“What about me?”
“What about you?”
“Could I do the same? With the piano. With the Beethoven piece.”
“I don’t know. Do you feel a pull to go there?”
“Maybe?” Angela hoists herself off the bed and paces around the room, her hands brushing some of Mom’s things as she does. The pile of yarn from her knitting hobby, which never produced anything but three sad pot holders. Her collection of potted bamboo stalks on the dresser. My and Angela’s school photos, but only the worst, most awkward middle school ones.
Angela leans against the window. “I think so.”
“We can try,” I tell her. “Maybe you’ll get there and you’ll realize that it’s where you’re supposed to be.”
The last time I heard Angela yell, before this afternoon, was the day our dad announced that he was moving out. He had left before, but this time felt real, like all the anger from the other times he said he was leaving had been dug up and shoveled into this one phrase. He had conviction. But so did Angela. Right now, we’re in the car with music on (Firing Squad, track four, “Head on a Train”) and when I replay, in my head, Angela’s shout from three years ago, it comes in louder than the stereo. “Stop walking away!” she yelled. And for a minute, Dad did. I stared at his boat shoes until they stopped on the driveway. It didn’t last, but Angela knew how to set up a metaphorical wall covered with metaphorical graffiti. Stop right there, it might say. Or maybe just, Fuck you, Dad.
Angela says, “Lilia’s been saying really nice things when I practice lately. Every time I work with her, she says I’m getting better, I’m finding my voice through the instrument, that sort of thing. What if she knows I’m coming tonight? I feel like she really could sense it, don’t you?”
She gets so talkative when she’s tired. I turn down the music so that I can better hear the rest of her monologue, but instead she leans against the window and is quiet again. Maybe this is how it’s supposed to be—the unstoppable pair of Moreno sisters, creating stuff together. I don’t know . . . we’ve never been that great of a team. But I like that she’s here with me.
I crack the windows, and the air comes in cool and thin, like an s being pushed between teeth. It’s going to be spring soon. It won’t feel like this for much longer.
Angela tiptoes through the lobby, and she pauses at the door to the steps. “Maybe I should stay down here.”
“Look, if Lilia’s in the studio, then we’ll go away and wait until she invites you. But if she’s not, then we can peek in. It’s only up one floor.”
She walks up behind me, two-footing each stair. The stairwell smells like salt water and old paint, probably toxic if you had to stay here too long. She holds the door as we head into the hallway. No one, as usual. It feels strange to have the presence of Angela tailing me. Angela wearing a Harry Potter T-shirt and dark blue jeans. Angela with her black hair tied up in a messy bun. Angela who feels ready but who has not been invited.
“There’s music,” she says.
“Yeah. It’s upstairs, usually.”
“Oh, let’s go there.” She moves back toward the door. “This floor creeps me out.”
We take the stairs up three more floors, because that’s where the party was last time. And, yes, the music is here again, starting and stopping and leaning into itself. Piano, drums, guitar, and bass. I keep thinking that for as long as I was at the party last night, I must have seen the band, but no, I never did. They were off down a hall, in a room that felt like it wasn’t meant to include me. The music kicks into gear, and Angela and I walk toward it. But as we do, it seems like the music is moving toward us, as well. It’s louder and louder, and I swear that more instruments are joining the band every second, and the music has direction now, and it’s like a cloud of noise in the hallway.
“Angela!”
She turns around.
“This is hurting my head!” I yell.
She says something I can’t hear.
“I’m going to walk back the other way!” I call out, pointing at the door to the stairs.
I’m walking, and now jogging, and now running. I hope she’s behind me. She’s not. And there are vibrations under my feet, and it’s not just my shoes coming loose because I’m a terrible runner, or the floors shaking because I’m a terrible runner, but really, the floors shaking because . . . the floors are shaking.
“Angela!”
The music stops. The noise in the hall is of the metal doors shuddering in their door frames.
Angela walks fast from the end of the hallway, and I start toward her again. My head rings with the echoes of the music, and the floor rumbles as though it is a piece of sheet metal being shaken from one end, and we have got to get back to that stairwell.
We meet in the middle. This time, she opens the door to the stairs, and we begin rushing down. One of my purple sandals falls off and tumbles ahead of me down a flight of stairs. I kick the other one off too, and it’s much easier going. I’d leave them here if I didn’t need them—they’re the ones still stained with the mess of the Food Poisoning duo.
“Has this ever happened before?” Angela is much quicker on the stairs than I am.
“No!” My breaths are raspy, and they keep getting stuck in my throat. “Honest to God. There was a party last time. A girl mixed me a drink.”
Angela reaches the lobby and waits for me. I run out, but maybe I don’t even need to now. The shaking has stopped. The lobby is still and quiet except for the hiss of air in the vents.
“I think we’re good,” I tell her.
“Maybe you are,” Angela says. “I don’t think I should come back.”
eleven
“I HAVE REGRETS,” Mom says. “Things I was going to tell Abuela when I got older. Older! Can you believe how ridiculous I was? I’ve been in denial. And now she might never know.”
“Tell her anyway,” I say. “Whisper them in her ear.” I take the last bite I can stand out of my toast. It has reached that state of trying to turn into its former self—from warm and crunchy to cold and chewy.
“Is there anything you want me to tell her for you?”
“No. I think I’ve said it all.”
“Hmm.” Mom sounds unconvinced, but she doesn’t press. “I didn’t mention any of this to Angela, by the way. She sounded strange. Is she okay?”
“We’re just tired. We got to bed late.”
“You shouldn’t do that. You’ve got school.”
“It’s Saturday, Mom.”
“Oh.” The dogs yap. I bet she doesn’t walk them on the beach like Abuela did. Three dogs and Ceci Moreno, all bored and restless and shedding hair, in that one little apartment. It probably doesn’t smell so good right now. “I’ve been thinking about coming home.”
“No.” I bolt off the dining room chair. “I know you don’t think she’s going to wake up. But I do, and someone should be there.”
“I called Tío Mario this morning.”
“He’ll probably poke his head into her hospital room once, be like, ‘Oh, she’s fine,’ and then go back to whatever the hell he does.”