There is a girl next door, she reminds me of myself from years ago. The fence between us is firm and unyielding. I watch her from our porch; lying in the grass, reading, singing to herself, or wandering among the statues scattered across her backyard.

Her family has owned that place for generations. My aunt likes to tell me far-fetched stories about them from when she was a kid. She was the one who grew up here, after all, and I suppose that means she has the right to stretch her stories of the place.

The girl next door looks up, and our eyes lock.

The house next door is big and complicated, like whoever built it was just winging it and trying several things at once. The windows are almost always covered with drawn curtains. The family is known by everyone.

No one has been able to tell me what the girl’s name is, though.

I hold her gaze, and hold up a book I’d brought out to read. I don’t think she can read the title at her distance, but her face lights up a little, and she holds hers up in return. Her book is missing its dustcover, and the hard binding is blank. But I grin back and nod my head.

My aunt told me she was sure the girl’s name started with an R. That she was top of her class. That her parents took her to every event they attended. That she has shaken the mayor’s hand.

I want to talk to her, I want to ask her name. There’s an odd space between us. There is the distance, the fence, and something stifling in the air. I want to tell her I remember being fifteen.

I remember how it can crawl under the skin.

I think she has a favorite statue. It’s of a little boy with a puppy, shaded by an old maple tree, and there’s a worn spot on the ground beside them. She sits there now, opening her book.

I wonder if she likes poetry. I wonder what kinds of stories she likes. I look down at my own book, but the words don’t mean anything to me. I stare at them for a long time. I stare until movement catches my eye; the neighbor girl is rushing back inside, her finger keeping place in her book.

There is something tight inside me. I don’t know her. I wish I did. The air still holds something stifling and it has only grown since she left.

She makes flower crowns for the statues. Because of this, her yard is picked clean of flowers, and fresh ones don’t last. I made a flower crown out of clovers once and tossed over the fence like I was playing ring-toss. It got caught on a low branch, but the next day it had been removed and placed around the puppy statue’s neck like a collar.

She waves whenever she spots me sitting on our back porch. There’s familiarity between us, and it makes my bones ache. In my mind, I’ve claimed her as a little sister. The warning bells in my mind tell me I shouldn’t. I don’t care.

It takes me weeks to finish my book. The air grows heavier. My aunt says that’s what it does in August, but I’ve stayed here enough summers as a teen to know this is something more.

The neighbor girl must feel it too. She hardly sings anymore. She walks slower when she wanders around the statues. Sometimes she pulls to a stop and simply stands there, rooted in place, as if pressed in on all sides.

At the end of August, just before school starts again, she walks out and stops under the maple tree. I’m out on the porch again, without a book or any other excuse to be there. She turns and meets my eyes, smoothly and purposefully, like she knew I’d be there. Like she knew I’d meet her gaze. There’s nothing to hold up for the other to see, and there’s no change in her expression.

The air is suffocating today, and it seems neither of us can breathe.

We stand locked in place, unmoving, unblinking, but a million unnamed things are passed between us. I have never felt so strongly such emotions that are so unknown and also definitely not mine. Still, I hold what I am given and do not push it away, no matter how strong. It is all I can do. I wish I could do more.

She blinks, and I breathe in for the first time in minutes. There’s a shriveled flower crown on the little boy statue’s head, and with the gentlest fingers, she lifts it from his head and places it on hers. It’s dried to a crisp despite the thick air, but not a single petal falls off in the transfer.

She suddenly looks very small, and just about as fragile as her crown. Her chin is lifted slightly, because it always is, but it hangs there like it has to. Like it doesn’t have a choice.

Like the air itself is pressing it up.

I want to climb the fence. I want to break through it. I’m sure I could; but even as I think that, I’m pressed back. It’s not just the fence. It’s the distance. It’s the air.

She’s standing there, under the maple tree, pressed in on all sides. A small breeze picks up, brushing past me like it’s rushing to her. She doesn’t move. Even her hair is still.

The pressure lifts.

I can breathe easy again, but I don’t. It wasn’t the August heat fleeing at the promise of September. It wasn’t the humidity suddenly dropping from the air.

And she doesn’t move.

The curled stems of her crown have gone gray, taking with it the color of the hair it sits upon. In the shade, the warmth of her skin is gone. Even her clothes have lost their hue.

I can move, finally, but I don’t. It doesn’t matter anymore. The pressure is gone from the air, and in my heart I know where it went. I wish I knew her name, so I could say it. So I could call out to her.

She doesn’t move. She just stands there.

Still as stone.