“Dad’s asleep in his room,” Iridian said.
Jessica grabbed her keys off the kitchen table and left without a word.
Rosa came in just as the Matas’ car outside started honking its horn.
“See you later,” she said, hustling toward the front door.
Iridian finished her cereal, put the bowl in the dishwater, and then went back to the couch. Once there, she wrote and wrote, page after page after page. She started with another page of I’m sorry I’m sorry, but then she tried to write down everything she could remember from her old notebooks upstairs into her new one. She wrote in the margins, in curves around the corners, in between the spiral holes, until her pen started running out of ink.
Eventually, Iridian fell asleep there, with the television on mute and her notebook open on her chest and pen dangling from her fingertips. She woke up a couple of times—once, briefly, when the air conditioner clicked on and she had to pull the blanket up tighter around her shoulders, and again when she heard soft thumps on the stairs and then in the rooms above her head, and she’d assumed that her little sister had come home from church and was trying not to make too much noise.
“Rosa,” Iridian croaked. She shifted on the couch so that she was facing the ceiling and watched a spider spin a strand of web between two blades of the unmoving fan. The air conditioner clicked on once more, which was followed by the sound of more footstep-thuds coming from the stairs. The air, Iridian thought, smelled a little like oranges.
Iridian called out her sister’s name again, but there was no reply.
“Dad?” she whispered.
Bracing one hand against the side of the couch, Iridian pushed herself to seated, peered toward the staircase, and made a noise—a strained little groan.
Scattered down the staircase were the books—Iridian’s books, Ana’s books—that had once been stacked neatly in Iridian’s closet with their spines facing the wall. They were now spread out, some with their pages yawned open, and some with the pages missing, torn out and tossed around. There was paper everywhere. The cover of The Witching Hour was there, right in Iridian’s eyeline. Iridian’s notebooks— also once stacked neatly in her closet—were there, too, scattered. Like the books, some were still intact, but just barely. Some were in pieces, ripped—shredded. Others were spread open, hanging half on, half off the stairs, like mouths, like big mouths with jaws unhinged from screaming or laughing.
Iridian tumbled off the couch just as she heard someone outside, in the front of the house. There was heavy breathing, grunts, the sound of someone rooting around in the earth by the bushes and bumping against the side of the house.
Rafe, she thought.
It was another bright day, and maybe he was outside doing yard work. That seemed possible. Iridian never ran to her dad in search of safety, but in this instance she didn’t know what else to do. She yanked open the front door, pushed against the screen door, and ran out barefoot into the grass.
Rafe wasn’t out there doing yard work. What was there was an animal, crouched low on four bent legs. Those legs were black, but its body was spotted, black on tan. A strip of fur all the way down the length of its spine stood taller than the rest. Its dark muzzle was smeared with blood. And there, pinned under one of its front paws, were the remains of a squirrel. The dead animal’s bushy tail fluttered in the light breeze, the sunlight shining off its red fur. Iridian watched—still breathless, close to fainting—as that crouched-low animal opened its mouth and its throat started to bob. A sound came out—not a grunt, not breath. A laugh. Hyenas, they laugh like that. They sound like cruel people doubled over and cackling.
Iridian started to shake—not just her hands, but her entire body. The tremors were so violent they caused her teeth to rattle.
“Rosa,” she pled feebly.
Rosa did not come, but the animal did. It abandoned the squirrel and stalked forward, its dark eyes pinned on Iridian. It stepped to the side and cut off the path to the front door, as if it somehow knew that Iridian’s escape was always inward, never outward.
Iridian looked to the street for help, but she was alone.
“It’s fine,” she whispered to herself.
It was not fine. She was still shaking. The hyena, still laughing, took another step forward, and Iridian let out her own scream. It was a low guttural howl from the back of her raw throat that was like nothing she’d ever produced before.
Again, Iridian looked to the street. Peter Rojas’s truck was parked in front of Hector’s house, along with a couple other of Hector’s friends’ cars. The front door to Hector’s house was open, but the screen door was closed. All Iridian could think was that she needed to get inside. Inside, anywhere.
The hyena stepped forward, and Iridian took a matching step back. She stepped back again. And again. Light-headed, she gulped, forcing air down into her lungs. The cool grass crunched under her bare feet as she moved—this was good. She just needed to keep moving. She was on the sidewalk and then on the slick asphalt of the street and then on grass again, in Hector’s front yard. When she reached the house, she didn’t ring the bell, just pulled at the handle. The door was open, and Iridian stumbled inside. Hector’s mom was in the living room, sitting on the couch, doing something on her computer with her headphones in.
“Iridian,” Mrs. Garcia said, trying to hide her surprise. “Is everything alright?”
Iridian didn’t know what to say, so she didn’t say anything.
This was a nice house, so different from hers. She’d noticed that when she was here before, last summer. It wasn’t dusty. The furniture mostly matched. There was a shelf full of sports-related trophies, and everywhere—on the walls, on side tables—were pictures in frames of Hector and his older sister. They were together, posing and smiling. They were by themselves, posing and smiling. What a nice family.
Iridian flew up the stairs, keeping her gaze on her feet. There was a blade of grass stuck to her big toenail. Pebbles from the road were wedged between her toes.
She could hear the boys even before she reached the top of the stairs. The door to Hector’s room was slightly open, and Iridian could see Hector and four of his friends sitting on the floor at the foot of Hector’s bed, in front of an old television set. They were passing around a box of cornflakes, scooping out the dry cereal with their hands and shoveling it into their mouths.
Jimmy was closest to the door, so he saw Iridian first, and froze, mid-chew. He nudged Hector, who ignored him. It was only when Iridian pushed open the door fully and stepped into the room that Hector turned his head and saw her.
“Oh . . .” he said. “Uh . . .”
The other boys—Calvin, Luis, and Peter—also turned to face Iridian. They said nothing, just stared.
“There’s something outside my house,” Iridian choked out. “By the window.”