One day you climb up the scaffolding of a water tower with Oskar. From there you can see across from his compound to yours. ‘Look,’ says Oskar. Goldie, the huge yellow labrador who lives with you, runs across your compound, gaining speed. She reaches the tall wall and, this is unlikely, she clears it. You’ve never seen her do this before. You didn’t know that she could.

The steel tubes supporting the water tank flake, releasing onto your hands and tongue an edge of iron. You balance your weight on a perpendicular bar, adjusting and re-adjusting. Inexplicably the metal is cool. With Oskar you watch Goldie sprint up the road between the compounds, into the bush, and she’s gone.

Oskar’s hair curls, but not so tightly as yours when it’s released from corn rows. He’s about the same size as you and very nearly the same age. It doesn’t matter whose idea it was to climb the tower. In any case each time you see him you know you are the same person, a boy girl boy girl. His shorts are more practical than your cotton sun dress. His eyes are the grey of Russian skies, unlike yours which facet a palette of brown and gold.

This is the right place to be. Oskar’s eyes are reflecting the world and his mouth is framed by open lips.

You remember the old house. There vultures arranged themselves along the roof, waiting. Around the back our garden of sprouted beans was dying. We’d planted it in the place the housegirl used to wash. We didn’t know. You think about that time you went outside to see what your sister was shouting about. She pointed through the gate’s metal bars. Split into slices of action you saw a puma, a dog, a man. A puma, man, dog. A man hunting, a puma running, a dog chasing. At the time you felt within yourself, yes within your own body, the coil and spring of the cat’s muscles. The thrill of vicarious running made you close your fists. But now, on the water tower, you doubt the memory. It has the yellow flatness of truth, all other tones are oppressed by the sun, but you remember that when you asked your sister what you were seeing she told you in her story voice. And later, when she told your mum about it, the puma became a lynx. You don’t know the difference and up here on the water tower you look out for the puma. You can’t see it, or a lynx, or your good dog Goldie. You can’t see your parents and, when not looking directly at them, their faces aren’t describable.

Neither you nor Oskar speak: you look. A car arrives in dust at the far distance. The noise of it takes a while to get to you. As one single body of scraped tawny olive and honey skin, you and Oskar descend. What once was reachable by straining hands is barely scrambleable by dangling feet.

Eventually, and not without mewls of panic, you touch the ground, again.