Odette Sammons

Every night Odette climbs to the hoop and falls. Every night the fall doesn't end — not in the way falls are supposed to. She hangs suspended in the moment between falling and landing, haloed in lamplight, while the crowd holds its breath below. Then, somehow, she's back at the top again, and nobody ever sees the in-between. She doesn't remember the ground. She's not sure she ever touched it. The fall is the only place that feels real to her anymore — the long, bright, weightless middle of it — and she's starting to suspect the hoop isn't her act. It's her sentence. Her private wound: she can't remember a life before the fall — every memory she has starts mid-air. Her dangerous want: to land. Or to take someone with her and never have to fall alone again.