After spending the day finishing her reread of The Witching Hour in a mostly empty house, Iridian opened her notebook and clicked her pen. Just as she was about to start a conversation between a witch and vampire who were falling in love despite a multigenerational curse, she heard someone coming up the stairs. She knew who it was because the steps were too slow to be Jessica’s and too heavy to be Rosa’s. Iridian slammed her notebook shut and crammed it into the space between her bed and the wall. She then barreled across her room and braced herself against the doorframe.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” she said, barring her dad’s entrance. “Did you get fired?”
“No, I did not get fired, Iridian,” Rafe sneered. “My boss let me come home a couple of hours early.”
Rafe worked twelve-hour shifts on the line, which meant he shouldn’t have been home until after 9 p.m. Iridian glanced at her clock. It was only 5:30.
“More than a couple,” she said. “You’re not allowed up here.”
Rafe towered over his daughter. It was obvious he’d been crying again. It was too dim to see if his eyes were red, but his eyelids were puffed. His gaze swept the darkened room that Iridian and Rosa shared, taking in the two unmade beds, the carpet that hadn’t been vacuumed in months, the clothes thrown all over the place.
“Where’s your sister?” he asked.
“I don’t know.” Iridian paused. “Which one?”
“Your little sister.”
Rosa hadn’t been home since the morning, but Iridian wasn’t worried. Rosa was a wanderer, had been since she’d been able to walk.
“You’re not allowed up here,” Iridian repeated.
“This is my house,” Rafe replied. “I can go anywhere.”
“What do you want?” Iridian felt her fingers dig into the doorframe. She never would’ve considered herself brave, but she was ready to use her long, weak limbs to defend the contents of her room.
Again, Rafe peered over Iridian’s shoulder.
“I’m wondering if you have anything of Ana’s,” he said. “Anything that I could have.”
“Why? What for?”
Rafe waited a moment. “Do I need a reason?”
“Yes,” Iridian said, even though she didn’t need or want to hear that reason. It wouldn’t matter. It probably had to do with missing Ana and wanting a keepsake, a scrap of something that used to belong to her.
He didn’t even need to be there, upstairs and lurking. The whole house was still full of Ana’s things. Just last week, Iridian had found one of Ana’s hairs bundled up in a pair of socks. She knew it was hers because it was long and dark, with about an inch of gray at the root. She’d squeaked with glee when she’d found it, and then wedged it between a couple of pages of The Witching Hour like a macabre little bookmark.
“Are you hiding something?” Rafe asked.
“Probably,” Iridian shot back. “Get out of my door.”
Rafe leaned forward. Lamplight hit his face, and Iridian could see the pink lines from where recent tears had tracked down his cheeks. They looked like burn marks. They did not make her feel sorry for him.
“You girls don’t understand,” Rafe said.
Iridian said nothing.
“You girls don’t understand,” Rafe repeated. He braced his weight against the doorframe and then dropped his head, shook it.
Iridian couldn’t stand this, how her dad always turned his grief into a performance piece.
“You have no idea what it’s like,” Rafe said. “Ana was my heart.”
Oh, Iridian had some idea what it was like. For her, Ana was hardly even gone. She was everywhere all the time. She was in the walls. She was in the wood of the walls, the wood of the cabinets, the cheap porcelain of the family’s mugs, the loops of the terry-cloth hand towels they used to dry their faces, the threads of the worn sheets they slept beneath at night, the pages of the books all stashed in Iridian’s closet. She was in the tiniest details of the ways in which the Torres sisters lived their lives, the choices they made, the directions in which they steered themselves, the shades of lipstick Jessica wore. Ana was the one who told Rosa, long before Father Canty ever did, that she was full of magic, that she was different and had a heart that was better-crafted than most people’s.
Sometimes, Iridian felt like Ana was the itch in her skin, like she breathed in pieces of her, and then breathed out pieces of her. She cycled through and through. It was overwhelming. Sometimes, like in that very moment, it was too overwhelming. And when things got too overwhelming, Iridian wished she could just shut herself down.
“Your sister died,” Rafe said slowly, “because she was keeping secrets.”
God, she hated him. Her hate was a sour film coating the back of her throat.
“My sister died,” Iridian countered, just as slowly, “because she was trying to get away from you.”
She stepped back into her room and tried to slam the door, but Rafe was too quick and caught it. His other hand whipped out and wrapped around Iridian’s upper arm.
“Apologize,” Rafe demanded.
“No!”
“You’re a miserable girl. Because you’re a miserable girl you try to make everyone else miserable.”
Maybe that was true—but was it possible that Rafe thought Iridian was the only miserable girl in his house?
“You spread your misery,” Rafe hissed, squeezing harder. “You’re like a disease.”
Iridian wrenched her arm free, slammed her door, and bolted it from the inside. She then braced herself there, with both palms and her forehead pressed against the wood, ready for her father to kick the door down or otherwise try to force his way in. She breathed in and out, inhaling the particles of the paint on the door, the particles of Ana. Eventually, Iridian heard Rafe’s footsteps receding down the hall. There was a pause and then a slight rattle as he tried the knob on Jessica’s locked door. Then there were more steps, hard and heavy, as Rafe went down the stairs.
Iridian counted to one hundred, and then to one hundred again. The weak limbs she would’ve used to fight her father started to feel even weaker, like foam. Just blow on her and she’d scatter. Once she was fairly certain that her dad wasn’t going to come back, Iridian raced to her bed, reached for her notebook, and smacked it to her chest. She was used to her dad throwing out all kinds of insults: little ones that barely pricked and big ones that were meant to crack bone. The best ones were the ones Iridian could snatch out of the air and then save for later, when she’d make them her own. If she could take Rafe’s words—no matter how hard or hurtful they were—and write them in her own hand, it transferred their power and made her feel less insignificant. Iridian needed that, to feel less insignificant.