Tigers, Not Daughters - Samantha Mabry Page 0,49
enough to head toward the staircase on her own.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Iridian asked.
Jessica hiccupped. “I just need to change clothes.” She hiccupped again.
Jessica got halfway up the stairs, and then spun toward her sisters. Her head had swiveled so fast, it looked like she’d been hit in the face. She wasn’t laughing anymore.
“Wh—?” Iridian started.
She couldn’t finish the question because she didn’t want the answer. There had to be something else, some new terrible thing—phantom steps on the stairs, a misplaced, girl-shaped figure in a doorway, or more writing on the walls—more I wants. Iridian reached back to grip the couch and dug her nails into its scratchy fibers.
Jessica shook her head and tapped her ear.
That meant: Listen.
There was still the sound of laughter coming from outside, but new laughter had joined it. It was different: joyful, rising like a cluster of bubbles, but also sort of cruel and breathy and gleeful. It was the sound of someone who’d just been told a good-bad secret. It was as familiar as the handwritten letter a’s on the wall. It was Ana’s laugh, and it was coming from upstairs, in the direction of Jessica’s bedroom.
Jessica spun again and then ran down the stairs. Halfway down, she tripped over an old tear in the carpet and was thrown into a waiting Rosa.
The laughter continued, and Iridian cried out. She turned and braced herself—her hands and her forehead—against the back edge of the couch. She pressed hard. She was trying to get in.
“Stop!” Jessica commanded. “Shut up.”
The laughing stopped. There were still the squeals coming from the little kids outside, but the house was quiet. Iridian stayed where she was, scraping her face against the couch. She felt her sister—Rosa—reach out and put a cool, small hand on her back. The three Torres sisters waited. Outside, a couple of birds chirped, thrilled about the sunshine.
Iridian heard Jessica swallow hard and then say, “Ana?”
There was a creak, like a foot being placed on the top step, followed by a drawn-out, hungry inhale, the type that someone would take after having held their breath underwater for a long, long time.
Iridian yelled, then yelled again. She kept yelling, over and over—long, loud, incoherent, non-word cries. She was yelling because she didn’t want to hear what came after that inhale. She wanted the sound of her yelling to rise up and swallow the sounds of her sister’s spirit. She wanted to drown out the world with noise.
Jessica
(Saturday, June 15th)
Jessica left the house—she bolted out the door and was gone. The maniacal laughter that had felt like big, big waves crashing against the walls of her stomach, pressing against her rib cage, had been replaced by dead-cold nothing. She was a void. Iridian was yelling with her face smashed against the cushions, and Jessica didn’t want to hear that. Rosa would take care of it.
Jessica found John right outside, leaning against her car, holding a cup of ice to his beat-up face. Peter was nowhere around, and his truck wasn’t parked outside Hector’s anymore.
“Where’d you go?” he asked.
“To change,” she replied.
John looked to the front of Jessica’s shirt, which was still speckled with light brown drops.
“Come on,” she said, unlocking the door.
Jessica could do these easy things: walk out of her house, unlock her car door, drive to the pharmacy, buy first aid supplies to fix up John’s face. These things were simple, as opposed to going back into her house and listening to her dead sister laugh with her or at her or whatever the fuck that was.
John waited in the car while Jessica went into the pharmacy to buy antiseptic and cotton balls. After that, she administered first aid in the parking lot. The cut on John’s lip was crusted with blood, and she could tell from the bruising it probably still smarted. She repeated the simple process: slosh a cotton ball with antiseptic and press to John’s lip. Eventually, John bucked his head back and hissed. He reached up and grabbed Jessica’s wrist, forcing her to stop and meet