There’s a moment when I feel like I’m talking into a mirror, when I can vividly imagine another time and place—maybe last year when Essie mated Richard, and we were hiding under the covers in her bed, and she’d covered herself head-to-toe with ice cubes wrapped in dish towels—when she might have said the same thing to me, and I might have said the same to her.

“How does this work?” I squint at the back of the box.

“You pee on it.”

“It says it expired last month.”

“Expiration dates are a human scam.”

I nod. It’s commonly known.

I fiddle with the box and look around. I’ve been...