,” she said in Spanish. “I know this is fast. I know you’re — you have your own life. But we can’t — ”
“I know, Mamá.” Hazel’s voice was steadier now. “We’ll figure it out.”
“They’re good girls,” Ivy’s mother said. “They’re just… early. Everything is early. And Sofía keeps — ”
There was a sound from the living room. A sharp, deliberate pop.
Sofía stood by the couch, holding the shredded remains of the blue balloon Ivy had hidden under the cushion. Her face was flushed. Her chest was heaving — not from exertion, but from something else. Something Ivy recognized.
Release.
“Sofía,” Hazel said, and her voice had a new quality — firm, but not angry. “Where did you get that?”
“It was under the cushion.” Sofía’s chin came up. Defiant. “It was already deflated anyway.”
“That doesn’t mean you pop it without asking.”
“I wanted to.”
Emilia had stopped beside her suitcase. Her thumb was in her mouth — a habit Ivy hadn’t seen since she was five — and she was staring at the balloon shreds on the floor with wet eyes.
“You always pop them,” Emilia said around her thumb. “You always ruin them.”
“They’re balloons. They pop. That’s what they do.”
“Not all of them.” Emilia’s voice cracked. “Not if you’re careful.”
The mothers exchanged a look — the kind of look that said we’ve had this argument forty times this week — and then Ivy’s mother knelt to hug Ivy goodbye.
“We’ll call,” she said. “Every night if you want. But we can’t stay. If we stay, we’ll talk ourselves out of this, and we can’t — we can’t keep doing what we’ve been doing.”
“Go,” Ivy said. “We’ve got them.”
Hazel’s mother kissed Hazel again. Then Sofía. Then Emilia, who submitted to it with the patience of a saint.
And then they were gone. The door clicked shut. The apartment was suddenly very full — two suitcases, two small girls, one duck, and the weight of a thousand unspoken questions.
Sofía dropped the balloon shreds. “I’m hungry.”
“I have to pee,” Emilia added.
“Down the hall, second door on the left,” Ivy said. “The bathroom’s the one with the rubber duck on the shower curtain.”
Emilia nodded and disappeared down the hall. Sofía watched her go, then turned back to Hazel with an expression that was too knowing for an eight-year-old.
“Emilia doesn’t like the pop,” she said. “But I do. I really like it.”
Hazel knelt. Took Sofía’s hands. The same hands that had been clutching a balloon grenade moments ago.
“I know,” Hazel said. “I know what it feels like. The whole body thing. The — ” She paused, searching for words an eight-year-old could hold. “The shiver. When it bursts. Like everything tight lets go.”
Sofía’s eyes widened. “You too?”
“Not the pop. Not for me. But the shiver? The letting go? Yeah. I know that.”
“Then why won’t Emilia let me — ”
“Because for her, the shiver isn’t the pop. It’s the soft. The squish. The thing that doesn’t break.” Hazel squeezed Sofía’s hands. “You’re chasing one feeling. She’s chasing a different one. And you keep breaking the things that make her feel safe.”
Sofía’s lower lip pushed out. But she didn’t pull her hands away.
“I made her cry,” she said quietly. “A lot of times.”
“Yeah.”
“I didn’t mean to.”
“I know. But you still did it. And now we have to figure out how to share the balloons so you both get what you need.”
Emilia came back from the bathroom. Her glasses were slightly crooked. She looked at Sofía, then at Hazel, then at the shreds on the floor.
“I don’t want the pop,” she said. Her voice was smaller than a moment ago. “I want the balloon to stay. I want to hold it and squish it and feel it push back. I don’t want it to die.”
Ivy’s throat tightened. I don’t want it to die. Coming from an eight-year-old who’d been watching her best friend pop every balloon she could find.
“Then we’ll make sure you have some that stay,” Ivy said. “Ones Sofía doesn’t touch. Ones that are just yours.”
Sofía opened her mouth — probably to argue — but Hazel touched her shoulder. “You get yours too. Ones you can pop. As many as you need. But you don’t touch Emilia’s. And you don’t pop anything without asking unless it’s in your room.”
“My room?”
“You’re getting Ivy’s room.” Hazel straightened up, brushed off her dress. “Ivy sleeps with me now. So the other bedroom is yours. Both of you. You’ll share it.”
Sofía looked at Emilia. Emilia looked at Sofía. A whole conversation passed between them — years of friendship compressed into three seconds of eye contact.
“We want bunk beds,” Sofía said.
“We can do bunk beds,” Ivy said.
“And a balloon box,” Emilia added. “For mine. With a lock.”
“And a pump,” Sofía said. “A good one. The one at home keeps breaking.”
Ivy caught Hazel’s eye over their heads. Hazel’s expression was something between overwhelmed and deeply, impossibly tender. The same face she’d made last night, when she’d crawled into Ivy’s lap and whispered thank you for seeing me.
“We can do all of that,” Hazel said. “But first: breakfast. And rules. And maybe some unpacking.”
“And meeting the duck properly,” Emilia said. She was already moving toward Pebbles, who had finished his food and was now eyeing the newcomers with the suspicion of a creature who had not agreed to share his apartment.
Pebbles quacked. Emilia knelt. Held out her hand.
Pebbles waddled over, sniffed her fingers, and promptly sat on her foot.
“He likes me,” Emilia whispered.
“He likes everyone,” Sofía said. But she was smiling — a small, reluctant smile that looked exactly like Hazel’s.
Ivy crossed to the kitchen. Started pulling out pancake mix and the good maple syrup. Behind her, she could hear Hazel herding the girls toward the table, explaining about the bathroom schedule and the quiet hours and the fact that, no, they couldn’t bring all the balloons into the living room at once because Pebbles would try to sit on them.
Twenty minutes ago, she’d been lying in bed with Hazel’s weight against her chest, tracing the warm give of a balloon and wondering what her girlfriend dreamed of.
Now she was making pancakes for her little sister and her sister’s best friend, both of whom had apparently inherited the same fetish that had shaped Hazel’s whole secret life.
Hazel appeared beside her. Reached for the whisk. Their fingers brushed.
“You okay?” Hazel asked, low enough that the girls couldn’t hear.
“I don’t know.” Ivy poured batter into the pan. It sizzled. “Are you?”
“I keep thinking about me at that age. Nobody to explain. Nobody to say it was normal. Just me and the balloons and this huge, terrifying thing in my body that I didn’t have words for.” She stirred the batter harder than necessary. “At least they’ll have us.”
“At least they’ll have you.”
Hazel set down the whisk. Turned Ivy to face her. The move was startlingly direct — hands on Ivy’s hips, eyes level, the pastel dress brushing against Ivy’s bare legs.
“They’ll have us,” Hazel said. “I’m not doing this alone. I can’t. They’re — Sofía’s a horny little popper and Emilia’s trying to figure out if she wants tight or soft and I don’t even have a bedframe that can hold bunk beds.”
Ivy kissed her. Quick. A press of lips that tasted like sleep and terror and the first flicker of something that might be hope.
“Pancakes first,” she said. “Furniture later.”
From the living room, Sofía’s voice rose: “Can we blow up balloons while we wait?”
“After breakfast,” Hazel called back, and the authority in her voice was so natural, so earned, that Ivy felt something unknot in her chest. “After we set up your room. After we talk about the rules.”
A pause. Then Sofía: “What kind of rules?”
Hazel caught Ivy’s eye. The corner of her mouth twitched.
“Rules about when and where and how many,” she said. “Rules about asking first. Rules about cleaning up the pieces when you’re done.”
“That’s boring.”
“That’s life, pequeña.”
Emilia had settled cross-legged on the floor, Pebbles now fully asleep in her lap. She was stroking his feathers with the same careful attention Ivy had seen her give to puzzle pieces and Minecraft builds.
“Hazel?” Emilia’s voice was barely above a whisper. “Is it true that balloons helped you? When you were little? Mamá said you knew things about them that nobody else knows.”
Hazel’s hand stilled on the batter bowl. For a moment, Ivy saw the old fear flicker across her face — the terror of being seen, really seen, by someone who might not understand.
Then Hazel set down the bowl. Walked over to Emilia. Knelt down on the floor with her yellow dress pooling around her, and put her hand over Emilia’s on Pebbles’s back.
“Yeah,” Hazel said. “They helped me. They still help me. They’re not weird or bad or wrong. They’re just… balloons. And some people, like you and me and Sofía, we feel things with them that other people don’t feel. And that’s okay.”
Emilia looked up. Her eyes behind her too-big glasses were wet again. “Even the bad feelings?”
“Especially the bad feelings. The balloons hold them. So we don’t have to.”
Emilia was quiet for a long moment. Then she leaned forward and wrapped her arms around Hazel’s neck. Pebbles quacked in protest at being squished between them.
“I’m glad we’re here,” Emilia said into Hazel’s shoulder. “Mamá tried to help but she doesn’t understand. She gets scared when she sees the balloons.”
“She loves you. She just doesn’t know what to do.”
“But you do.”
Hazel’s eyes met Ivy’s over Emilia’s head. Something passed between them — a recognition. A yes. This is the thing we’re doing now.
“Yeah,” Hazel said. “I think I do.”
The pancakes burned. Just a little — the edges went dark and smoky before Ivy remembered to flip them — but nobody complained. Sofía drowned hers in syrup. Emilia ate hers with her fingers, tearing off small pieces and feeding the corners to Pebbles. Hazel sat close enough that her knee pressed against Ivy’s under the table, and every few bites she’d glance over like she was checking that Ivy was still there. Still okay. Still in this.
After breakfast, they dragged the suitcases into Ivy’s old bedroom. The bed was still unmade — sheets tangled from the last time Ivy had slept there, which was weeks ago now. The closet was half-empty. A small desk sat under the window, covered in Ivy’s old notebooks and forgotten pens.
“We’ll clear it out this weekend,” Ivy said. “Get you a second bed. Or bunk beds, if we can find them.”
“Can we paint the walls?” Sofía asked. She was already bouncing on the mattress, testing the springs.
“We’ll ask the landlord. But probably not.”
“Can we put up posters?”
“Yeah. Posters are fine.”
Emilia had opened her suitcase. Inside, neatly folded among the clothes, was a small mesh bag filled with deflated balloons — pastels, mostly. Pinks and lavenders and soft mint greens.
“These are mine,” she said, holding up the bag. “Sofía isn’t allowed to touch them.”
Sofía rolled her eyes. “I have my own.” She unzipped her own suitcase and pulled out a tangle of bright orange and red balloons, all knotted together, all visibly stretched from overuse.
“Those are going to pop if you look at them wrong,” Hazel observed.
“That’s the point.” Sofía grinned — the first real grin Ivy had seen from her. Sharp and bright and full of mischief. “I like it when they’re about to go. When they’re so tight you can see through the latex. And then — ” She made a popping sound with her lips.
Emilia flinched.
“Sofía,” Hazel said. Not scolding. Just reminding.
“Sorry.” Sofía didn’t sound sorry. But she did pull a single orange balloon out of the tangle and set it aside, as if marking it for later. “I’ll be careful. I won’t pop any of hers. I promised.”
Ivy leaned against the doorframe, watching them. Her sister and Hazel’s sister, already carving out territory on opposite sides of the room. Sofía on the bed, bouncing. Emilia on the floor, carefully arranging her balloon bag next to her stuffed duck.
“I’m going to need to childproof this apartment,” Ivy said quietly.
Hazel came to stand beside her. “I was thinking the same thing. Sharp things put away. Clutter cleared. Lots of baskets for balloon storage.”
“We’re going to be the weird balloon moms.”
“We already were.” Hazel bumped her shoulder. “Now we just have paperwork.”
Ivy laughed — a short, surprised sound that made both girls look up. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d laughed like that. Grief-adjacent laughter. The kind that lived right next to crying.
“Okay,” she said, pushing off the doorframe. “Room setup. Then rules. Then maybe we blow up a few balloons and see where we are.”
Sofía’s eyes lit up. “Can I pop one?”
“One. After we’re done setting up. In your room, with the door closed, so it doesn’t scare Pebbles.”
“And me,” Emilia muttered.
“And Emilia,” Ivy agreed. “Sofía, you pop yours where Emilia doesn’t have to hear it. Emilia, you get to hold yours as long as you want, and nobody touches it without asking.”
“What if I want to pop it?” Sofía asked. A test. Pushing the boundary.
“Then you ask. And if she says no, you respect it. If you can’t respect it, you lose your popping privileges for the day.”
Sofía chewed her lip. Considered this. “What if I really, really want to?”
“Then you come find me or Hazel and we’ll figure something else out. But you don’t touch Emilia’s.”
A long pause. Then Sofía nodded — a single, sharp jerk of her chin. “Fine.”
“Fine,” Emilia echoed. She was already pulling a lavender balloon out of her bag, running her thumb over the deflated latex. “Can I blow this up now?”
“After the room setup,” Hazel said. “We haven’t even unpacked your toothbrushes yet.”
“Toothbrushes are boring.”
“Life is mostly boring. You get used to it.”
But Hazel was smiling. And Emilia was smiling back. And Sofía, still bouncing on the bed, was already plotting — Ivy could see it in her eyes — all the ways she was going to test these new rules and see how far she could push before someone pushed back.
Ivy pulled Hazel into the hallway. Out of earshot.
“They’re a lot,” she whispered.
“Yeah.”
“They’re going to be a full-time job.”
“Yeah.”