you didn’t even know who I was at first. But then you woke up and you did.”
“Did I say anything strange?”
A twist of her mouth. “Like what?”
My shrug seemed to give her the confidence to venture whatever thoughts she had on the matter. “You told me you had a black bike with blue stripes and it broke when you crashed it on the road in the rain, but Dad was in the room and he said you never had a bike like that. Your bike was red and you didn’t break it in the rain. It just got old so Dad got rid of it. Do you mean things like that?”
“Yeah.” It came out rough, a motorbike with blue accents vivid in my mind, a gleaming thing of chrome and power.
“One time, when Dad didn’t know I was coming to see you, I heard him use his mean voice with you.” A quiet tone, her shoulders hunching in.
“I won’t tell,” I whispered. “Pinky promise.” I hooked pinky fingers with her as my mother had done with me in childhood.
“He was saying, ‘Don’t be stupid, Aarav. You’re the one who messed up the rug. Cleaners just threw up their hands when they saw the state of it.’”
For a small child, my sister is a very good mimic with an excellent memory.
“I don’t think you’re stupid,” she added with fierce loyalty. “You wrote a whole book with no pictures.”
I forced out a grin.
I knew I hadn’t hurt my mother. I could never hurt her.
* * *
—
Once home, I gave in to Shanti’s offer of an afternoon snack, then—after a small detour to Pari’s room—decided to spend a couple of hours working on my book. Writing calmed me down, helped me think, and I needed to do both of those if I was going to get to the bottom of what had happened to my mother.
Dr. Binchy’s earlier comments helped when it came to the manuscript—I didn’t need external validation in the rest of my life, but I couldn’t get enough when it came to admiration or accolades for my work. As for bad reviews, I liked to print them out and burn them piece by piece on the brazier I had on my apartment balcony.
“I used to think that was cute,” Paige had said one night, about a week before she left me. She’d been seated in one of the loungers, a glass of red wine in hand and her cozy blue cardigan wrapped around her thin frame.
“What?” I’d fed another review into the fire.
“How you’d burn your bad reviews.” A sip of the wine, the short cap of her blonde hair shining in the late afternoon sunlight. “Don’t you think it’s weirdly obsessive that you hunt out these reviews? I mean, you’re burning reviews from bloggers with ten followers.”
“All writers are a little mad,” I’d said with a grin, bringing out a line I’d used more than once to good effect.
But Paige had lived with me for six months—the longest any woman had ever lasted—and she knew all my bullshit. “Seriously, Aarav, you need to get help or you’ll end up one of those unhinged authors who stalk reviewers.”
“No, I never will.” It hadn’t been a lie. “This is all I need.” A moment of feral pleasure, then ash, after which the bad review was erased from my mind. I wondered what Dr. Jitrnicka would say about that. Would he consider it disturbing behavior, another indication of my “slight antisocial” tendencies?
He was too nice to label me, and apparently the word “sociopath” was no longer in the diagnostic manual, but I liked it better than its long-winded replacement. I wondered what Paige would say if I confessed my liking for a disturbing label. I still couldn’t believe she’d dropped me cold. Women tended to cling to me. But Paige . . . she was a ghost.
Six months of a life together, then nothing. I’d probably been a bastard to her. Just as well I didn’t remember.
I got up after having written three thousand good words. Copious sweet wrappers littered the desk. Fudge. Toffees. Chocolate. I’d made my way through a smorgasbord of delights as I wrote. Kahu called me a “vomit and shit” writer.
“When you’re in the zone, you vomit out words. The rest of the time, you do shit-all.”
I’d laughed until I cried at the accuracy of it. I might take a year to write a book, but add up the hours I spent at the computer and you’d wonder