“Well,” Officer Parker says from underneath his dust ruffle-esque white mustache, stopping his timer at 3:26 when I’m finished recounting my story with a delicate sniffle into a waiting handkerchief, “sounds like you’ve had a harrowing night, young lady. It’s a wonder you’re alive. You’re one tough kid.”

I nod shakily, shifting back and forth, not saying much. A harrowing night. He doesn’t know the half of it.

There’s pure silence for a few minutes as I play back and forth with the chain around my throat, which Sergeant Jacobs breaks with, “that’s lovely, the necklace. What does it say?”

I blink, surprised he noticed. “Em yêu em.”

Officer Parker frowns. “Why Chinese?”

“It’s not-“

Sergeant Jacobs looks at me patiently, clearly trying to open me up like some kind of giddy surgeon with a scalpel. “What does it mean?”

“I love you.”

His eyes are understanding. “And…someone gave that to you.”

God this is painful. Just pull out my fingernails instead or something, I beg of you. “I…yes. Someone very special.” The tears come unbidden again.

He nods, satisfied at what he’s “discovered”.

Suddenly, I remember something that could prove vital to the story. “Officer–my cat. She was in the house. I...I didn’t take her with me!” I start to rack sobs as he looks extremely uncomfortable.

“Don’t worry, I’m sure she’s fine. I doubt the killer would go after a cat,” Sergeant Jacobs replies kindly, attempting to soothe me with a tissue he pulls out of his pocket.

He must be a new transfer. We carry only blue or pink silk to comfort assault victims here, sir. Off white is for the suicide attempts.

I snuffle a little, which turns into full-on disgusting blubbering. I want to collapse into myself, but the seat feels like it might crumble.

I swear, they must google “most uncomfortable chairs” just to give interrogation subjects even more back pain.

“D’you have somebody you can call, sweetheart?” Officer Parker asks, the dust ruffle tipping back and forth. It really is a crime against humanity. 

And sweetheart? Sweet suffering Jesus, sir, I’m not at a damned tea party asking for cucumber sandwiches.

Now would be the moment where most cops would suggest contacting your mother, if this wasn’t a town smaller than most community colleges and said cop wasn’t the same one who clicked his tongue whenever my mother dared to speak in her dialect in his presence. 

I think about texting my father, but then I remember that they’ve already called him.

I think about texting my little brother but then I remember he doesn’t have a phone.

I think about texting my older brother but then I remember I hate him.

So instead, I call the one person I know will answer.

It rings once.

The contact name “Papillon,” flashes on the screen, as a kpop song from 2007 (that has no right to be so upbeat in the given circumstances) plays. 

It rings twice.

I pace up and down the eerily blue hallway, trying not to start compulsively shivering. 

Three times and you’re out.

Pick up the phone, I swear to -

“Allo?”

“I need your help.”

“Ah.” A nasal sigh, as though a nose is being pinched. “Comme tu l’as fait la semaine dernière?”

“No, not that kind of help.”

“Il est trois heures du matin!” my phone hisses. “Il ne fait même pas jour!” 

“Well,” I point out helpfully, “technically it’s 3:33.”

Angel numbers. How ironic.

Cue the sarcasm, as I knew would happen. 

“Trafic de drogue, extorsion, ou meutre?”

I almost smile. Almost. “What do you think?”

“Merde. Je vais chercher les pelles.” I hear the sounds of covers being thrown off. 

“I’m serious, Vivvie.” I stop walking. 

My voice must crack into a dozen splinters, because when she responds again, it’s to say, “Mon dieu, chérie. Cinq minutes.”

And then the sound of her opening a door and shaking someone awake.

True to form, Simone Nguyen arrives through those oak doors with their frosted over glass windows in cat eye sunglasses, a white turtleneck, and a faux fur coat as black as the Ace of Spades and probably three times my age.

And true to form, it’s 3:49 a.m.

It takes all my willpower to look at the cops for confirmation before I practically fall into that coat like a drowning cat. She smiles, patting my head, before signing a few words to mean, “back in the car.”

We walk to the cops’ desk together, clinging tighter than some kind of kangaroo and her baby.

“You need to sign here, ma’am,” Officer Parker tells her, shoving a clipboard onto the table with a clack.

After a couple seconds of no response, he repeats, loud enough to make a cadet flinch, “You need. To sign. Here, Ma’am.”

“She can’t hear you, sir.”

I turn back to her, and explain as quickly as possible through my hands.

She nods, and immediately carefully traces out the letters on the dotted line. Apparently it’s not to Officer Parker’s satisfaction because he humphs under his breath.

Sergeant Jacobs attempts a smile, but it looks more like he’s trying to convince himself. “All set.”

We walk away.

“Gwendolyn Slater.”

I pause, hand on the door, breathing out for just a moment before I turn back around to face the desk.

Just like I thought, a new transfer. No one’s called me that name since I was 11. Well, no one who knows me, that is.

Simone doesn’t hear them, of course, so I tap her shoulder to tell her to pause.

“We’ll need you to come back tomorrow for a few more questions,” Sergeant Jacobs tells me. 

I nod, and at last they let her lead me away. 

Thank god, any longer under those blue lights and I’d give up the keys to Fort Knox and the nuclear launch codes. Not that I have either. 

Normally I would demand to sit in the passenger seat—or even to drive home—but with the way my hands are shaking, it looks like I’ve drunk a warehouse’s supply of Monster. Preferably the white pineapple—if, of course, there’s a gun to my head and all the good coffee is gone.

True to form, Viv takes one look at me in the darkness in the back of that Honda before she wordlessly signs to Simone, who throws the coat into Viv’s arms and me with it.

And true to form, she catches me.

–End Of IV–

I call my father at 4:22 am before he gets on the red eye home from Stockholm, and manage to calm him down after I tell him that I would be sleeping on their old lime green couch. 

“I’m glad Vivian’s aunt was home,” is all he says. Then he hangs up to call Matthew.

When I walk back into the kitchen, the said Viv is sitting on an island stool, stretched out like a cat lying in the sun if not for the tenseness in her shoulders and the fact that her lipstick—shade 127, indigo wine, as it’s been since twelfth grade—is smudged into the scar on the corner of her lip, forming an uncanny valley smile. 

Her said aunt is bustling around the kitchen flapping her hands like a peacock, constantly asking if I want carrot cake, apple pie, or any number of other All-American desserts that she just happened to have in her fridge and definitely didn’t go out and buy while she was picking me up at the police station. 

How she had time is beyond me, but Simone is a woman of mystery. 

When I was younger (and stupider), I used to imagine that Simone was a superhero that could warp time, and I asked her once if the reason she couldn’t hear was because of her day job saving the world. 

I’ll never forget how much she laughed. 

I’d give my left arm to be that stupid again.

Although, if the pain in my wrist is any indication, that might be in the cards.

Once she could breathe again, Viv, then just home from her first day of third grade, handed her a piece of paper, and she wrote, “No. But I love that anyway.”

She only told me the real reason years later: that it was the B-52 bombing back in a tiny village just outside of Hànôi that had burst her eardrum and caused her parents to send her thirty pound six year old self across endless water on the most capsizable boat in history (or at least, the most capsizable of 1974).

With only her mewling infant brother—Viv’s father, Nam—in her bony arms.

And, almost forty years later, with a different name on her papers, her notepad in hand and Nam just a warm memory and a cold photograph in the frame behind her, she taught my forty seven pound six year old self my first word in sign. 

Love. 

You stick out your little finger and your pointer, then your thumb. I. L. U.

So, to humor her, I eat a respectable amount of carrot cake, the only dessert I can really stand. 

My mother would say it’s because all the others are so sickly sweet they feel like sugar committed suicide on your tongue.

Ach, Mama. 

Thankfully, Simone is Simone and somehow knew that I’d be freezing, so she makes Chè Trôi Nước while I sit on the stool next to Viv. It’s also as sweet as death but at the very least you have ginger syrup to make up for it.

And the warmth. It feels like there’s a blanket curled around your spine. Or a heating pad on your abdomen. But I’m starting to realize that not even throwing me in a fireplace could make me stop shivering.

The last time someone was looking at me with this much concern was when I was bleeding all over her carpet. It was Simone then too.

And this is exactly where I was sitting. 

My feet don’t reach the floor like Viv’s do when she sits on the stools, just dangling like a little girl the first time she tries to impress a teenage boy.

And all the parents giggle and shake their heads.

Viv says what she often says, which is nothing. Instead, she stares at me like she can see right through my soul to the other side.

When I was younger (and stupider), I thought that that stare meant that she was zoning out, and to an uninformed observer, she’d look like a piece of paper with it. 

So I pointed my chopsticks at her and made a bet that I could make her laugh. 

And she raised an eyebrow and dared me, and what seven year old can resist a dare? It took me a full year, until her tenth birthday. 

Her laugh is horrible, like the Wicked Witch of the West losing her mind.

I think I’m losing my mind right now, because here I am, my hands shaking so much on the counter that the dishes are rattling like a frost bitten hiker’s falling out teeth. 

Viv squeezes my left, then signs a few quick sentences to Simone, who rolls her eyes but takes the dishes from her hands.

“This is all an excuse to avoid washing dishes, isn’t it?” I tease her. It comes out bitter.

The corners of her mouth twist up in something that can’t decide if it wants to be a smile as she gets up to turn on the water.

Then I take a long bath with the heat on its highest setting. I must lie there, a non- redheaded Ophelia for at least a couple hours, closing my eyes and washing the blood away bit by bit.

I wish, more than anything at this moment, that I hadn’t been home tonight. That Dan hadn’t had a surprise day off, that I hadn’t said yes or said no or said…something? 

I don’t even remember what I said.

I wish I had stayed the night here to see Simone tell the myth of the Táo Quân for the 171st time and have her shake her head as I got ice cream on her good couch when she gets to her favorite part while Viv “interprets” the most incomprehensible sign language I’ve ever seen into “the hunter burned the haystack with the woodcutter inside it”.

But instead, here I am, living my own version of the myth with a story that will be coating every paper tomorrow morning like an infectious disease. 

Here I am, lying as the water grows cold. 

I wish I could burn someone in a haystack. 

I don’t think I’d feel anything.

I try not to feel anything at all until Viv knocks on the door with a towel in her hand and something between pity, understanding, and determination in her eyes, then walks up to the tub and extends a hand. “Allez.”

When I don’t move, she looks like she’s refraining from pinching her nose, but instead she pulls me up, with a curt, “Ne saignez pas sur le tapis.”

I exhale out my nose. “You shouldn’t have a white rug near a shower in the first place.”

Again, the half smile.

It takes a few more moments of silent hair brushing before she asks quietly, “Pourquoi ce soir?”

“I don’t know,” I answer back just as quietly. 

It takes me a while to sleep, so I end up lying on my side and memorizing every line on the wings of the dried Euploea Tulliolus (purple crow butterfly) pinned delicately on the cork board near her window and fiddling with the bandage on my left hand.

That night, I sleep better than I have in years. Simone is surprised, I’m sure, but she doesn’t say anything.

My brothers don’t say anything, not even annoyance at being forced home from a summer camp and a pre-graduate school program to attend to their crazy sister.

My father doesn’t say anything, besides the same long-worn-out joke about the lime green of the couch seeping into my brain that he’s been making for a decade now.

Even Viv doesn’t say anything as she helps me into an old pajama set of hers--black with golden decorations--to go home in and throws my blood-soaked sweater away, so ruined now it looks like it caught pink eye.

No one says anything.

After all.

I’ve had a harrowing night, young lady.

It’s a wonder I’m alive, didn’t the cops tell you that?

I’m one tough kid.

And they’re right, of course. Just not the way they think they are.

–End Of V–

Look, I've watched enough horror movies to know the three big DON'Ts: don't scream, don't run up the stairs to get away, and don't for the love of god, even think about tempting fate.

So, there I found myself, Wendy Slater, at eighteen years, four months, and twenty two days old, standing over a corpse with a broken lamp in my hand, then screaming bloody murder just seconds after my (now dead) boyfriend Dan pinned me to the ground, ripped off my heart shaped necklace, and told me harshly under his breath, “C’mon now, shut up, it’s not like anyone will ever find us here,” thinking, Well. Damn. What now?

“You complete idiot!” is probably what he’d yell, shaking his head and ranting about this current predicament. 

It's what he yelled when I hid behind pillows during that awful horror movie he made me watch where the woman chokes on moths and told me that even Shadow was laughing at me.

The said cat never liked him. 

She has better knowledge of these things than I do.

But he wasn’t my idea.

It would’ve been, if this wasn’t a town smaller than most community colleges and your father’s employee’s cousin’s brother didn’t have a son who went to school with you that was deemed “suitable.”

“You complete idiot.”

It’s what he yelled when he broke my wrist so badly that I couldn’t hold a ring of keys.

It’s what he yelled when he smashed my phone after I called Viv to pick me up just one too many times.

It’s what he yelled after he dragged me down the stairs by my hair, and told my father it was my own clumsiness, not that my father disagreed.

All he did was laugh.

And then told my older brother to get bandaids.

And who can blame him? Is probably the response most people would have. 

But I do.

I told you, nothing good ever happens at three a.m.

I went into my room’s closet, listening to my own shuddering breathing, searching around for

something, anything, that a normal person would use to hit someone over the head with. 

But then I saw it, the thing that was going to save me—from being arrested—the rickety old chair I took to stand on to reach the top shelf, because I was so tired of asking Dan to help me.

I think he liked doing it for me, though. It made him feel strong.

So did trying to hurt someone when they dared reject him.

But who’s stronger now, Dan?

I was so tired I could barely raise it above my head. But when I slammed the closet doors open, I didn’t hesitate. 

With every inch of strength in my pencil stick arms, I beat down with the chair on the empty ground until it broke into pieces, until my innocence was certain and the scene was perfectly staged.

A crazy person. 

For more believable than a girl who couldn’t stand it anymore.

Far more believable than a girl who snapped.

Far more believable than a girl, full stop.

Not wasting another second, I jumped out the window, landing with a crack on top of my (already-broken) wrist. 

I barely felt a thing at this point. 

I haven’t felt a thing in years outside of Viv and Simone’s house.

But at least I was safe. 

I hoped I hadn’t forgotten to set up anything in the house. I just kept running and running. And running. 

I once complained to my father about having a house a five minute walk from town, but I sure wasn’t complaining then. 

Anything that meant the police station was even a yard closer was vital.

If I’m going down for this crime, I’m not doing it without telling them the tale first.

I barged in, making sure all of the four people still in the building looked at me in horror, making sure I looked like the Creature From The Black Lagoon, blonde hair stuck up (because I ruffled it like a dog’s), eyes bloodshot, nails broken from trying to claw him away, hands covered in.... 

Well, let’s just say it probably wasn’t acrylic that Viv helped scratch out from my cuticles and brushed out of my hair, murmuring, “Pourquoi ce soir?”

“I don’t know,” I told her, “I just couldn’t stand it anymore.”

–End Of III.V–

The only acrylics in that apartment were the press-ons on Viv’s fingers that dug into my arm, as I buried into her chest in fitful sleep, black waves a pillow under my head, both of us clinging tightly under the patchwork quilt on her bed as though it was some kind of shock blanket, until we were less like two figures and more like a single shadow.

Or on the puffy pink sweater that she and Simone threw away after dressing me in Viv’s old pajama set. 

They hung on me like a skeleton wrapped in a burial shroud as I sat at their kitchen counter eating my second bowl of Chè Trôi Nước and attempting not to shiver.

And failing, of course, as Viv squeezed my left hand and clasped it tightly with hers, then pulled me with her to take a bath.

She acted like she was leaving me alone for that hour, but I’d bet every silver dollar in every purse I’ve ever owned—even the tiny green one that my mother bought me in Belfast at age seven, now currently shoved in the back of my closet —that she was sitting outside the door listening to the water.

Of course, after said hour, she decided that she’d been sitting long enough and held out her arm to the Creature From The Black Lagoon sitting in her bathtub with a quiet “Allez.”

When I didn’t move she simply sighed and kneeled on the floor, head pillowed on her bent elbows on the top of the bathtub as she looked at me.

And then proceeded to lecture me for getting blood on her carpet.

And then I proceeded to tell her, after she’d managed to pull me out of the cold water, eyes focused on the pinned purple crow butterfly near her window, that white carpeting in a bathroom was a recipe for disaster.

To which her response, mumbled against my ear, was, “Et nous ne le sommes pas?” 

“No, we aren’t.”

True to form, she tilted her head, looking, always looking, and pulled me again—this time, into her waiting arms.

True to form, I looked back. And turned out the lights.

When I was younger (and stupider), I imagined that her eyes saw everything mine do, but shattered in pieces and put back together again.

But then I learned that that’s just what Viv does with everything, taking them apart with her meticulous tweezers and carefully reassembling it like one of those broken vases patched with gold.

I made her a bet once, when she was nine years old and already quiet as death, that I could make her laugh, and she raised an eyebrow and dared me. 

It took me a full year, until her tenth birthday, but I did it. I was climbing a tree in a ballgown, attempting to escape a boring function for my father, and I fell on the ground like a cannonball—right in front of her. Her laugh really is terrible. I was horrified. 

And the laugh bubbled out of control until she started clutching her stomach and had to catch her breath. And I did too, because that terrible laugh was suddenly the best thing I had ever heard.

And I didn’t know what to do about it, because I was young and stupid, so we just ended up splitting our sides lying in the grass and staring, always staring, with just our little fingers curled around each others’.

The same horror replayed exactly eight years later, as I heard that laugh for only the fifth time in my life when she opened the tiny box I handed her and found the lipstick—shade 127, indigo wine, as it’s been ever since—and said I’d bought it for her because the label was in French.

But I knew what to do about it then. 

And then we both ended up lying on our backs laughing—although thankfully no one had to fall out of a tree and thankfully my mattress is less painful than the forest floor.  

And thankfully no one else was home.

We were lying in the same position that night, except with towels under our unruly hair still wet from the bath, and I think that the tears drying on her pillow, left as she sewed me up in silence, my head cradled in the crook of her neck, are some of the only real ones I’ve shed in the last two days. 

Besides those over the necklace. 

Em yêu em. 

She gave it to me soon after the fifth time I heard her laugh.

It means I love you.

It’s Vietnamese, not Chinese, Officer Parker, was what I wanted to say, but I restrained myself.

Go and read a goddamn book, I wanted to say, but I restrained myself.

Em yêu em.

It means I love you. 

It means I can’t live without you. 

It means I, a woman, love you, a woman, romantically, I wanted to say, wanted to scream, but I restrained myself.

I am so practiced at restraining myself that it’d be more likely that I’d run off to a convent than to say any of that.

“It’s not proper grammar,” was all Simone signed as Viv clasped it around my neck, but she was grinning from ear to ear.

And as much as she would claim differently, I’d swear Viv was too.

In many people’s eyes, it isn’t proper at all. 

So tie me to the pyre then. 

I refuse to scrape my skin for him, but I’ll gladly burn holding her hand.

Ah, Viviennè. 

Shade 127, just under my hairline, forming a perfect plum violet butterfly over a handprint bruise. 

It took me a while to fall asleep.

Instead I did what she always does: take stock, assess, analyze. I watched her chest rise and fall and then let my arm around her waist do the same.

Je T'aime, ma chérie. 

What would I do without you?

–End Of V.V–

3:33 p.m. 

Just over half a day since this nightmare began, I am standing back in the scene of it to get my things.

When we got here, my father directed me upstairs to the bedroom and told me to pack comfortable clothes.

As if anyone would care about comfortable clothes right now.

As if any of my clothes are comfortable.

3:33 pm. 

Angel numbers. 

Ironic.

Viv’s already sent me a screenshot f the time, with a text saying, “Levez les yeux vers le ciel.”

And then another, “Avec moi.”

I have nothing better to do with my time, so I do; I glance at my ceiling, at the eggshell expanse of nothingness that’s blanketing me. 

“Mama.”

Silence. Neither of us say a thing.

I try again. “Mama…” Breathe. “What am I supposed to do, then?”

I imagine I hear it echoing back, “Let’s have a yarn, wain.”

“Then-”

Then. Now. What now?

I can’t reach her.

Every crumb of her has been carefully removed from this place, just like they took out the orange nail polish I spilled on the rug, or the broken glass from the lamp. 

Or the old painting from Belfast currently carelessly wrapped in plastic in our attic.

Someone threw out the lamp.

Someone cleaned up the bloodstains. 

Someone burned the carpet. 

I assume it was Matthew. The only person with that kind of stomach is a scientist. 

Clearly I’m not a scientist, because when I walk back downstairs, I find myself kneeling on the ground next to the floorboards where a large crimson stain should be soaking through, but instead it’s blank, faceless, like every other surface in this god-forsaken walk-in-freezer masquerading as a home.

I hear her before I see her, little daggers on her paws making clicking noises on the ground as she strides over.

It’s silent again for a few moments before those taps stop and there’s a tiny dark blur curling on my lap, scratching Viv’s jeans.

Shadow’s fine, as I knew she would be. 

I hope she isn’t mad that I left her there on purpose. 

I doubt it though.

She has better knowledge of these things than I do.

When my mother gave me Shadow, she told me it was so “there’ll always be someone watching over you”. 

“And you won’t?”

“I’ll watch as best I can. But everyone needs sleep, don’t they?”

“Do you need that much?”

“I’m old, love.”

I sob into Shadow’s fur as she looks at me with those cold yellow eyes, as if to say, “I know.” 

She’s one of only a few who does know. Who knows why I had to do this, why the hand cast awkwardly to my right is really broken.

There’s a bandage wrapped around, secured with warm hands and the gentle pressure of a sharp cheekbone in my matted hair.

The only warm thing in this mockup of the Arctic Pole. 

I must sit on that floor for a good half hour before feeling a hand rest on my shoulder.

It’s a flinch that could power a motorboat.

Matthew almost jumps back.

“Damn, Gwen. Save some skin to jump out of next time, don’t you think?”

I give him a smile shakier than a plank of wood over a river. 

He hugs me anyway.

It takes me a minute to remember to wrap my arms around his sides, and not leave them lying lamely at my own. 

“All packed?”

I nod.

“We’re going to the spare.”

I look up at him. “For…how long?”

He shrugs. “How should I know? You know how he is.”

“How who is?” I freeze as the voice echoes throughout the house, as he comes into view with my little brother Lucas on his heels.

Shadow makes herself scarce.

For a second there’s only the soft shuffle of feet and the oppressive tap of his cane as it supports the old war injury in his left leg.

I used to love hearing the story of it, how he heroically fought his hardest against the onslaught in Sàigòn and suffered for his country as hardly more than a teenager.

I wanted to suffer for mine.

Until I was ten.

On Viv’s twelfth birthday we saw a performance of water puppetry and Simone told the story of helping her father make them back in Hànôi as a little girl.

“Do you still have them?”

“No.” Because they had burned when the rest of her village had, she told me on the drive home.

So now?

I force a small smile and turn around to say, “No one, Dad.”

“Gwendolyn!” He wraps me in a tight hug before I have time to react. I feel like he’s crushing my ribs.

“Hi.”

“Good to be home, eh, girl?” he asks, pulling me into the kitchen, not-so-subtly away from the scene.

I nearly flinch at the word home. “Mmhmm.”

“Are you ready to go then?”

I hesitate.

Now or never, Wendy. 

“Can’t I go back to Vi-to the Nguyens?”

“No.” My father hits his hand on the table. “We’re a family, damnit, and we’re going to act like one. You need a family at a time like this.”

It’s right on the tip of my forked tongue, to say, I have a family. And you took them away from me. 

But I restrain myself.

Because that won’t work.

Instead, I do the thing that will.

I sniffle. 

I hunch over. 

I curl into a tiny ball. 

“I…I just can’t stand living in this house, Dad. Or the spare. Without…without…I can’t do this anymore!” 

At first I’m planning on it being the performance of my life, but it isn’t until I’m sobbing my eyes out that I realize I mean it.

I want to go home. 

I WANT TO GO HOME.

I’m begging you.

Take me home.

–End Of VI–

Of course my little brother fidgets with his sweater. Of course my older brother averts his eyes. 

Of course my father’s eyes soften. Of course he sighs kindly. Then, of course, he looks at Matthew, who’s already looking up at him with decision on his face.

They share glances for what feels like forever before my father sighs again. “For now…alright. But it’s not permanent, Gwendolyn.

I nod shakily, looking up. 

“But before the wolves descend”--he looks outside, where surely there will be a veritable Mediterranean Sea of reporters by morning light— “we’re having dinner out.”

My shoulders slowly come to rest. I don’t trust myself to speak so instead I just nod slowly and make my eyes wider than saucers.

“Where to?” Matthew speaks for me.

I let him. I always do.

“How about the Thai place?” 

I blink at him.

“The one on the corner near the-”

“It’s Vietnamese.”

“What?”

I repeat, “It’s Vietnamese.”

He waves his hand. “Either way. It’s close by. We aren’t arguing about this. Matthew. Drive.”

We sit down in a small booth, and slowly the chatter rises as Lucas starts speaking about camp and the clarinet or the oboe or…some other instrument I don’t care about.

They aren’t looking, simply talking amongst themselves, so as the waitress takes the menus, I quietly tap her arm, to whisper, “cảm ơn.” 

I see the quiet flicker in her eyes. Surprise. Recalibration.

Recognition. 

She smiles, then whispers back, “You’re welcome.”

My father looks out of the corner of his eye. “What was–”

“Oh. Nothing.”

I arrive at Simone’s apartment a few hours after, bags in hand and Shadow curling around my heels.

As she opens the door, she makes a motion of pinching her cheek near the corner of her mouth, then again near her ear.

She used to do the sign as drawn out as a ballet dancer in slow motion so I could understand it, used to hold my tiny hand in her huge warm one, but I know it by heart now. 

Home. The second word I learned in sign.

For now, this is home, Mama.

Home is lilac perfume and butterflies pinned to boards, angel number screenshots and acrylic nails, gentle reminders not to stick the chopsticks vertically in the Lotus Root, and soft blankets tucked around my waist when I wake in the middle of the night.

Home is little carnelian envelopes and a bottle of Cognac in Simone’s hands, Viv in a blue Áo Dài Cưới and me in a long red gown stolen from its captivity in the back of my mother’s closet, intertwined fingers with incense sticks in them, and so many pots of chrysanthemum tea that I might (and happily would) lose my mind.

Sometimes I think I already have.

Because sometimes I think about telling my little brother the story, when he’s old enough to stop pulling girls’ pigtails on the swing set because he likes them. 

Maybe I’ll sit him down on the eyesore lime green couch of my eventual apartment and maybe Viv will come out of the kitchen with cucumber sandwiches on the plate that’s perfectly balanced on her sparkly red acrylic fingernails and maybe she’ll squeeze his hand in comfort like she’s so good at and maybe I’ll hand him these ripped out diary pages to explain the truth and maybe I’ll even cry.

But then maybe he’ll tell.

But Shadow won’t tell, now will she? 

Simone won’t tell.

My mother won’t tell. 

Neither will Viv.

And neither will you.

–End Of X–