Content Warning: This section of the guide mentions suicide, self-harm, and disordered eating. It also includes racist and xenophobic content, including offensive terms for Black people and undocumented citizens, which is replicated in this guide only in direct quotation of the source material.

Chapter 8 opens with Miranda in a trance, clutching Ore and imprisoning her with her body. Miranda claims the house wants her, and tries to climb out of Ore’s window from four stories. Ore pulls Miranda back in, and traps her until she awakens, giddy at Ore’s “silliness.”

Ore spends afternoons reading to a shaken Miranda, and Miranda most enjoys her imitating the djinns and sorceresses of The Arabian Nights. Miranda’s condition improves, and she once again finds sunlight bearable. She stops taking her prescribed medicine. She misses her brother, but Eliot continues to ignore her calls. Miranda kicks Ore in the shins when the latter suggests that Eliot is self-absorbed.

Miranda and Ore go to a 1950s-themed dance together, and Ore watches as Miranda dances well, exhausting the couples around them. After the dance, Ore and Miranda try to have sex, but Miranda asks Ore to stop—a repetition of Ore and Tijana’s earlier encounter.