“Hey, Kiki, you wanna go swimming today?” Prem asked, as he sat on the kitchen chair.

“Uh-uh,” she said reflexively. She sometimes got into the pool with Prem, since he wasn’t allowed to swim alone. But Karina’s usual impulse was to say no to anything Prem wanted to do with her—play a game, do a puzzle, go to the park—and yes to anything he could do alone—read a book, watch TV. Those two precious hours at home without teacher or parental oversight were Karina’s solace, two hours she could spend like a normal teenager. She felt her cell phone buzz in her back pocket with a message. “Do your homework and then you can watch TV,” she said to him.

“Pleeease, Kiki?” He tilted his head to one side and pleaded with his big brown eyes. “It’s so hot today, it’s practically summer. And I want to try out the giant water shooter I got at Tommy’s birthday party.”

Karina shook her head and turned away, unwilling to expend any more verbal energy fending him off. Digging another cookie out of the jar and placing it on his plate, she made a silent deal with her little brother and went upstairs.

Her activities for the next couple of hours followed their normal pattern: she started her homework, then called Izzy to talk about it, which led to talking about the boys they each liked and analyzing every interaction they’d had with those boys in the past twenty-four hours. Karina tried on a few outfits, experimented with hiking up the hemline of her skirt and stretching out the neckline of her shirt. She practiced lightening her skin tone with cream foundation she’d borrowed from Izzy and pondered the results. Finally, she finished her homework, then went downstairs to check on Prem before Mom came home.

He wasn’t in the family room watching TV, though he’d left the couch pillows all clustered on one side where he’d propped himself up. “Prem!” she yelled, plumping and redistributing the cushions across the couch, the way Mom would as soon as she saw them. Prem was not supposed to watch television after school. When he finished his minimal schoolwork, he was supposed to read or play with one of the educational toys in his room. In the kitchen, Karina brushed a pile of crumbs from the kitchen table into her open palm and dropped them into the sink. Where was the last kitchen chair? “Prem!” she called, getting annoyed. Mom would be home soon. She noticed that the door to the back patio was ajar and tentatively touched the door handle, her mind beginning to race before she threw the door open and walked quickly around to the swimming pool.

Time stopped for a long moment as she took in the scene: the chair propped up against the wrought-iron fence enclosing the pool, the still diving board at one end, the crystalline aqua water with sunlight dancing on its surface, the oversized Space Rangers spaceship bobbing gently in the deep end. With her heart pounding, Karina ran back inside to retrieve the gate key, fumbled with the lock before flinging it open. As she drew closer to the pool, she saw a thin arm, its edges whitewashed through the water, dangling below the surface of the inflated spaceship. Suddenly she was in the water, paddling furiously over to the spaceship, yanking it out of the way to find Prem’s body lodged beneath. She choked on water as she screamed his name and tried to drag his body, weightless yet heavy, to the side of the pool.