“I’m sorry,” he said while Ayanna diced poblanos.

“Do you think I should cook these first?”

“Ayanna.”

“Why not Mom?”

“You know Opal doesn’t want to see you.”

Ayanna watched her hands chopping. Encouraged herself to say everything she had been thinking these weeks while he drank and cried and ignored her. She was going to yell at him, to demand that he be there for her, to ask him what they could do for Olivia. If anyone knew anything about the doors, about what to do, it would be him. It would feel good to finally say everything brewing inside.

Ayanna’s father was crying. His eyes were red and the way his lips were crumpled, she felt like he was far younger than she would ever be again. She wanted to cut off her own pinkie. She had read people did that in some countries as a path to a sincere apology. She wanted to walk around her life, offering her right pinkie to everyone who loved Olivia. If she said that to Olivia, Ayanna knew her sister’s face would scrunch up with concern and glee and maybe she would say something like “You can’t culturally appropriate an apology, Ayanna.” Her father was saying things like I can’t do this, I’m sorry, I don’t know how to be a good parent, I don’t even know how to be a person, and she could not bear to fully listen to what sounded like her father breaking up with all the responsibilities that came with raising her. Ayanna put the knife down and went to her bedroom. There, she pulled all the clothes out of her closet, looked at her books, and wished she had gone out into the orange swamp. Her pinkie was so small. What was the point? She knew it would have been better to have walked through the door when it had opened, slipped her shoes off and waded into the orange water, leaned back into its carbonated orange warmth, looked up into the black night, and let herself slip down below the surface.

12

In her dorm—after showering and changing into Olivia’s cherry-and-lemon pajama set—Ayanna took one of the golden pills. She drank a glass of water in a quick gulp and then flopped back onto the bed. The ceiling light looked kind of like a boob. White walls, white sheets, everything she had brought to live in this single stowed in the blocked-off closet. Only the desk looked vaguely lived-in, with her laptop, some pens, and the off-kilter stack of books. “How can I do this for another sixty or seventy years?” she asked herself. There were no answers available, and she promised herself she would ask herself again tomorrow. It was easier some mornings to want to live when the sky was bright blue and the trees were crisping from green to brown.