Still, though. This was different. Rosa had always known that John was mean and that Jessica always jumped when he said jump, but this was the first time she’d seen evidence of him touching her sister in an aggressive way. Had there been signs? Had she missed them?
“Don’t tell Dad,” Jessica said, as she unlocked the front door.
“Alright.” Rosa’s heart broke a little. “Of course. If that’s what you want.”
“I’ve been telling him I want to leave,” Jessica said. “That’s why he’s in a bad mood.”
“Leave him?” Rosa asked, startled. “Like, break up with him?”
“No.” Jessica paused. “Like, leave San Antonio.”
“Oh.” Rosa shook a drop of rain from the tip of her nose. “Where would you go?”
Jessica shrugged. She looked tired. Her mascara was flaking off. There were little specks of black around her eyes, and her lipstick was smudged. There was a blur of dark red on her jaw, from where John had pulled the color away from her mouth.
“Austin, maybe? Maybe the Valley to stay with Aunt Francine. Anywhere but here. I asked him to come with me, but he doesn’t want to.”
“You should go by yourself,” Rosa told Jessica. “If that’s what you want to do.”
“It’s not that easy.” Jessica pulled her key from the door and faltered, like that little flick of her wrist had exhausted her completely. “You wouldn’t understand.”
Jessica turned, and Rosa wondered if her sister’s weary appearance was due to something more than what had just happened with John. It seemed like an older weariness, like one that had tidily tucked itself inside her. Rosa didn’t ask Are you okay? or Did something happen? because it was clear that something had happened and Jessica was not okay.
“Do you think . . . ?” Jessica crinkled her nose, like she did when she was uncomfortable but didn’t want anyone to know she was uncomfortable. “Do you think there’s something wrong with the house?”
Rosa didn’t know how to respond. All sorts of things were wrong with the house. Pick a room, pick a cabinet in a room. Open the door, and there were reminders of dead women. Look at the floor, look at the wall. There were scuffs and scratches of lives lived. Was it possible for a house to be abandoned and still have four people living in it?
“What do you mean?” Rosa asked.
Jessica’s teeth dragged across her bottom lip, pulling the color off even more. There was something wrong, something really wrong.
“Nothing,” Jessica replied. She opened the door. “Forget I said anything.”
Rosa knew it was a lie, but what could she do? It was impossible to force the rain to stop falling. It was just as impossible to force the truth out of her sister when she was determined to keep it locked up tight.
Rosa was a searcher, though. She was determined and had ways of finding things.
Iridian
(Wednesday, June 12th)
Iridian’s notebook was down at her feet, open and with the pages spread wide. She must’ve kicked it there while she’d been napping. She fumbled in her blankets, trying to find her pen, but it wouldn’t have been the first time one of them had been lost for days in the folds of fabric or wedged tight in the space between her bed and the wall.
It was raining outside, pretty hard from the sound of it. Iridian could hear the whoosh of wind and the drums of drops against the windows and the roof. It wasn’t night, just the middle of the afternoon according to the clock on her nightstand, but her entire room was in shades of gray. It was dreary and wonderful. She would’ve stayed in bed for hours more if she hadn’t needed a glass of water.
Iridian stepped into the hall and then stopped. The hall, the house—everything—smelled like oranges. The air conditioner clicked on and blew out orange-scented air. She closed her eyes and could picture herself back at Francine’s place in South Texas, out in the dry air and the orange trees. She took another step and yelped as the bare sole of her right foot landed on something hard and thin. She looked down, and there it was: her pen. It must’ve gotten caught up in her waistband and then fallen out as she walked from her room. As she bent to pick it up, a mark on the wall—scrawled there in blue ink on the white paint, just an inch or so from the baseboard—caught her eye. It started off as a series of broken lines—light tick marks—but then those marks started to merge with curves and loops. The loops turned into letters. The letters formed words. The ink became darker, the lines thicker, as if the hand holding the pen had become more sure of itself.
I want him I want him to want me
A hard breath burst from Iridian’s lungs.
“Ana,” she whispered.
Those words were Iridian’s words—from the story she’d just been working on. The writing, though—especially the letter a’s, handwritten in the typed-out style, with the little umbrella-curl on top—was Ana’s, without a doubt.
Iridian didn’t know how long she waited for her sisters to come home—minutes? an hour? She also didn’t really remember going downstairs. Mostly she remembered sitting on the couch, her spine too straight, and being haunted by the smell of oranges—so strong it was making her sick.
When her sisters did come home, Rosa rushed to Iridian’s side. The fabric of her dress was soggy from the rain, and Iridian gripped it tight, squeezing out water. Jessica stood by the end of the couch. Her hair was in a ponytail, but it didn’t look right. It was lopsided, puffed, like she’d been running through the woods and branches had snagged her long locks. A dark splotch the size and shape of a peanut shell stood out on her cheek.
“My words,” Iridian told her sisters. “Ana’s writing. Upstairs.”
“I’ll go look,” Rosa said.
While Rosa was upstairs, Jessica just stood there, doing nothing and saying nothing. Iridian gazed at the blank television screen. She tried to swallow, but it felt like her tongue was a wad of cotton.
“I saw her hand,” Jessica eventually said.
“It smells like oranges,” Iridian said. “Do you smell it?”
There was a pause. “No,” Jessica replied.
“Why is she doing this?” Iridian asked.
Jessica didn’t respond.
After a while, Rosa came back downstairs.
“I taped up a piece of paper,” she said. “You can’t see it anymore.”
That was a fine fix, but Iridian knew it would be a long time before she went upstairs again. She was under attack, and the only thing she knew to do was hide.