I don’t know if fresh air will help, but I know that I can’t sit here, tended to by silent men my uncle’s brain has turned into nothing more than invisible cogs. It’s what we were born to do, isn’t it? Use everyone around us, below us, as an excuse for any wrongs we commit, any wrongs we witness.

Tai’s eyes shine at me, trying to convey some sisterly message that’s beyond me, and I need. To. Go—

I come to my feet, and the plush carpet wobbles, pitching me deeper into that fiery, crackling, coppery zone.

It’s black static.

It’s pain, the low-level, deep-seated kind you don’t understand except for knowing it’s causing damage that will take so long to heal.

The black’s receding, and the sadness is rushing in to fill its place, with anger close at its heels. I open my eyes, and I’m in our Limatra apartment, Tai kneeling beside me. She looks littler than before, sucked dry, her nails bitten to shreds.

“Nons?” Her voice sounds hollow and otherlike. “It’s morning, Nons.”

I sit up—there’s light crawling under the blinds and I know she’s right, but I can’t account for the hours in between. It hasn’t happened like that. It hasn’t happened like that ever. Did I eat something bad? I rub my eyes, and my lashes feel stiff as splinters, and I wonder if Tai slicked her magic paints on my face like a doll when I was out, and—

“What … happened?” I ask. Someone scooped my brain out with a rusty spoon, that’s what.

She wrings her hands. “You don’t remember? We came back here in a taxi, because you refused to ride with Teddy or in the car, and you were … upset. Ranting about boys and privilege? We called your doctor, and she told us you should take one of your anxiety pills.” The thin skin under her eyes is cruciferous purple green. “So you did. And … you went to sleep.”

And then the details file back in—how Mitso stalked and harassed Mama, how Dad and Teddy let their colleagues take responsibility for their problems and washed their hands of it all, including this darkness in Mama (the bleeding of the mouth, just like how my anxiety became fizzy pennies).

But what hurts most of all, senseless as it is, is the fact Tai and I didn’t even know any of this was going on at the time.

I know we were just children. But I feel awestruck by my obliviousness, by the way my memories shifted to conceal clues that must have been so obvious, leaving me with only that lingering impression of her malaise.

I need to know just what she found out.

I need to see her.

To promise her I’ll never be so blind again.