She waited until people moved and then, just as the guard looked away, took my hand and ran my fingers across the lower half of the painting. I closed my eyes, connecting through the oil and canvas, feeling the heat of her hand over mine. When we pulled away, she wrapped herself around me, her breath on my neck, slow and controlled, as if she was asleep. I forced myself to look back up at the painting and then suddenly, instead of shadow, there was light. The letters slipping clumsily from my lips stopped and the rattling inside my head calmed and I felt the painting in a different way than when she had let me touch it. I breathed in the color and smell of quiet and then the light dimmed and the ache in my neck released. Leah was watching me, her face soft, like it had been washed in rain.

“You see what I see.” When I didn’t respond, she pulled me in closer, put her nose in my hair.

We drove home submerged in calm, but as we got closer to her house, I started to feel it—the buzz in my head getting louder and bigger, a static hiss that happened when things around me moved too fast. Leah pulled up to her house and I ran out of the car. I covered my ears and quietly rocked back and forth while I waited for her to fish around in her bag for the brass-colored key. She slipped it into the lock and, with a click, the doorknob turned.

It was the way the pillows on the couch were arranged. The way they all had perfect V’s plunged into their middles, as if someone had walked up to each and given them a swift karate chop. It was my mother’s style of fluffing cushions before she left a room.

And that is when I knew.

I knew they were gone, and I knew they were not coming back.

Matilda

The air between us felt electric and my ears turned red from the heat. We drove slowly at first and then picked up speed once we reached the highway. Music from the radio filled the space between us and it was so loud that, for a moment, I forgot that Franny wasn’t with us, sitting and spelling in the backseat. When I finally looked up at my mother, I could tell she knew where she was going. The scenery became more rural, and soon we weren’t getting any radio stations. Without the music, the sound of the road took over and my mother’s smile grew even more determined. I pretended that she was a stranger who had abducted me and kept myself busy trying to come up with ways to let someone know I needed help.