Her eyes stung. She still tasted the vomit in her mouth. Once, when she was a child suffering a particularly bad bout of gastrointestinal upset and fever, her mother had become convinced Calliope was inflicted with mal de ojo from someone looking at her jealously before her father had abandoned them, before they had lost everything. Her mother had taken her to the curandera, who rolled a raw egg over Calliope’s body then broke it into a glass of water. When her father left, her mother had blamed it on that case of evil eye. The curse hadn’t been fully broken. Even Bisabuela said for Puebloans—one of the Acoma peoples—like her, it’s not good to have too much, for others to envy you. It brings a witch’s wrath.

Yet even now, even after she’d sworn off such twisted beliefs, Calliope felt the unmistakable tingling of curse. Where was her family? Who had been cursed? Them? Or her?

Minutes passed. Calliope sat silent, numb with exhaustion, unthinking, sweating. She might have sat there the rest of the night had she not heard the tap-tapping. Every few seconds. Tap-tap. Louder than raindrops. She scrambled to her feet and tottered downstairs, unsure if she should be scared, though her pulse quickened. The tap-tapping continued, a knocking at the front door.

“Who is it?” she asked, her voice barely a whisper.

Silence.

She cleared her throat, then bolder, louder, “Who is it?”

Still no response.

She looked through the peephole, saw nothing. If she hadn’t known better, she’d have thought the neighborhood kids were ding-dong ditching. She shook her head and laughed bitterly. “Okay, it’s no one.” Hunger or fatigue. She was losing her grip. How long since she’d eaten or drunk anything? Her stomach rumbled despite her nausea. “I’m alone and crazy.”

Tap-tap, again. Lightly. Tap-tap.

Calliope cracked the door ajar.

Standing in front of her, a wisp so slight she appeared to hover on the welcome mat, the Korean girl from next door. Calliope had heard her earlier that summer, splashing in a plastic pool in the backyard, singing loudly while Phoenix played in their own yard. She didn’t know her name or her parents’ names. But she wanted to hug the birdlike girl on the front porch. The city wasn’t empty. There were people next door. Maybe they knew where Calliope’s family had gone. Maybe they knew what was happening.

“I can’t find my mommy and daddy,” the girl whispered.

TWO

TWO

RIVERBED SPARKS