One sister is born with the cord around her throat. Another with her eyes too big. Shallow orbits. The girls share a birthday party but not a birthday. The throat sister is born in spring. The eyes sister, July. The party, split the difference, is in June and Eyes makes invitations that say, Don’t forget to bring your bathing suit! though the family has no pool. They have a limp hose, bare feet in grass. They have bees.

Throat barely does chores, says she doesn’t know how. Throat is always insisting on what she doesn’t know. Eyes rolls them. Throat is such a child. They are all children. Eyes cooks supper most nights. Rice features heavily. Meat. The mother is allergic to bread. Eyes is allergic to the mother. Eyes is allowed only this boundary in the house: the kitchen to herself. If the mother enters when Eyes is cooking dinner, Eyes will close, untend every burner and let them burn. If the mother wants a hot meal, she must stay out of the kitchen. She does want one. She does stay out.

Throat sings and her voice is too low. Throat has to be the boy when they play with the neighbor girl with the dead brother and the dry dry Skin. Skin is mean. Skin always wants to be the girl and always wants to be named Whitney or Britney. Throat knows how to be a boy. It takes a hat with a brim. Eyes has to be something else. Skin has her own tiny television on a high shelf in her bedroom. When the three watch a movie one day, they settle on the floor and their necks hurt from looking up. Up there, a girl cries, and Eyes cries, cries so hard the adults come to see what makes Eyes so loud. Throat laughs. Skin lays in her bed, puts a stuffed animal between her legs, and Eyes is always crying. Maybe she is water masquerading as a girl. And now two families call her Water Works.

After Skin, the family does get a pool even though they are an inside family. Throat is the only one who doesn’t burn in the sun, who has the good Italian complexion. Throat, in her suit, carries a can of Raid and kills the bees who can’t resist the sweet chlorine, the copper hair the girls have grown to their waists. The bees hunt any bright thing.

Another party. Six girls show up. Because boys are coming. Even Michael DiCarmine has RSVP’d yes. Because of the pool. But then, word arrives that yesterday’s rained-out altar boy trip to Six Flags has been rescheduled for today. It is no contest. Six Flags. Zero flags. Zero boys. Your pool is turning us blue, complain the Six Girls. So the pool is always cold. Throat stands on the diving board, suggests a contest. We don’t have enough people for a contest, the Six Girls lie. Contests require almost nothing to launch.

Eyes says let’s take a walk to the river. Water shoes haven’t been invented yet and so they put on wet sneakers and follow her into the woods. Eyes is proud of her wilderness, her river. When they arrive, the Six Girls demand, where is the river? Because Eyes has led them to a stream. She climbs on her special picnic rock. Wells up.

Who lives over there? Six Girls ask, pointing to a house through the trees, a house Eyes has never noticed before. She always thought she was away enough, alone. I don’t know, she says. It’s new. Though clearly the house has been there for a long long time.

Eyes looks at Throat, who is quiet, who smells like chemical. Why didn’t you tell me this wasn’t a river? Eyes has never been to a river, thought all flowing bodies were basically the same body. I don’t know, says Throat, sprays a small dark thing in flight.

From the new house, the sound of a bouncing ball. The guests, who are always announcing We’re the guests! by the way, take it as a cue. Race you! one of them says and they are good runners. In a few years, the Six Girls will be selected for various teams with similar girls. At the start of each practice, they will stretch their quads and freshen their lip gloss and French braid one another’s hair. Someone taught them how to braid, and how to make it stay.