Magenta lashed out, and this time Yaya didn’t fight. The limb sprang loose, jabbed Bryant’s skin, and broke through to shimmering red. He scuttled toward the far wall, desperate. At the next barbed lash, he began screaming.

“TV on!” Yaya shouted. “Volume fifty, play movie.”

Fight Club’s end credits swallowed Bryant’s screams in another slash of electric guitar. Magenta dove a tentacle into his body. Blood swallowed the tip, and then her protruding stalk swallowed the blood, a banana dipped in liquid clarity. The rest of her tentacles sprang forward, and Yaya stormed closer.

She felt Magenta’s hum in her ears.

Peanut butter. “Peanut butter.”

11

Magenta felt the cop tank’s rumble before Yaya heard it, a warning that quaked down Bryant’s walls and through their conjoined nerves. The cops had been slow coming, but the tremor meant they’d parked outside. Yaya had seconds to spring out of the bathtub, throw a towel around her dripping body, and amble to the front door. Had she thought ahead, she would’ve turned off all the lights outside the bathroom and drawn the curtains to pretend no one was home, but no one ever checked on screams in her neighborhood. She had been conditioned to let these things go.

Bryant lived in a different kind of neighborhood. Screams had suggested to neighbors that something was amiss, contrary to Yaya’s expectations. Someone must have been walking the street and heard the commotion after all. The TV’s volume might have thrown them off, explaining the delay, but eventually they had decided to call the cops.

And here cops came, knocking at the outer door.

Yaya fumbled with Bryant’s keyring until she unlocked the inner door and slipped through the creepy corridor to the outer. Two tall officers waited behind a sliding chain, each clad in blue plastic-looking armor. Blue and black masked helmets hid their faces. Their cop tank sat toad-like at the sidewalk, its gunmetal gray surface mottled with steel warts, from which cops shot gas cannisters, soundwave blasts, and live rounds.

They spoke in unison. “Evening, ma’am.” “Morning, miss.” They glanced at each other and then back to her.

“Happy technically Wednesday,” Yaya said. “What’s up?”

“Got a report of disturbance,” Black Mask said.

“Some commotion,” Blue Mask added.

Yaya forced a sheepish grin. “All’s well. My boyfriend and I got rowdy, but we didn’t mean to scare anyone.” She pretended to struggle at keeping the towel wrapped around her.

Blue Mask shuffled, his armor clunking.

Black Mask remained stiff. “And where’s he?”

“Sleeping,” Yaya said. “He always falls asleep after. I was taking a bath.”

Blue Mask turned away. “Miss, you’ve got—uh.” His black-gloved finger pointed at her legs.

Yaya could only make out the faintest red raindrop reaching her knee, which meant the cops could see much more. “Shit, my period.” Her free hand cupped between her legs so that the towel bunched as if to staunch her blood

flow. “I’m so sorry, but I need to take care of this. He must’ve—” She coughed and wished she could blush on command. Averting her eyes from the cops’