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that had felt like big, big waves crashing against the walls of her stomach, pressing against her rib cage, had been replaced by dead-cold nothing.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 his gaze. She tried not to stare at the one eye that was swollen nearly shut, the bruising around it nearly black. The seam of that eye, all along his lashes, was moist, weeping like a cut blister.

  “You’re pressing too hard,” John said.

  “Sorry,” Jessica muttered.

  She wasn’t sorry.

  Rosa

  (Saturday, June 15th)

  After warming up some leftover chicken fried rice Jessica had brought home the other day, Rosa eventually coaxed Iridian into the kitchen. They ate together at the table, and then Rosa led Iridian to the couch in the living room. She clicked on the lamp. The television was still on. Rosa sat down next to Iridian and started telling her about her searches for the hyena and her trips up and down the river and out to Concepcion Park. She described the sounds of frogs and wind and crickets.

  As Rosa started in on all the birds she’d seen recently—cardinals, bluebirds, crows, little warblers—Iridian’s eyelids started to flutter closed.

  She waited a few minutes to make sure Iridian was asleep, turned off the television, and then went upstairs to grab a box she kept under her bed. When she was younger, Rosa used to collect all kinds of colorful things. She liked tiny racecars with missing wheels, swirled-glass marbles, and bird feathers. She’d find objects around the neighborhood and hide them all over: in a plastic grocery bag that hung on a hook in her closet, in the hollow of the oak tree outside, in an old sour cream container she’d buried under the bushes in the backyard. Over time, she’d narrowed her collection down to the most important objects, and those objects were in a single shoebox.

  Rosa pulled that box onto her lap and sifted through the contents. Her fingers skimmed a fake pearl button and a couple of Fiesta pins, and then landed on the note she’d received last July, a little over a month after Ana had died, from the boys across the street. One of them had written it, printing in very neat letters on a piece of a rounded-edged page from a composition book, the kind Iridian had always used. It was dark in the room, so she couldn’t read those neat letters, but she didn’t need to read it. She knew by heart what it said.

  We saw Ana last night. She was standing in the front yard tapping on your dad’s window. We thought you’d want to know. P.S. This is not a joke. We are serious.

  She’d believed the boys, figuring they didn’t have a reason to lie. They’d never been the mean types. She’d never heard about any of them playing pranks on other kids at their school. They didn’t come right out and say they’d seen a ghost, but they didn’t have to. She knew that’s what had happened. But she couldn’t understand why Ana would appear first to Hector and his friends, as opposed to her and her sisters.

  There had to be a connection, Rosa thought, between Ana and the hyena and the cardinals. There just had to be. Rosa decided she needed to search again, and she needed a better, or quicker, method than on foot. She needed a car, or someone with a car. There was no way Jessica would take her around, or her dad, but maybe there was another option.

  Rosa tucked the boys’ note back in with the pearl button and the pins and the rest of her most important treasures. She guided the box to its hiding place, and then went into the hall to grab the receiver to the landline. She tried the church first, but Walter Mata wasn’t there. He picked up on the second ring on his home phone.

  “Hi, it’s Rosa Torres,” she said. “Do you think you can borrow your mom’s car for a while?”

  Rosa was wondering if she’d made a mistake. Cars were different from feet. Obviously. She was too removed from the ground. The car’s muffler was sort of broken, making huff-huff sounds. Being a cautious driver with only his recently acquired learner’s permit, Walter was diligent about using his turn signals, so in the background there were always these little click-clacks. The radio was on, playing the doo-wop oldies his mom liked. It was low-volume, but still. Rosa didn’t like those kinds of sounds.

  “Why do you want to find this hyena so badly?” Walter asked.

  “It might need my help.” Rosa was looking out the open window. She’d trained her eyes to see in the dark. She could make out distinctions in black shades and shapes and could tell a possum from a cat from a football field away.

  “How can you help it?” Walter asked.

  “I don’t know,” Rosa replied. “I’ll know when I find it.”

  She’d had Walter drive her up and down the streets closest to her house first, and they’d fanned out from there. Closer to downtown, just a few streets away from hers, things were changing. Where, a few weeks ago, a small house had sat, there was now an empty lot. Where, a few weeks ago, an empty lot had sat, there was now a new, bigger house, or a small row of condos, or a bar with a cute, cursive neon sign above the door. Several of the houses that were still there had For Sale signs out front, even though those houses were occupied and Rosa could see lights on inside.

  “I think it has something to do with my sister,” Rosa said. “The hyena, I mean.”

  “Which sister?”

  “Ana.”

  “Oh. As in, her spirit?”

  “Yes.” Rosa swiveled in her seat. “You think that makes sense?”

  “I know a thing or two about spirits,” Walter replied. “I spend a lot of time in an old church, remember?”

  Rosa turned again to face the window. “Father Mendoza spends a lot of time in an old church, too, but he hasn’t been particularly helpful or encouraging.”

  “To clarify,” Walter said, “I spend a lot of time in the basements and abandoned rooms of an old church. I have a different perspective.”

  Rosa smiled out into the night. Maybe, she thought, this trip wasn’t a mistake after all.

  “Let’s try the park again,” she said.

  Walter clicked on his turn signal.

  For almost an hour, Rosa and Walter walked through Concepcion Park. The night wasn’t hot, but the air was thick. Rosa was sweating inside her rubber boots, and her dress was sticking to her skin. It turned out to be not a very good night for searching. There were too many distractions. People were out late, playing baseball under the harsh lights. Cars took up almost all of the spaces in the lots. Some of those cars had windows that were steamed up—or smoked up, Rosa couldn’t tell. Walter wasn’t a distraction, though. Sometimes he tagged along beside Rosa, and sometimes he went his own way. Whenever she looked, Rosa noticed a firefly flash above Walter’s right shoulder. She was sure this was a sign, a good omen. She needed a good omen.

  “Are you scared?” Walter asked. “About your sister?”

  “No,” Rosa replied. “I just want to know what she wants. Are you scared? Of the spirits in the church?”

  “Oh yeah.” Walter laughed. “But not enough to quit my job, right? It’s funny. I sort of like being scared.”

  Rosa didn’t think it was funny at all. She thought it was wonderful.

  They were making their way across a field when Walter stopped and went into a crouch. He’d found something. Rosa squinted, but she couldn’t see what it was. Walter straightened, and there, pinched between his fingers, was the tiniest snail shell. It was a perfect coil, and without a single chip. As he turned it, its iridescence gleamed in the moonlight.

  “Do you want this?” Walter asked, holding the shell out to Rosa.

  “Yes,” Rosa replied.

  She knew exactly where she’d keep it.

  Iridian

  (Saturday, June 15th)

  On this night, when Iridian wrote, she was alone in a dark house. The first thing she did was turn the television back on so she could take comfort in the glow of other people’s fake lives, and the second thing she did was grab her new notebook. Using a blue pen Rosa had fetched from upstairs earlier, Iridian filled all the lines of the first page with two words: I’m sorry.

  They were, of course, for Ana—for what Iridian had said a year and a week ago. Apologies and forgiveness were rare and did not come easy in the Torres house, because rarely did anyone deserve them.

  Iridian hated emotions because the one she felt the most was shame. It never left, or when she thought it was gone, there it was again, like a hard tap on her shoulder or a sudden stomach cramp or the sound of her name being called when she was sure no one was around. Iridian knew she didn’t deserve forgiveness, but Ana deserved apologies. And Iridian would give them to her until her fingers bled. Ana would see them because she had eyes enough to read and then write on walls.

  Jessica

  (Saturday, June 15th)

  After dropping John back at his house, Jessica sat in her car in her driveway. It was late, but she still didn’t want to go back into her complicated house. Remnants of the block party littered the street. A red plastic cup was wedged in the opening of a storm drain. Several napkins were half stuck to the asphalt, waving feebly in the dull breeze.

  Jessica’s left arm was draped out her driver’s-side window, and she was tapping a beat on her car door. Across the street, the light was on in Hector’s bedroom, and she wondered if the boys knew she was out there. Finally, close to midnight, she saw Peter’s truck round the corner and pull to a stop in front of Hector’s. As Peter killed his engine and opened his door, Jessica whisper-shouted his name and climbed out of her car.

  Peter stopped, his eyes narrowed. He looked up and down the darkened street and tossed his keys in his hand, as if he was testing their weight and was ready to use them as a weapon.

  “It’s just me,” Jessica said. “I swear it.”

  Peter came forward, and Jessica saw the short, neat cut between his left eye and his brow. Aside from that, the eye didn’t look so bad. It wasn’t swollen shut and oozing fluid, though the white part was shot through with streaks of red, like some capillaries had burst. She quickly scanned the rest of his face. The light from the street lamps was dim and hazy orange, but she couldn’t see any swelling at his jaw or bruising at his temple. Jessica wished he would smile one of his easy smiles so she could check if he’d chipped any teeth.

  “Here to survey the damage?” Peter’s question was an icy snap in the warm night.

  “I was worried about you,” Jessica replied.

  “Why?”

  “What do you mean why?” Jessica ran her fingers through her humidity-puffed hair and then motioned to the street. “Because of what happened.”

  “Why would you be worried about me, Jessica?” Peter urged. His face was uncharacteristically stony, nearly eerie under the street lamps. “I’m just someone you work with.”

  Jessica looked to the street, her eyes landing on what used to be a piece of white frosted cake. It was by the curb, smashed and covered with ants.

  “I’m sorry.” It was the second time Jessica had said those words that night, but the first time she’d meant them.

  Peter stepped closer, and Jessica lifted her gaze from the street just enough to see his hands hanging by his sides. There were bruises on them, across the ridges of the knuckles. Peter flexed his hand, and Jessica wondered how much those knuckle bones still stung, and if anyone had bent over them and cared for them, dabbed gently at them with a cotton ball.

  Just inches from Peter’s bruised knuckles, a firefly flashed.

  “For what?” Peter said. “Sorry for what?”

  Jessica startled and looked up. Peter was angry, but he was giving her a chance. She knew that whatever she said next would ruin something. It would either ruin something for her and John, or for her and Peter. She had to make a choice. It wasn’t simple. Or, it was too simple.

  “Do you want to come inside?” Jessica asked. “We can talk inside.”

  She could go inside again, if he came with her.

  Jessica half expected Peter to glance over his shoulder at Hector’s window, to check to see if his friends were watching, but he stayed focused on her.

  Did his expression soften, or did Jessica just imagine it?

  “Alright.” Peter nodded in the direction of the front door. “Sure. After you.”

  Rafe had always had a rule against boys in the house, but Jessica didn’t care about rules right then. Besides, her dad wasn’t even home. He was probably out with Norma, spending the night at her not-haunted house. Jessica led Peter through the dimly lit living room, past the flashing television and a sleeping Iridian huddled under that stinky old blanket, and then up to the second floor. On the staircase, Peter slowed to look at the photos in frames that hung on the wall.

  “Your mom.”

  Peter pointed to a photo of Jessica’s mother. She was sitting in a lawn chair at a pool party, wearing a forest green bikini and large black sunglasses. Her long brown hair was parted down the middle and hung over her shoulders. Jessica was ready for Peter to ask about her, about how much Jessica remembered about her, and Jessica would have to shrug and say not much, which was the disappointing truth.

  “She looks like Rosa,” Peter said.

  “She does.”

  Jessica unlocked and opened the door to her bedroom, realizing too late it was an embarrassing wreck of trash and clothes and dirty sheets. Her face turned hot as Peter did a quick scan, taking in the sorry sight of damp towels tossed into corners and empty tubes of lip gloss and mascara that littered the carpet. Nothing in his expression gave away what he might’ve been thinking until he went to the window, pulled back the curtain, and looked out into the night.

  “This used to be Ana’s room,” Jessica said.

  “I knew that.” Peter let the curtain drop and then turned toward Jessica. “We used to watch her from Hector’s.” He dropped his head and shook it. A blush spread across his cheeks. “That sounds creepy. It was creepy. We were creeps.”

  “What did you see?” Jessica asked, genuinely curious.

  Peter lifted his head and crinkled his brow.

  “When you would watch her,” Jessica clarified. “What would she do?”

  “She would sneak out,” Peter replied. “Climb down the tree. A couple hours later, she’d come back and climb up the tree. Most of the time, though, she would just stand here and look out. Not to the street, but to the sky.” He paused. “You don’t do that. Stand at the window and look out.”

  Jessica should’ve been angry. Peter was giving her proof of his and the neighborhood’s prying eyes. She wasn’t angry, though. There was a difference, she realized, between being spied on and being noticed. She wanted to be noticed, and Peter had noticed her. It gave her a buzzy, soft-edged feeling her hard self wasn’t used to.

  “Did you see her fall?” Jessica asked.

  “No. We heard the glass break. And a car drive away.”

  “It wasn’t John,” Jessica said automatically. “He said it wasn’t him.”

  She winced and then scrubbed a hand across her face. It was like those terrible words had actually stung as they came out of her mouth. She’d always known John was there, even if he denied it. The boy who had tasted and touched every centimeter of Jessica’s skin had seen her sister die and had driven away.

  “I’m sorry,” Jessica said. “I’m sorry I just said that.”