“You’re home now. Both of you.” Danny put his hand on my head like I was little again. “That’s all that matters.”
Trix wrinkled her nose at the room. “If you’re not gonna sleep here, let Holly.”
“You liked it back in the day,” Danny said. “Maybe she will too.”
“I—sure. But where am I going to sleep?” I kicked at the back of Trix’s knee, making her buckle and almost hit the floor. “With you?”
“Fuck no!” She flipped around and smacked at me. “I sleep naked.”
“Last I checked, you did most things naked.”
Danny cleared his throat. “Mal, you could take great-aunt Isla’s room. It’s been a storage closet since she passed, but we could fix it up.”
Trix groaned. “She’s been dead for like half a century and that door hasn’t been opened in years. It’s gonna be a fucking disaster!”
“Well,” Danny wrapped his arms around our shoulders and turned us toward the hall, “we better get started.”
“You know how much shit is in there?” she whined. “We’ve been throwing every piece of junk mail and spare part in there for twenty years now.”
He faced the door across from Jinx’s and frowned. “It can’t be that bad.”
Trix glared and yanked the door open. A landslide of junk crashed out, covering the hall and tumbling into Jinx’s room. Trix pressed her head to the wall and groaned again.
“I’m going to look for trash bags.” Danny stepped over the mess and disappeared down the stairs.
“What is all this stuff?” I asked. I brushed some of the mountain around with my foot.
“Shit we apparently can’t afford to throw away because we’re broke. ‘Beatrix,’” she mimicked a high, nasally voice, “‘if I find that broken screwdriver in the trash, so help me God you will regret the day I gave you existence.’”
“Newsflash, Gi, you already do.”
We high-fived over the husk of an ancient desktop monitor. It was quiet for a second as I pawed through, looking for interesting bits.
“Did you really get fake tits?”
“Hell no, you think I could afford that?”
I laughed. “Do mine really look lopsided?”
She scrunched her face at me like an art critic appraising a four-year-old’s finger painting. She settled on, “Your shirt’s too baggy to tell. Do you even listen to Pink Floyd?”
“Holly picked it out for me because she liked the rainbow.”
Trix snorted. “Sounds about right. The only thing I ever remember you listening to was the radio,” she said. She fished an old walkman from the heap and tossed it to me. The stickers on it were white from age.
“Never had money for CDs.” I dug through the mess for a pair of headphones to match, uncovering a leather-bound book instead.
“Oooo,” Trix sing-songed. “Someone’s gonna catch a beating for not putting that back.”
I turned it over in my hands, resisting the urge to rub at my growing headache. It looked familiar, but I couldn’t place where I’d seen it before. The leather was stamped with decorations but no name or title. Trix snatched it out of my hands and cracked it open.
“Looks like it was . . . an ‘A and Z.’ Never heard of them.”
I scoffed. “Since when do you read?”
“Oh, I assure you I don’t.” She set the book off to the side like it was made of eggshells and turned back to the hoard.
“Then how would you know the author?” I massaged my temples, hoping it would help the ache growing between them.
Trix gave me a funny look. “Because we’re related to them? Mal, it’s a—”
Lightning exploded in my skull. I think I screamed but I had no sense of the rest of the world or even the rest of my body. I was incapable of thought or memory. Nothing existed beyond the pain.
It left in waves, and the world came back around. My head was in my hands and I was staring at the kitchen table. Someone had sat me in a chair and a rag covered my face. I pulled it away to find blood left behind. Everyone was hovering over me with expressions that ranged from concern to terror. Holly was the latter and clinging to me like she was afraid I was going to disappear. I rubbed her back before I knew what I was comforting her about.
“Mal?” Dio was in the chair beside me, the soft caramel color of her eyes a stark contrast to the forceful calm they carried after a lifetime of cleaning up blood from her children and grandchild. “How do you feel?”
“Like I got hit by a semi.” I tried to make it sound like a joke, but the croak of my voice wrinkled her brow. My head still ached but it was easing.
She pressed the rag back to my nose. “What’s the last thing you remember?”
“Ugh.” I tried to think but it felt like my thoughts were pushing through sludge, the pain worse when I concentrated. I took a shot in the dark. “The mess in the hallway?”
Ama’s ancient hands brushed my hair from behind me. The rest of the family shared a look I couldn’t place. Somewhere between worry and confusion.
“What happened?” I asked.
Danny’s rings were a blur around his fingers. “You and Trixy were playing around in the junk and you just . . . screamed.”
“No,” Trix said. “She was asking me about the—”
The pain that exploded behind my eyes was worse the second time, and no less debilitating. It was like falling into darkness, my world tunneling down into a single sense: agony.