Tigers, Not Daughters - Samantha Mabry Page 0,9
so that she could sit facing Jessica. She then lifted her fingers up to her sister’s face to smooth out the eyeliner. The rising sun coming in from the windows lit Rosa up from behind. In that light, she was weirdly pale. Her eyelids, nostrils, and the upper crest of her ears were practically translucent. Jessica closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Rosa’s skin was cool, and the light pressure of her fingers was soothing.
Out in the living room, Iridian landed on what sounded like the local news. With her eyes still closed, Jessica listened for updates about the weather. Overnight there’d been another thunderstorm. Hurricane season had come early that year. Even this far inland, they’d been hit with bad storm after bad storm.
Jessica heard updates, but they weren’t about the weather.
. . . already at least a couple of sightings near Concepcion Park. If you see the animal, please don’t approach it. Do not attempt to feed or capture it. Instead, call police immediately . . .
“Iridian!” Rosa called out. “What is it?”
“What is what?”
“The animal that escaped. What is it?”
Iridian took a couple of seconds before replying. “A spotted hyena. It escaped from the zoo yesterday morning. Those things are gross. They eat babies.”
“They do not eat babies,” Jessica said.
“They do,” Iridian insisted. “They come into people’s houses at night, steal the little babies, and eat them. I read about it.”
“Did the storm wake you last night?” Rosa asked Jessica, giving the corner of her sister’s eye one last dab with her finger.
“Yeah,” Jessica replied, “I thought the thunder might break my window.”
“Ready, Jessie?”
Jessica opened her eyes. Rafe was standing in the entrance to the kitchen. That little crust of foam was still there on his ear, and Jessica’s traitor heart clenched at the sight.
“Ready,” she said.
The air-conditioning in Jessica’s car had been broken for months, so she always kept the windows rolled down while she drove. It was hard to have a conversation or listen to the radio because the wind and the street noise drowned everything out. This meant Jessica couldn’t really talk to her dad as she drove him across town to the factory, where he had a job building cars on an assembly line. The silence was fine with her.
Jessica pulled into the lot and let the car idle as her dad climbed out of the passenger seat. After shutting the door, he leaned in through the open window and clasped his calloused hands together. He really did look bad. The sunlight made it worse.
“Jessie. Keep the faith for your old man, huh?”
Jessica smiled. She imagined it looked unconvincing.
“And don’t worry about coming to get me later.” Rafe gazed up, squinting into the sun. The fingers on his right hand twitched. Jessica worried that he was going to try to reach for her hand like he did earlier at the kitchen table, but he didn’t. “I’ll figure out a way back. Catch the bus, find a ride or something.”
Jessica’s phone buzzed in her cup holder. She glanced down to see several missed messages—calls and texts—from John. She’d never heard any of them come in.
Her smile—convincing or otherwise—disappeared completely.
Iridian
(Monday, June 10th)
In the weeks following their sister’s death, the Torres girls would play a game called Who Loved Ana Most. Iridian would always win because she was the best at remembering small details. For example: Ana’s left eye sat a little lower on her face than her right. There was a freckle on the inside of her right wrist, at the pulse point. There was a spot on the crown of her head where gray hairs would always sprout. Iridian knew about that last thing because sometimes Ana would ask her to sit up on the bathroom counter and pull those hairs out with tweezers. Ana’s favorite movie was The Princess Bride, but she’d tell people it was The Craft. When she was thirteen, Ana decided she wanted to be a majorette, not because she had school spirit—she didn’t—but because the girls’ mother was once a majorette, and, most of all,