I didn’t know this until after I died, but it turns out Mom always felt bad about leaving us at home after school, even before all those people started blaming her. But I say, Forget That! Kiki and I loved hanging out together. We ate ice cream sandwiches right on the couch in the TV room, which was usually Not Allowed, except for special occasions like Guests or the Olympics. Sometimes, Kiki played dominoes with me or helped me build huge Lego towers. Sometimes, she let me snuggle up on her bed to read comic books while she did her homework. Those were the best times, so Forget That, Mom. I try to tell her, but I don’t think she can hear me.

So, who is to blame then? If not Mom or Kiki, and not Dad because he was At Work as usual, then who?

Simple.

The water. The water decided to swallow me up that day, and if you’ve ever seen the Pacific Ocean or Niagara Falls, you know that when the water decides to do something, you can’t stop it, no matter how hard you try. So, I definitely don’t blame Karina, and you shouldn’t either. She was the only one who kept me company while I was dying. She held my hand and kissed my forehead. She was the only one with me on the last day of my life.

7 | Jaya

June 2009

It was like no kind of sleep she’d ever had. Some might call it a dreamless sleep, but that made it seem unpleasant, as if it was lacking something vital. No, this was the best kind of sleep, the kind that transported her to another place. Sometimes, as she was waiting to succumb, she envisioned a giant pillowy cloud carrying her off into the sky, enveloping her until she was no longer visible. What she appreciated about this sleep was that it occupied both mind and body. She rarely woke before late morning, and she woke gradually, emerging from fog.

And then. And then, the beauty of that black vacuum dissolved, and the realization intruded. It started slowly, just an inkling, and then came crashing over her all at once, and there was no escaping it. This, too, took over her body and mind. Her eyes stung, the inside of her throat thickened, and the weight on her chest pressed the breath out of her. The dark haze engulfed her once again. In that darkness, she relived each important moment—was it to torture herself or to ensure she would never forget?

The first moment. Her phone rang as she drove home from work. The officer’s flat, procedural voice came through the car speaker, the words he spoke incomprehensible. She felt anew the sense of dread and panic as she gripped the wheel. She pulled diagonally into the driveway and up onto a flower bed— she saw later—leaving the engine running as she ran around the house to where all those medics and police officers were standing: foreign bodies in her cultivated landscape. And then, the worst moment of all: the moment she saw Prem’s thin body, lifeless and alone on the ground.