How It Feels To Float

“He reaches across to touch me, but of course he can’t.”

The ghost of Biz’s father—or, more accurately, her vision of her dead father—offers her every comfort except what she most needs: He cannot cross into the real world that perplexes and terrifies her. Thus, the comfort she takes from his presence is not sustainable.

“I can feel the tightness of her skin when she saw the train, and how sweat sprang up a moment before the train hit—

step

and how our pupils widened

step

and turned my eyes to black.”

At the beginning of the novel, Biz is obsessed with the death of a woman who died after being hit by a subway train while crossing the tracks. On her way to school, Biz projects herself into the woman’s mind. The pronouns change from “her” to “our” to “my,” suggesting that in her perception Biz becomes the woman who was killed.

“They say observation affects reality, that it can pin an electron into place. Until then, the electron is just a possibility, just an idea. Until it’s seen, it might as well not exist.”

Biz searches for metaphors to explain her feeling that she represents the observer’s paradox, a concept in the sciences whereby the presence of an observer changes the outcome of the subject being observed. She also references the uncertainty principle, which states that one cannot know both the speed and position of an electron (or other particle) at the same time. The metaphors communicate that for Biz, part of her experience is always unknowable, both to herself and others.