* * *

By the end of the following week, the yard project was completed, with no sign there had ever been anything there but an expansive green lawn. It took six more weeks for the workmen to finish transforming Prem’s room. When it was completed in June, the floors were cool marble and the closet doors had been removed to create an open alcove that housed three tall god statues, complete with silk garments and floral garlands, all imported from India. On the floor were three seat cushions embroidered with small mirrors and tassels. Standing alone in the transformed version of Prem’s room, Keith could think of nothing else he could do to try to save his marriage and his family. He felt like he was losing himself.

The Hindu priest came to bless their new home temple with a private prayer ceremony. Jaya was animated in a way she hadn’t been since Before, as if she had come back to life but as a different person. Keith numbly went through the motions: he and Karina wore what Jaya chose for them, stood and sat where she told them to, and followed the instructions she translated from the priest as they went through the steps of the ceremony. It eerily paralleled the service they’d had one year earlier to commemorate Prem’s death, also in their home, with the same priest. Only this time, it was Jaya they had lost.

16 | Karina

2011–2013

In the end, Karina lost both her brother and her parents. They divorced the summer she turned sixteen, two years after Prem’s death. Given her father’s schedule, her parents agreed she would live primarily with her mom, or at least this was how they explained it to her. Karina wasn’t sure whether her dad fought to have her or not, but they settled on weekend visits when feasible.

After trying so hard to make her parents happy and hold her family together, Karina had still failed, so the only thing left to do was save herself. Now, beginning her junior year, she only had to hold on to her tenuous existence for two more years until she would leave for college. It would be a clean start. She could seek the place where she truly belonged, free from the baggage of her family. A shift occurred inside Karina, unnoticed by her parents but significant, as she redirected all her energy toward the one thing she could now control: her own future.

* * *

Karina took a leadership role on the Science Olympiad team, assisting the captain by running after-school meetings. With Mrs. Galbraith’s help, she set up a peer tutoring program for younger students, which took up all her remaining free time. Her days were full and busy, but she liked having a sense of driving purpose—reasons to work late into the night, knowing exactly what to do when she woke in the morning.

“So, Karina.” Mrs. Galbraith leaned against the lab table where Karina was sitting one day after school, stapling papers for the Olympiad quiz session. “Have you decided on your classes next semester? I’m teaching environmental science and I’d love to have you in my class.”