“No problem.”

  During the summer, Jessica rarely saw Peter. He usually worked the overnight shift and was clocking in around when Jessica was clocking out. The old ladies who shopped at the pharmacy loved him. They always asked Jessica if he was working even though they knew his schedule by heart. They went out of their way to steer their carts into the aisle where Peter was stocking or to ask specifically for him to reach for items on the highest shelves. He asked them about their surgeries, and they showed him their granddaughters’ senior portraits and photos from their quinceñeras. He seemed genuinely sad when they would tell him that another one of their old lady friends had died.

  They’d gone to the same school, but since Peter was Iridian’s age and had just finished his junior year, Jessica didn’t know him well—they’d been in choir together; that was it—but he was one of Hector Garcia’s friends, which meant that, when he wasn’t at work, he was usually camped out at the house across the street from Jessica’s. He’d been there yesterday afternoon, in fact, standing out in the street with the rest of his friends, gawking as Jessica was trying to yank her distraught father off the ground. He’d seen her at her unraveled worst, begging her sisters for help and yelling at the neighbors to leave them all alone.

  Standing there behind the registers under the industrial blast of air-conditioning, Jessica could feel her face get hot and the sweat start to gather behind her ears as if she were still outside with her father, crouched and crying on the asphalt.

  “Here, let me,” Jessica said to the woman. She plucked twenty-three cents from the pile of coins and started sorting them into the register. “You know, it’s probably just scared.”

  “What, dear?” The woman looked up. “Oh, hello, Peter.”

  “Hi, Mrs. Rivas,” Peter replied.

  “The hyena.” Jessica handed the woman her change with a long ribbon of coupons. “It’s probably just scared. Imagine if you were lost and alone in a strange place. I bet that would be pretty scary. You might start to do some weird stuff.”

  Mrs. Rivas looked from Jessica to Peter, then back to Jessica.

  “But you know,” Jessica couldn’t help adding, “that thing about the Yorkie? It’s probably just a rumor. People around here love to come up with all kinds of stories.”

  Mrs. Rivas, once so chatty, was apparently at a loss for words.

  “Have a nice day,” Jessica said with a grin. “I can help who’s next in line.”

  Jessica ended up pulling a double because a coworker had to leave to take her kid to the emergency room after he accidentally smashed his hand in a car door. Even though she was exhausted, she was grateful for the excuse not to go home. She spent her time stocking toilet paper, thermometers, greeting cards, condoms, diapers, and cotton rounds. She worked the register some more and tried not to judge customers by their purchases. She spent ten minutes helping an older man look up a coupon on his phone, only to tell him that it had expired three months ago. She ate a granola bar and a fruit cup, and drank a cherry Diet Coke alone in the break room. She caught herself humming along to a Celine Dion ballad that was coming through the speakers. She’d worked four shifts a week at the pharmacy for nearly five months now, since the beginning of the spring semester of her senior year, and had probably heard that same song three hundred times.

  Sometimes, she really loved how boring her job was.

  Late in the night and toward the end of her second shift, Jessica was with Peter again, this time in the vitamin aisle, where they were scanning hundreds of little bottles that were about to go on sale. The two of them worked in silence, which Jessica thought was great, until Peter asked what he must’ve assumed was a simple enough question.

  “So,” he said. “How are you doing?”

  Jessica paused, her finger hovering over the trigger of her hand scanner.

  “Fine. Why?”

  “I don’t know.” Peter shrugged. “After yesterday. Because of yesterday.”

  What, Jessica wondered, did Peter think the answer to his question could be? Did he want to know how Jessica went to sleep last night clutching one of Ana’s old shoes—one of her shoes—because the stink from the sole was still there, and so strong? Did he want to know how, earlier today during her shift, when a twelve-year-old girl wanted to buy the same cheap, linen-scented perfume that Ana always used to wear, Jessica sat in silent judgment of the girl’s thin, mouse-brown hair and chapped lips and too-wide eyes, as if some little girl was too weird and too unattractive for a four-dollar plastic bottle of perfume? Or did he want to know about how, while Jessica was having sex with John in the back seat of her car the other night, she started crying so loudly and violently that she’d tricked him? John had thought they’d been cries of passion, what he’d been able to pull from her depths, but they’d had nothing to do with him. Her cries were from grief and rage. She’d bitten John hard, on his shoulder, desperate to cause someone else pain.

  Jessica resumed scanning. “I don’t feel anything. I’m sort of numb about it.”

  “What about your dad? Is he doing any better?”

  “He gets in these moods,” Jessica replied, echoing what her father had said earlier that morning. “I can’t really blame him for some of the things he does.”

  “I remember when Ana died,” Peter said. “It was . . . it was awful. Your dad’s allowed to have a bad day about it. You’re allowed to have a bad day about it.”

  Peter was just trying to be nice—Peter was nice—but that didn’t make his timing any less terrible or his words any less infuriating. Jessica wanted to wail like a fucking banshee because this exactly was the problem: Her entire neighborhood knew all the details of her miserable life. Peter knew. Peter’s friends knew. Peter’s friends’ grandparents knew. Mrs. Rivas from earlier today probably knew. Her fucking cat Hudspeth probably knew. They knew about Jessica’s dead mother, her dead sister, her alive but destroyed sisters, her total disaster of a dad.

  Jessica’s phone chimed, and she pulled it from her back pocket to read a message from John.

  hey babe! come get me and lets go somewhere! xxoo.

  It was 1:06 a.m. Jessica’s shift had been over for six minutes.

  “I’ll finish all this,” Peter said, gesturing to the shelves. “It’s no big deal. I’ve got all night.”

  “Thanks,” Jessica murmured.

  She turned and rushed down the aisle toward the break room, where she’d stored her keys and her wallet in her locker. She couldn’t wait to be alone in her car, to feel the sticky outside air and to drive with her windows rolled down.

  Rosa

  (early Tuesday, June 11th)

  Nighttime was perfect for listening. There were birds. Mockingbirds. There were dogs. They all howled together even though they were in separate yards. Mostly, there were crickets. It was hard for Rosa to imagine a single cricket’s heart, what it looked like or how fast it beat. Dozens of crickets must fill a backyard on a summer night, all with hearts that thump or whoosh in different rhythms. All those hearts fuel all those legs that scrape together. They scrape together to create a song that will bring them a mate.

  Rosa was outside, sitting in her chair and listening to the crickets. A new moon, a perfect white circle, was perched just above the telephone wires, and the air was thick. There were probably going to be storms again. Rosa’s hair was puffed around her head, and her bare feet sank a little into the still-damp ground. She felt buzzy and full of static.

  Something landed on Rosa’s shoulder. She opened her eyes and saw a firefly. She watched it launch off her arm, disappear, glow, disappear, glow. She stood and chased after it, which was something she hadn’t done in years.

  Another firefly blinked, off to Rosa’s left. She spun toward it, but then another caught her eye. And then another. The yard was alive with dancing light. The fireflies pulsed and swooped, so silently. It was dizzying, delirious. Rosa didn’t know where to turn. She burst out laughing, feeling lost.

  Another firefly lit up right in front of Rosa’s face, and when she clasped her hands together to trap it, she could feel the insect’s wings flutter against her palms. When she released her cupped hands, Rosa watched for a moment as the firefly blinked away in the direction of Concepcion Park, where the news had said the escaped hyena had first been sighted. Was this a sign? She decided it was. She dragged her chair to the back porch and went inside the house.

  Iridian was in the bedroom they shared. She’d fallen asleep with one of her notebooks open on her chest. She did that a lot. The digital clock on the nightstand read 1:16 a.m. Rosa grabbed a backpack from her closet, put on a pair of rubber boots, and left.

  Down in the kitchen, she gathered up a half-eaten bag of potato chips, an apple, and a granola bar. She filled a thermos with cold water. She noticed that someone had left the freezer door open slightly, so all of the ice had melted and formed a giant puddle on the floor. A couple of flies were bouncing across the puddle’s surface, taking sips from the still-cool water. After throwing down dish towels and scooting them up closer to the bottom of the fridge with the toe of her boot, Rosa left through the back door.

  The street her family lived on was just four blocks from the San Antonio River and ran parallel to it, so the walk to Concepcion Park didn’t take very long. The closer Rosa got to the water, the more the night sounds started to change. The crickets multiplied. There were thousands of them it seemed like, all of them trilling, but there were also the croaks of frogs. Some birds were chirping, but mostly they rustled in the leaves of the trees that lined either side of the river.

  The neighborhood was dark and quiet. Only a few houses had their lights on.

  Rosa walked up and down the soggy banks of the river and waited for more signs. She hoped to hear the hyena’s laugh, or at the very least, a quick huff of its breath. She hoped to see the flash of a glassy eye, something she could follow. It wouldn’t have been as bright and clear as the glow of a firefly, but it might be enough.

  The water in the river was a rushing murmur, but occasionally there were pops and plunks, like twigs breaking and falling into the murk. Speakers from a car somewhere out in the neighborhood went boom, boom, boom. Rosa couldn’t hear the music, just the boom, boom, boom.

  The perfect circle moon was high overhead when Rosa finally stopped to sit on the ground near the riverbank. She opened her backpack and started eating her apple. Once she was done, she pitched the core into the water and lay down on the driest patch of grass she could find. Resting her head on her backpack, she stretched out and gazed up at the sky. There weren’t many stars in the heart of the city, but there were some.

  Rosa believed in signs, but she didn’t believe in coincidences. It was no coincidence, for example, that the anniversary of Ana’s death came on the same day that an animal escaped from the zoo. Maybe other people wouldn’t see those two things as linked, but Rosa liked to think that she was more attentive than most people.

  She just wasn’t quite sure of how or why those two things were linked yet. She had to be patient and let the answers come to her. Patience was key.

  Something buzzed in Rosa’s ear, probably a mosquito.

  What, she wondered, went on in a mosquito’s heart?

  Rosa closed her eyes and curled her fingers into the grass. It felt a little bit like fur.

  Jessica

  (early Tuesday, June 11th)

  Rafe had a rule against boys in the house, and John shared a bedroom with his brother and his cousin, so Jessica’s car was usually the only place where she and John could be alone together. Sometimes they sat in her car outside of John’s house. Other times they went to a park or the empty lot of an office building. Sometimes they made out. Sometimes they talked. Sometimes, they made out then talked.

  For now, they were parked a couple of streets over from Jessica’s house, across from the high school. They weren’t making out. Or talking. They were just sitting. It was three-something in the morning. Thunderclouds were rolling in, and Jessica was waiting for John to tell her to drive him home.

  It had only been a little over two hours since she’d run out of the pharmacy and plunked down with a contented sigh into the front seat of her car. She didn’t feel content anymore.

  “Aren’t you tired?” Jessica asked.

  John shifted, angling in. “You’re trying to get rid of me?”

  John usually smelled like his house, which smelled like his kitchen, which smelled like the yeasty bread his grandmother liked to bake. Tonight, he didn’t smell like that. He smelled sour. Not sour like yeast, but sour like sweat, like he’d been out under the sun for hours, sweating then cooling, sweating then cooling.

  “Of course I’m not trying to get rid of you.” Jessica slouched in her seat. “I’m just tired. I was at the store forever, and I have to get up early tomorrow and go back again. Hey, speaking of that . . . I’ve been thinking about asking my manager about transferring.”

  What Jessica said next came out in a rush.

  “It wouldn’t be for a while. I’d have to make sure my family was set up alright, and I wouldn’t go anywhere too far, just like to Austin or Galveston. It’s a good time for a new start, you know? You and I—we can get a cheap little place together, but still be close enough to visit home when we wanted.”

  It took a while for John to respond. “The last time you tried to run away it didn’t work so well.”

  Jessica scoffed. “It’s not running away if I’m sitting here telling you about it. I’m asking you to come with me.”

  “I love you, Jess,” John said. “But I’m not leaving San Antonio.”

  “But do you want to?” Jessica urged.

  “It’s not about wanting to or not. I won’t leave. My family needs me.”

  Jessica held in a snicker. John’s family needed him for what, exactly? He’d never had a job. His mom spoiled him rotten, and since his car broke down in the spring, all he’d been able to say he’d done this summer was stay home and fix his little cousin grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch every day.

  What did John know about a family that needed him? Jessica’s dad had turned from a man into a puddle the other day and would’ve stayed there, sobbing on the street, for God knows how long, if Jessica hadn’t literally hauled him off the ground and begged him to walk. When he wasn’t having a public meltdown, Rafe required nonstop words of love and loyalty. He also required food, so Jessica had to carve out money from her paycheck each month to keep the fridge stocked. She also had to make sure Iridian didn’t fossilize under the covers of her bed and that Rosa didn’t do something weird like sprout wings and fly off into the sky.

  Speaking of Rosa.

  Up ahead, a familiar form wearing a long dress and rubber boots was crossing the street. As Rosa passed under a streetlight, Jessica noticed she was eating something. Beef jerky? A candy bar?

  “Is that . . . ?” John asked.

  Jessica honked her horn.

  Rosa stopped and turned. She waved and then waited as Jessica started her car and drove up the block.

  “What are you doing?” Jessica called out the open window as she pulled up alongside her sister. “It’s about to start raining.”

  Rosa turned toward the black sky pulsing behind her, and as Jessica stuck her hand out the window, she could feel the humidity breaking and giving way to cool, pre-storm winds.

  “I know,” Rosa replied, taking a bite of what Jessica could now see was a granola bar. She stepped closer to the car, and Jessica saw blades of grass sticking to the fabric of her sister’s dress, and mud caking her boots. Rosa was also, for some reason, wearing a backpack. “I was on my way home.”

  “On your way home from where?” Jessica demanded.

  “The river,” Rosa said, simply. “I was looking for the hyena.”

  John barked out a laugh.

  “Of course you were,” Jessica replied. “Just get in the car.”

  The Day Jessica Torres Attacked a Priest

  Hector’s parents, being good Catholics, opened their home after Ana’s funeral so that the neighbors could gather, pick at potluck dishes, and express their condolences to the thoroughly distraught Torres family. The girls were there, of course. Rosa was wandering around in a somber daze. Iridian was wide-eyed and stunned, and Jessica was looking . . . lost. It was so unlike her. She just shuffled from room to room, her gaze pinned to the floor. She was wearing Ana’s lipstick, a dangerous shade of near-hot pink, as well as a bluebonnet-blue sundress that used to belong to her older sister. It was several sizes too big and it swallowed her up.

  We were there, too, of course—forced by our parents to wear our church clothes and to stay downstairs with everyone else and not hide up in Hector’s room. That was okay because we were on a mission. We started out in a cluster at the base of the stairs and then fanned out from there. We hovered, eavesdropping, seeking more details about Ana.

  On the night she died, we’d all fallen asleep watching television in Hector’s room and had woken up to a sound—at first, Jimmy thought it was a gunshot; Calvin said it was more like the hard, sharp beat of a snare drum—followed by a girl’s strangled cry. That cry was followed by the hard snap of a tree limb breaking, which was followed by the squeal of tires against the asphalt as a car tore down the street. We tumbled over one another to get to the window. The first thing we saw were Ana’s curtains, flapping gently in the summer wind. Her window was open—no, not open, broken. Someone must’ve thrown something through it. We watched a piece of glass the size of a hubcap dangle from the frame, then fall. Then, Ana’s sisters appeared in the window. They were screaming.

  They were screaming because there, facedown in the yard, at the base of the oak tree, was Ana. Her body was not twisted, her legs and neck not kinked at strange angles, but her long dark hair was fanned out across the dried-out patches of grass, and she wasn’t moving. A flip-flop was on her right foot. Its mate was on top of a nearby bush. Clutched in Ana’s right hand was a branch from the oak tree, as if she’d tried, at the very last second, to reach out, take hold, and break her fall.