“Calm down. Try to breathe.” My own anger and confusion faded next to Padma’s blast of fury. In my words, I heard the echo of Tariq’s voice that afternoon, and I felt ashamed. “This is just the first crazy thing they’ve written. The reporters don’t know anything, so they’re making it up. That’s what they do.” I knelt on the floor and rubbed her back. Padma took a couple of deep breaths and lifted her head slightly, resting it on my lap. Her hair was black and lustrous and wavy, like Claudia’s, and as I stroked it I remembered how I had calmed my sister down like this so many times after our father died. Our mother was lost in her own grief, too fragile to ameliorate ours. Sometimes we would stay like that for an hour, and Claudia would make me recite “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe, a poem I’d memorized for a Halloween talent show at school. Leave my loneliness unbroken, I thought now, remembering fragments of verse and wondering why Claudia and I had taken comfort in something so dark and foreboding. I looked at Padma and felt a fierce urge to protect her. “I know it’s hard right now, but it’s going to get better.”

“The police inspector has not called again,” Padma sobbed. “That means Tariq is in surgery still.”

“Tariq is tough. I think he could pull through just about anything.” I didn’t have to like him to mean that sincerely. Cockroaches were survivors, too.

“He was almost killed because of me.”

“What do you mean?”

Padma turned her face up to look into my eyes. “Claudia did not tell you?” I shook my head. “Tariq is the only man of my family who will speak to me, let alone shelter me.”

“Why?” Padma’s face still had the round contours that hinted of baby fat. She was still a teenager. But as she rolled up one sleeve I saw deep, pink trenches dug into her flesh.

“Acid burns,” Padma said softly. “There are such marks all over my body. Everywhere but my face.”

I stared at them, horrified. Claudia’s arms were pitted with old track marks that had become infected and hollowed out into rough-edged craters. But those missing bits of flesh were like pinpricks next to the gouges out of Padma’s skin. “How…?”

“My family became involved in a dispute. The men of the other family wished to teach my father and brothers a lesson, and so they attacked me. Of course, my family cannot accept such shame.”

“Such shame? You’re the victim.”