I look at her so I can’t see the images in my mind: Mom choking on the ocean she’d been deliriously happy about—Did you get the pictures, Nah? Look how BLUE it is! Dad, his body bashing into a wall that surrounds the seaside bed-and-breakfast they were staying at. He’d lose his glasses. Wouldn’t know which way was up.

Micah tries to hold my hand, but I pull away and stick my hands in my armpits and stare at the TV. He doesn’t get mad. Just keeps calling the embassy in Kuala Lumpur again and again while Mae turns her focus to the Red Cross, since they already have people on the ground. I can hear through their speakers: Due to high volumes …

“I love you,” I say to him, after a bit, because I do, right now I do, and because I feel guilty for hating him, too. He’s not perfect and I’m not perfect and maybe I’ve just been too hard on him all these months.

“Love you back.” He kisses my forehead. “They’re alive. I know it.”

I nod. “Right. Yes. You’re right.”

“The death toll is astronomically high—at least two hundred thousand people,” a doctor is saying when I change the channel.

His scrubs are bloody, and his eyes are so heavy I’m surprised he can still stand up.

The anchor’s voice cuts in. “Please be warned that what you’re about to see contains graphic imagery that may not be appropriate for children.”

Hell.

Behind the doctor, there are bodies covered in white sheets, and people crying and brown skin and white skin and chaos. A little boy is screaming for his mom and he hasn’t got any pants on.

“How can people find their loved ones?” the reporter is asking. She shoves a mic in the doctor’s face.

“We’re working around the clock to update our list of patients. At this point, anyone being brought in is … They are beyond our help. Most bodies don’t have any identification, of course, so we’re taking photographs.” He gestures toward a wall filled with Polaroids. Tons of people are gathered in front of it, and every now and then someone sobs as they recognize someone they’re looking for.

“They’re taking pictures of dead people?” I say.

Mae begins typing furiously. “It’s probably unethical to put the photos online, but…”

“We’re not looking at them,” I say.

“But—”

“Mae. We are not looking at photos of dead people because our parents are not dead. Okay?”

She hesitates for a second, the knowledge-seeker in her warring with the sister in her, then finally nods. “All right.”

“The worst damage is in Langkawi Island,” the reporter is saying. “We expect—”

“Where are you going again?” I ask Mom.

“Langkawi,” she says.

“Ohhhh,” I say, sounding snooty. “Lang-cow-eeee.”

She hits my arm, playful. I hit her back.