Jessica resumed scanning. “I don’t feel anything. I’m sort of numb about it.”
“What about your dad? Is he doing any better?”
“He gets in these moods,” Jessica replied, echoing what her father had said earlier that morning. “I can’t really blame him for some of the things he does.”
“I remember when Ana died,” Peter said. “It was . . . it was awful. Your dad’s allowed to have a bad day about it. You’re allowed to have a bad day about it.”
Peter was just trying to be nice—Peter was nice—but that didn’t make his timing any less terrible or his words any less infuriating. Jessica wanted to wail like a fucking banshee because this exactly was the problem: Her entire neighborhood knew all the details of her miserable life. Peter knew. Peter’s friends knew. Peter’s friends’ grandparents knew. Mrs. Rivas from earlier today probably knew. Her fucking cat Hudspeth probably knew. They knew about Jessica’s dead mother, her dead sister, her alive but destroyed sisters, her total disaster of a dad.
Jessica’s phone chimed, and she pulled it from her back pocket to read a message from John.
hey babe! come get me and lets go somewhere! xxoo.
It was 1:06 a.m. Jessica’s shift had been over for six minutes.
“I’ll finish all this,” Peter said, gesturing to the shelves. “It’s no big deal. I’ve got all night.”
“Thanks,” Jessica murmured.
She turned and rushed down the aisle toward the break room, where she’d stored her keys and her wallet in her locker. She couldn’t wait to be alone in her car, to feel the sticky outside air and to drive with her windows rolled down.
Rosa
(early Tuesday, June 11th)
Nighttime was perfect for listening. There were birds. Mockingbirds. There were dogs. They all howled together even though they were in separate yards. Mostly, there were crickets. It was hard for Rosa to imagine a single cricket’s heart, what it looked like or how fast it beat. Dozens of crickets must fill a backyard on a summer night, all with hearts that thump or whoosh in different rhythms. All those hearts fuel all those legs that scrape together. They scrape together to create a song that will bring them a mate.
Rosa was outside, sitting in her chair and listening to the crickets. A new moon, a perfect white circle, was perched just above the telephone wires, and the air was thick. There were probably going to be storms again. Rosa’s hair was puffed around her head, and her bare feet sank a little into the still-damp ground. She felt buzzy and full of static.
Something landed on Rosa’s shoulder. She opened her eyes and saw a firefly. She watched it launch off her arm, disappear, glow, disappear, glow. She stood and chased after it, which was something she hadn’t done in years.
Another firefly blinked, off to Rosa’s left. She spun toward it, but then another caught her eye. And then another. The yard was alive with dancing light. The fireflies pulsed and swooped, so silently. It was dizzying, delirious. Rosa didn’t know where to turn. She burst out laughing, feeling lost.
Another firefly lit up right in front of Rosa’s face, and when she clasped her hands together to trap it, she could feel the insect’s wings flutter against her palms. When she released her cupped hands, Rosa watched for a moment as the firefly blinked away in the direction of Concepcion Park, where the news had said the escaped hyena had first been sighted. Was this a sign? She decided it was. She dragged her chair to the back porch and went inside the house.
Iridian was in the bedroom they shared. She’d fallen asleep with one of her notebooks open on her chest. She did that a lot. The digital clock on the nightstand read 1:16 a.m. Rosa grabbed a backpack from her closet, put on a pair of rubber boots, and left.
Down in the kitchen, she gathered up a half-eaten bag of potato chips, an apple, and a granola bar. She filled a thermos with cold water. She noticed that someone had left the freezer door open slightly, so all of the ice had melted and formed a giant puddle on the floor. A couple of flies were bouncing across the puddle’s surface, taking sips from the still-cool water. After throwing down dish towels and scooting them up closer to the bottom of the fridge with the toe of her boot, Rosa left through the back door.
The street her family lived on was just four blocks from the San Antonio River and ran parallel to it, so the walk to Concepcion Park didn’t take very long. The closer Rosa got to the water, the more the night sounds started to change. The crickets multiplied. There were thousands of them it seemed like, all of them trilling, but there were also the croaks of frogs. Some birds were chirping, but mostly they rustled in the leaves of the trees that lined either side of the river.
The neighborhood was dark and quiet. Only a few houses had their lights on.
Rosa walked up and down the soggy banks of the river and waited for more signs. She hoped to hear the hyena’s laugh, or at the very least, a quick huff of its breath. She hoped to see the flash of a glassy eye, something she could follow. It wouldn’t have been as bright and clear as the glow of a firefly, but it might be enough.
The water in the river was a rushing murmur, but occasionally there were pops and plunks, like twigs breaking and falling into the murk. Speakers from a car somewhere out in the neighborhood went boom, boom, boom. Rosa couldn’t hear the music, just the boom, boom, boom.
The perfect circle moon was high overhead when Rosa finally stopped to sit on the ground near the riverbank. She opened her backpack and started eating her apple. Once she was done, she pitched the core into the water and lay down on the driest patch of grass she could find. Resting her head on her backpack, she stretched out and gazed up at the sky. There weren’t many stars in the heart of the city, but there were some.
Rosa believed in signs, but she didn’t believe in coincidences. It was no coincidence, for example, that the anniversary of Ana’s death came on the same day that an animal escaped from the zoo. Maybe other people wouldn’t see those two things as linked, but Rosa liked to think that she was more attentive than most people.
She just wasn’t quite sure of how or why those two things were linked yet. She had to be patient and let the answers come to her. Patience was key.
Something buzzed in Rosa’s ear, probably a mosquito.
What, she wondered, went on in a mosquito’s heart?
Rosa closed her eyes and curled her fingers into the grass. It felt a little bit like fur.
Jessica
(early Tuesday, June 11th)
Rafe had a rule against boys in the house, and John shared a bedroom with his brother and his cousin, so Jessica’s car was usually the only place where she and John could be alone together. Sometimes they sat in her car outside of John’s house. Other times they went to a park or the empty lot of an office building. Sometimes they made out. Sometimes they talked. Sometimes, they made out then talked.