Ava - "Milk Blood Heat"

In "Millk Blood Heat," Ava is the main character on whom the third-person limited narrator is focused. She is 13 years old and experiencing the feelings of alienation that often accompany adolescence. In particular, she feels frequently annoyed with her strict mother and "unnatural and unfamiliar in her body" (4). Ava thinks her best friend Kiera is the only person who understands her, and the two spend all of their time together, often engaged in a game of hypotheticals that involves imagining different ways they might die. At the story's climax, Kiera jumps from the roof of a hotel during a birthday party. Afterward, when reflecting on why she might have done this, Ava comes to the conclusion, "She wanted to know what it felt like" (14). At the end of the story, in the midst of her grief, Ava finally feels like her mother understands her...