I lose my cool fast.
“Nona,” I bark, closing the space between us, curling my hand around her arm as she pivots to pull away from me.
Her skin is cold with no trace of life in it.
“I can’t say more.”
“You have to tell me more. Please. At least I’ll know what I’m dealing with.”
She ponders something before turning to me and looking me in the eye.
“You’re in great danger, Leilani. That’s all I can say. I know it’s not news to you, but this is different from what has happened before. I know about some of the things––”
She stops when I straighten, bracing for the worst.
My hand slides off her arm as I look at her expectantly.
Of all the days I thought Nona would acknowledge what had happened, it had to be this? My twenty-first birthday?
“Please go on.”
She clams up.
“That’s not what I wanted to say.”
“It doesn’t matter, does it?” I say, my voice ice cold. “You know what you know, and I experienced what I had experienced. How is this worse than what had happened before? And why can’t you tell me? It will happen to me one way or another.”
My last words wear the coat of prickly sneering.
Her eyes drill into mine as I stare at her, unbothered.
I see the battle in her eyes. I know how it feels. I’ve been there so many times. She’s scared. There’s also a part of her that wants to do the right thing, warn me about what’s to come.
But her fears are stronger.
She’s afraid she might not wake up one day, and instead of growing old and blissfully insignificant, she might become a victim of this cruel world.
I can see it in her eyes.
The splattered blood on her snow-like pillows, the disposal of her body, the made-up story everyone has to swallow. I see everything, and suddenly I don’t care.
This is the world we’ve been living in.
This is how they’ve taught us to be.
Crude, self-centered, fighting to survive.
“Let’s do this,” I say. “I’ll ask you a few questions, and you give me yes or no answers. I’ll glean what I need from that.”
“It won’t work.”
“You want me to go straight to my grandparents and ask them?”
Her eyes are flushed with panic.
“No. It would make things worse.”
“That’s what I thought. Then, speak. I’ve got time,” I say, crossing my arms over my chest and leaning back against an armchair.
