I run my fingers over the illustration of the Little Prince’s abandoned rose, sticking to the side of his small planet, all by herself, with nothing to protect her but four thorns.

Then Mom reads what has always been my favorite line from the book, which the rose says to the Little Prince when bragging about her thorns, which deep down she knows aren’t big enough to protect her, but she’s proud and she doesn’t want him to pity her and she doesn’t want to pity herself, so she says: “Let the tigers come with their claws!”

I whisper the words into the silence of my room: “Let the tigers come with their claws.”

It sounded better when the thorny rose said it in Mom’s voice. I open my eyes and look at the yoga mat I laid on my floor this morning, waiting, but she’s not there.

“Come back,” I whisper. I guess Mom can’t hear me. Where she is.

I pulled a card today from the tarot deck Mom bought me when I turned thirteen—Rider-Waite-Smith, the classic.

I got Death. That skeleton riding on his horse, looking fucking satisfied with himself. Maybe the card is telling me she’s not coming back, ever again. Maybe it’s telling me that my parents aren’t the only thing in my life that has died.

There is a knock on my door. I ignore it.

Poor little rose with all her bravado, all that insecurity coiled up inside her petals. Doesn’t she know that trying to be strong never works?

More knocking, louder this time. “Nah?”

“Yeah.”

The door creaks and I open my eyes when I can feel the heat of my sister over my face. She leans above me, her short, blond hair sticking up in every direction. Her blue eyes, a tropical blue like Malaysian water, stare into my green ones. She knows. I know she knows. My sister is the smartest girl under eighteen in the world. If she can figure out how to fly to the moon, she can figure out I’m currently on it.

The late-afternoon sun cuts into the room so that her face is half light, half shadow. What goes on in there, in that head? Is it all math, or is she as confused as I am? I haven’t seen her cry, not once. But I know she’s sad. Yesterday, Mae forgot what the capital of Norway was. She was talking about stars in gutters and said the guy was from … and then her face scrunched up. It was the first time I saw my sister not know something. I guess sad hits people in different ways.

“There’s food,” she says.

“I’m not hungry.”

“Are you nauseous?”