The Backward Throw

Putri stands in the courtyard in Jakarta with her back to the house, tooth pinched between her fingers. "Throw it straight," her mother warns. "Crooked throw, crooked teeth." Putri inhales, focuses, and hurls the tooth backward over her shoulder, over the roof, into the sky. It vanishes clean. She turns and grins. Her dentist, decades from now, will be impressed.