She moved through the room like a rumor: bright, unavoidable, not quite believed. Conversations folded into her orbit and then away again, as if gravity had a taste for the absurd. She loved everything that wasn’t owned: stray songs on late-night radio, books with bent spines, jokes that smelled faintly of danger. When she smiled it was an invitation to mischief; when she frowned it was proof that the world still surprised her.