The next day, I put the baby boy up for adoption, and haven’t seen him since. My life got more or less back to normal after that. After fiddling with it a little, I put the pump away and almost forgot about the whole thing. It was easy to convince myself it had all just been some kind of weird dream.

But then several months later, I was cleaning out my chest of drawers and came upon the rolled up girl in the back of one of them. I unrolled her on the floor and looked at her. She was exactly the same as when I’d last seen her. I guessed that without any “air” in her, she didn’t have any life in her either.

Then one of the other girls knocked on my door, and said through it. “Hey, Carlotta, we got a problem. Betty’s got the flu, so we’re one girl short for the party tonight. And it’s short notice so we can’t find anyone else. You know anyone to ask?”

I looked down at the flat girl on the floor. “Actually, I think I just might.”

It took me ten minutes of rummaging in my closet to find the pump.