All it took was one moment of a lowered guard. As Nadine watched, the hairstylist shook her head slightly and retreated into her salon. The door swung shut behind her.
Nadine stood. Time to go.
“Do you want my sandwich?”
Janna’s brown eyes went wide. “The whole sandwich? Are you sure?”
In answer, Nadine put the feeno in the girl’s calloused little hands. Nadine’s own hands were smooth. In a few years, when Nadine would start to keep a journal of her private horrors, she would joke that blood made a good moisturizer. Her hands never wrinkled, never cracked.
“Do you want to come back to my house? I don’t think the bus is coming today. My mom can drive us.”
Janna stopped chewing. “Oh. I should tell Mama first, though. Right?”
The last word told Nadine all she needed. She had Janna in the palm of her supple hand, and she would do whatever Nadine said.
These girls, these soft girls, they weren’t a challenge. Their parents loved too hard. Protected them more than they should. Any instincts Janna might’ve had, instincts about girls like Nadine, never had a chance to develop. “My mom will let her know after she drops us off. Come on, we’re going to be late.”
Janna held Nadine’s hand all the way to the ivy-wrapped iron gates around Nadine’s two-story villa. The young girl shrank a little as they entered the estate, her curious gaze roving over grandiose pillars supporting delicately carved buttresses and balconies the size of some apartments.
At school, Nadine learned about a creature called an anglerfish. A hideous, ordinary fish except for one detail: the glowing fin dangling right in front of its mouth. In the darkness, the fin shone terribly bright, entrancing the anglerfish’s prey. They wouldn’t see the sharp, hungry teeth lying in wait. Wouldn’t hear the snap of its jaws until they were already between them.
These painted walls were the Haikal family’s glowing fin. And Nadine had grown up between its teeth.
Janna didn’t let go of Nadine’s hand past the living room, up the stairsto the second floor. It wasn’t until they reached the waiting steps to the third-floor door that Janna’s hand twitched in hers.
“I didn’t know you had a third floor,” Janna murmured. “Is your mom in there?”
An orange light spilled under the door, the rays crawling toward their dusty shoes. A soundless hum wove through the air. No matter how many times Nadine heard the sound, it never stopped raising the hair on the back of her neck.
The first fissure of fear broke open in Janna. She tugged free of Nadine, but it was too late. The shadows slithered from the walls, blots of black dancing toward them. They snuck beneath Janna’s feet, slunk around her crooked hijab. Sound erupted from the shadows. Voices rang around them, and Nadine guided her gaze away from the snatches of color flitting across the dark surface.
Pockets of forever, Mama called these shadows. Moments, memories, that time saw fit to save.
But time only moved forward for a reason. Whatever imprints those shadows stored, Nadine wanted no part of it.
The door swung open. Nadine threw herself to the ground, covering her face in the nick of time. Janna’s bloodcurdling scream pierced her ears, ringing in her head, and the orange glow momentarily brightened behind Nadine’s closed eyelids.
Janna’s screams abruptly cut off. Nadine waited for the click of the door to raise her head.
The orange light receded. All that remained from where Janna Elshenaway had once stood was a half-eaten feeno sandwich.
The next morning, the sound of a buzzing saw rouses me from a marathon night of terrible sleep.
A bleary glance from my window identifies the culprit: none other than Mister When-I-Wake-Up-We-All-Wake-Up Talbot.
I yank my robe over my pajamas and wait until I hear Baba’s car leaving the driveway to creep out of my room. Strings of pain stretch inside my head, strumming between my temples. The sun barely peeks through the blanket of clouds, but its presence means the threat of a Ward Wailer is gone. My mother’s journal sits on my bedside table, open to one of its many blank pages.
I shove my feet into the yard Crocs, slapping the screen door open. A rickety wooden gate separates our backyard from the Talbots’. As I approach, I spot Jesse moving through the gaps in the boards. The morning frost seeps into my pajamas, wringing a shiver from me.
“Hey!” I shout through one of the gaps. “Quit it!”
Nothing. The sawing continues, yanking at the strings in my head. The headache grows, my temper with it. I circle the yard for a way to stick my head over the gates, narrowing in on a cracked plastic chair by the fire pit. I almost forgot we had a fire pit. Baba had big plans to grill corn, potatoes, and yams, but they had long since rusted along with most of his extracurricular plans.
Slamming the chair against the gates, I climb up, ignoring the warning squeak of the cracked plastic leg. Jesse wears protective goggles and ear protectors as he brings the saw down against a hollowed-out tree log. Containers of bleach, charcoal garden soil, and compost stack the bench behind him. A blue tarp flutters beneath the containers.
Oookay, that’s not suspicious at all. What the hell is he doing?
Nothing I do succeeds in grabbing Jesse’s attention. I call, I wave, I whistle. Zilch. The guy is totally tuned to his own station.
