We pressed our way through the throng—“What’s up, Moreno?” and “Hey, man,” some of the guys from school called out, Axel waving back at them—until we had made our way through the heavy door and out onto the sidewalk. I sipped in the spring air.
The sun was tucked behind some clouds and a crisp breeze was kicking up. Tall bushes rustled behind us, shaking out rain-like noises. I crossed my arms against the chill and tried to find a place for my eyes—the parking lot, the grass, my shoes—anywhere that wasn’t Axel’s face. Caro’s words echoed around me. Axel and Leanne got back together.
“Want some?” He held out the fudge, a pale rectangle on a slip of white wax paper.
I shook my head. “No thanks. I just want to talk.”
“Okay,” he said. He wrapped the paper around the fudge, and when he stopped fidgeting, he turned his gaze up expectantly.
I opened my mouth and closed it again. I sucked in a deep breath.
“It’s just,” I started at the same time that Axel went, “Listen—”
“Go ahead,” I said quickly. I wondered if he was going to bring her up.
He kicked at a pebble on the sidewalk. “I feel like things have just been really weird. Like, we haven’t been the same.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. A new breeze swelled up, and I tried to ignore the way it played across his dark hair.
“Can we, like, try to reset?” he said.
I nodded. “Absolutely.”
“I’m not sure it’s possible to totally go back to normal. Or at least, normal as defined by how we used to be. I don’t know.”
I nodded less fervently, pretending there was something I understood in that sentence. Was it because of Leanne? Was she the reason why we couldn’t go back to normal?
“But I’ve really missed you. You—you’re my best friend.”
The words stung a little. I breathed them in and swallowed them down.
“I’ve missed you, too,” I said softly.
“Well,” he said. “I was starting to worry.”
I rolled my eyes but couldn’t help smiling a little.
“And I’ve really missed your mom’s chive dumplings.”
“I knew it,” I said. “You’ve been using me this whole time just to get dumplings.”
“And waffles,” he added. “I was a good guy once. The waffles were my downfall.”
My smile faded a little. It was just a few hours ago that I’d been in our kitchen making waffles by myself, even though it was the wrong day for them. When I went upstairs into the master bedroom to try to nudge my mother awake, she only knotted herself tighter in the sheets. I ended up sitting there at the kitchen counter, eating cold waffles with sour berries and missing Axel while Meimei slinked between my legs, winding back and forth, back and forth.
“Well.” Axel cleared his throat. “Sorry, but I actually have to go. I told Caro I couldn’t stay long—”
“Oh.” I tried not to look disappointed. I barely managed to stop myself from asking if it was because he had to go meet Leanne.
“I’m sorry, it’s just, I promised Angie we would practice for this Father’s Day surprise we’re doing—it’s kind of silly.”
I let out a slow breath of relief.
“But. Never mind that. You know what I remembered this morning?” he said.
I shook my head.
“Tomorrow is Two Point Fives Day.”
“Oh my god.” Warmth bubbled in my stomach. It was, wasn’t it?
It was the day that was exactly two and a half months after Axel’s birthday, and two and a half months before my birthday. It was our annual thing to get together, make some weird form of sweet-and-salty popcorn, and draw each other’s feet. A celebration of us, and a celebration of school ending, because it was always more or less the week before summer vacation started.
“I can’t believe I forgot,” I said, feeling dazed.
“So, come over? We’ll hang out in the basement, make some popcorn?”
“Yes,” I said with a real smile. “Definitely.”
93
By the time I get back, the cracks have made their way into my grandparents’ building. Up the stairs and onto the landing and in through the front door. I slip off my shoes and watch the way the floor breaks under Waipo’s steps. People are speaking to me, but the sound is like rushing water. Or static on a radio. Loud. Empty.
I stare at the cracks. Black, spreading, fissuring.
“Leigh,” I finally hear.
It’s my father. He’s standing in front of me, holding my shoulders. He didn’t respond to my email, but he’s here. His entire body is cracked, too, the pieces of his face barely hanging on.
“Dad,” I hear myself say.
He looks down at the bouquet of red feathers in my hand, and his mouth draws a grim line. “Are you okay?”
There’s a wrong kind of noise. The tiniest little snap.
I realize: There should be light coming through the windows, but there isn’t. The living room is dark as midnight.
There’s just one little sliver of brightness pouring through from the corner. Enough to show how the windowpanes are glistening, distorting. I blink fast to clear my vision, but it takes a long moment for my brain to process what I’m seeing.
The windows. They’re melting.
As they slide down off the walls, the liquid glass turns to black ink. It pools on the floor and spreads toward me, runny and fast. I step backward quickly, hitting a wall with my shoulder. On impact, there’s a shattering sound. The wall cracks into a million more pieces. New ink oozes from those fissures, running down to join the puddle on the floor.
A small feather slides out from my handful and turns a slow somersault in the air before drifting directly into the inky darkness. The feather sizzles and crumbles, turning to ash and then vanishing. Instinct tells me: We can’t touch the liquid black.
My mother’s dying soaked down through the carpet, through the wood. When it was done with the bedroom, it took over our house, and then it moved on to me. It soaked through my hair and skin and bone, through my skull and deep into my brain. Now it’s staining everything, leaking that blackest black into the rest of the world.
“Leigh?” says my father.
“Come on,” I tell him. I look over at my grandparents sitting at the dining table. “Waipo. Waigong. Tell them to come, too.”
“Come where?” says Dad.
When I pass the kitchen, that same darkness is pouring out onto the tiles, dripping down the cabinets, overflowing from the drawers. The ink seems to sense my presence; it comes snaking toward me.
“Run,” I call out.
Nobody moves.
“Come on,” I say, nudging my grandfather’s elbow and wrapping my hand around Waipo’s wrist.
My grandparents move so slowly I’m about to have a heart attack. We make our way down the hall and into my room. The ink follows us all the way. I don’t know how much time we have, but the black is creeping close when I slam the door shut.
“Leigh, what on earth are you doing?”
The only thing I can think to do. My best guess at stopping the cracks:
I strike a match, light the last stick of incense. Touch its firefly end to the handful of feathers, and watch them begin to burn.
94
—SMOKE & MEMORIES—
The black smoke explodes. Everything around us tilts and turns, beginning to spin. We’re trapped in a storm, a cyclone of heat and ash. It’s far worse than when I lit the incense with Waipo. Everything has disappeared. There’s no room, no door. Just the four of us and the darkness, the wisps of black smoke winding around us, burning our eyes, filling our lungs.
We fly through darkness. We wing through light. The air around us turns to ice, then to fire.
It begins as whispers: the same whispers that first called me to the incense. The smallest, most hushed of voices. They increase in volume, like someone’s turning up a dial. I recognize them: My mother, sparkling and bell-like, talking to a piano student. My father, chanting silly rhymes I haven’t heard in a decade. Waipo’s quiet laughter. Then others that I know only from memories. Waigong’s deep tones. Jingling’s round and optimistic cadence.
The voices wrap around us like the softest blankets.
And then we hit the other side of the storm. It tosses us high, and I get separated from everyone.