The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing

CHAPTER 1

Paige and Akhil could not get enough of each other.

Yes, it was a cliché, one that Amina had often heard describing the kind of love that required couples to sit on each other’s laps when the whole couch was available, but with Akhil and Paige, it was literal. From the start, it seemed to her like they’d plunged into an underwater world in which the only way to breathe was through each other.

It was a shock, of course, seeing Akhil — only recently minted into fuckability by Mindy — approach Paige in the quad the following Monday with a notebook that he’d emblazoned with her name in black Sharpie. No one expected Paige to blush any more than they expected Akhil to reach out and tuck her hair behind her ear before walking quickly away. But then notes were exchanged in lockers. A hide-a-key box was left wrapped on the hood of the station wagon to prevent future lock-outs. Less than one week later, when they were kicked out of the library for talking too loudly about the drought in Ethiopia, it seemed strange that it had taken them two months to get together.

She was perfect for him. Yes, another cliché, but there were times when Amina felt that somehow Paige Anderson had been pulled out of a very specific dream that no one but Akhil would have bothered to have. It wasn’t just that her upbringing on one of the finest university campuses in America had left her with a carefully curated collection of protest T-shirts (it had), or that she referred to her parents as “Bill and Catherine” (she did), or that she was leading a student coalition to campaign against the nuclear-waste site just outside Socorro (she was), or that her thighs and breasts and blurry mouth were primed for constant, prolonged attention (they were) — it was that every part of Paige, from her conscience to her politics to her grown woman’s body, was suffused by an optimism so assured that to stay with her, Akhil had to stop being such an angry dick.

“So what?” Amina overheard Paige saying to Akhil one morning during one of his poor-Indian-me rants as they walked across campus. “We’re a country of immigrants, and you’re the first wave. At least you’ve got an opportunity to set your own stereotype.”

Paige believed that changing the world for the better was a reasonable goal, that racism could be unhinged by education, that nuclear disarmament should be embraced in their lifetimes, and that equality between the sexes would surely occur as women integrated into careers dominated by math and science. She also believed every act of consensual sex released positive energy into the atmosphere.

Most important, Paige believed in Akhil. Or at least gave him the benefit of most doubts. In her eyes, Akhil’s political tirades became evidence of great passion. His neuroticism belied a big heart. His tendency to pick fights was a desire for honest communication. His pot habit was introspective.

And strangely enough, with Paige’s eyes on him, Akhil began to transform. Amina watched with marvel as her brother’s rants became less didactic, his worries developed rich humanitarian undertones, and his endless baiting turned into invitations for “discourse.”

“Do they ever stop talking?” Dimple asked some weeks later, as their dark heads crossed the campus, ducked to the world outside of each other.

“Not really,” Amina said. But she had listened in on enough of their phone conversations to know that it wasn’t so much what they talked about (Van Halen, apartheid, Riemann sums) as the charged pauses in between, the reevaluating and rethinking, that was truly remarkable. In fact, it wasn’t until Akhil stopped driving Amina home altogether, and started returning from “after school activities” with lips rubbed to pulp, that Amina began to worry that the union might be too intense.

“We’re just driving to the top of the mountains and back down,” he told her when she hinted as much. “We do some of our best thinking at higher altitudes.”

And where was Jamie during all of this? Right there, and yet, somehow, not. He still showed up for English class, and he still seemed interested when she was talking, but beyond catching eyes once or twice, neither of them knew what to say to the other. It wasn’t a lack of interest so much as an eclipsing of one — a mutual embarrassment that their own odd exchange could be overshadowed by something as potent as their siblings’ connection.

“I am stone in love with her,” Akhil said to Amina a month after the dance, in one of the only direct exchanges they would ever have on the subject. They were just starting out for school. It was spring and everything was rain clean, and new, tiny shoots of green just beginning to dapple the fields. When Amina sneaked a look at his face, she saw that spring had come to Akhil as well, his insides finally catching up with his outsides, leaving him altogether reborn. He had finally found an America he could love; an America that would love him back.

CHAPTER 2

Thomas was home for dinner. What exactly the occasion was, neither Amina nor Akhil knew, but they had come home from school to find him chatting in the kitchen with their mother, stealing pinches of carrots from her cutting board as she grated them.

“What are you doing here?” asked Akhil, never one to wait for a reveal.

“Case finished early. Thought I’d get some rest.”

“Oh.”

“Carrot halwa!” Kamala announced, like anyone had asked.

“How was school?” Thomas smiled and the children mumbled vaguely at him, a little scared of his enthusiasm.

“Wash up!” Kamala commanded. “We’ve got lamb curry and rice.”

Half an hour later, they sat at the table, Kamala ordering everyone to try everything, as though they had never had her cooking before.

“So I’m going to prom,” Akhil said, trying not to look pleased.

“You are?” Amina said.

“What’s a prom?” Kamala asked.

“It’s a dance. A formal one. That you go to. With a date.”

“Neat!” Thomas said. “And you’re going?”

“A date who?” Kamala asked.

“A girl in my class. Paige Anderson.”

“Paigean?”

“Anderson, last name. Paige, first.”

“Oh.” Kamala nodded. “How do you know this Paige?”

“Through Mathletes.”

Kamala smiled. “A nice girl!”

“Well, yeah.”

“You asked her?” Amina asked.

“We asked each other,” Akhil said haughtily, as though she had missed some essential point he had made earlier.

“We should meet her,” Thomas said. “You should bring her here before the dance.”

“Dad, it doesn’t work like that.”

“What do you mean? Shouldn’t the parents always meet the date before the outing?”

“Only if you’re the girl’s parents. It doesn’t matter for the guy’s.”

“Oh.” Thomas looked fleetingly disappointed. “Well, no matter, we could simply meet her afterward.”

“No, no, no.” Akhil shook his head. “Afterward is the casino party, and then after that is … another party.”

“So many of parties?” Kamala asked. “Who is having them?”

The parties after prom, Amina knew (well, not knew firsthand, but knew in that Dimple had told her), were always conducted in hotel rooms on the side of the highway. Akhil put a chunk of lamb in his mouth, chewing and stalling. He swallowed and said, “Just some friends of mine in the class. Nice kids. Mathletes.”

The last line blew it a little, Amina could see, her father’s features darkening slightly. “We should talk to the parents.”

“What parents?”

“The parents of the kids with the parties. Just to make sure it’s okay.”

“What do you mean, make sure? Of course it’s okay.”

“We’ll see,” Thomas said.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that unless we feel good about it, you’re not going anywhere.”

“You can’t do that!”

“He’s going to need to rent a tux, you know,” Amina said, to change the subject. “It’s required.”

“Tux?” Kamala asked.

“Tuxedo,” Amina said. “They’re, like, required. All the boys have to wear them.”

“One of my patients has a tuxedo rental shop!” Thomas said, sounding pleased. “We can go see him together. Bill Chambers. Nice man. You’ll like him.”

Akhil said nothing.

“Eh, Akhil? We can go see him?” Thomas stopped eating, his cheek bulging with a pocket of unchewed rice. “Akhil?”

Across from him, head tucked to his chest, Akhil didn’t stir. His breaths were light and shallow.

“What’s wrong with him?” Thomas asked.

“Nothing. He’s asleep,” Amina said.

“What?”

“Don’t worry, he’s just tired,” Kamala said.

“What do you mean? He was just asking us if he could stay out all night. He was getting upset.”

“And now he’s sleepy,” Kamala said. “So what? Growing boy, you said it yourself.”

“He’s done this before?”

“He’s always tired during dinner,” Kamala said, wiggling her hand for the curds, which Amina handed her. “He needs to get more sleep.”

Thomas rose from his chair, walking around the table. He hovered over Akhil, peering at his face, but when he moved to pick up his wrist, Kamala slapped him away.

“Chi! Let him have some rest.”

But Thomas would not be deterred. He leaned over Akhil, first waving his hand across closed eyelids, then pulling them up, one by one, exposing two pockets of white. He lifted his wrist and pinched it between two fingers, listening to his pulse. He turned to Kamala. “How often has this happened?”

“How often has he fallen asleep?” Kamala snorted. “At least once a night.”

“Fallen asleep in the middle of doing something else.”

“He hasn’t! He just sleeps a lot. My God, I told you that months ago! But he’s getting better. Ask Amina.”

“Have you seen him do this?” he asked Amina.

Amina looked at him uneasily. “Yeah.”

“During normal activity? When he should otherwise be in an alert and stable condition? Are the triggers usually emotional?”

“I …” What was he asking her? “I don’t know.”

“How often has it happened?”

“I don’t remember. A few times.”

Thomas tugged at his beard, frowning at his watch. “And when did it start?”

“I’m not sure. Six months ago, maybe.”

Thomas kneeled down, his brow furrowed into dark canyons. He held Akhil’s hand, stroking it lightly. Watching them, Amina realized it had been years since she had seen her father do anything so intimate as touch any of them. When Thomas pressed his brow to Akhil’s sleeping face, she had to look away.

“What are you doing?” Akhil asked, jerking awake.

Thomas backed up. “Hey. Are you okay?’ ”

“Why wouldn’t I be okay?”

“You just fell asleep.”

“No I didn’t.” Akhil looked at Amina, who tried to nod with just her eyes. “I just shut my eyes for a second.”

Thomas sat back on his heels.

“Finish eating,” he said. “We’ll talk after.”

Two days later, they left for the hospital.

“What are they going to do?” Amina asked as she watched Akhil place his pillow and his backpack in the backseat of Thomas’s car. They would not be coming back until late the next afternoon, Thomas had explained, checking his pager mid-sentence. Now her father was in the driver’s seat, his mouth moving over words that Amina could tell were directed not at her brother at all but at whoever was on the newly installed car phone.

“Who knows? Some stupid dream-monitoring nonsense.” Kamala frowned.

“But why does it take so long?”

“Measuring nighttime and daytime activity or some idiot thing.”

“But what does Dad think is wrong?”

“Nothing! Nothing is wrong, he just wants to perform some tests to make sure nothing is wrong.”

Did Kamala hear herself when she said things like this out loud? Amina’s annoyed disbelief was abruptly tempered by her mother’s face, the fevered anxiety of someone treading water with no shoreline in sight. She squeezed Kamala’s shoulder and went upstairs to read.

CHAPTER 3

The problem with talking to Paige was that Amina had never really talked to her before. Or certainly not more than a few sentences, with Akhil nearby making sure the communication remained short and sweet. Still, the next day at school, Amina found herself walking toward the picnic table behind the senior building where Paige sat alone, reading a book.

“Oh, hi,” Paige said, looking up. “What’s up?”

“Nothing.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, um.” What was she supposed to say? Amina smiled nervously. “Akhil isn’t here today.”

“I noticed.”

“Yeah. He’s, uh, did he call you? About why he isn’t here?”

“No.” Paige closed her book. “Is something wrong?”

“No. Nope. Nothing.”

Paige squinted at her with that same look Jamie would get sometimes in English class, like he thought you were trying to trick him when you were really just trying to figure out what to say. Amina stared at Paige’s jeans, which were blue and slightly bell-bottomed and hugged her thighs.

“Have you ever seen him fall asleep?” Amina asked.

“What?” Paige stiffened.

“I mean, I just … has he ever fallen asleep around you suddenly? Like, maybe when he’s emotional or excited or something?”

Paige blushed slightly, pushing a lock of black hair behind her ear. “I don’t know.”

“Never mind. It’s silly. I’m just, you know, trying to figure something out. It’s not a big deal. My dad just asked about it, and I thought—”

“Wait, your dad’s worried about it?”

“What? No, no. I mean, kind of. He just … he asked me, and I don’t really even see Akhil that much anymore, I mean, not that there’s anything wrong with that, but you’re sort of the person who sees him most now, so I thought that maybe you … but it’s no big thing. Thanks.”

She had no idea what she was thanking Paige for, or even really saying at all. She spun frantically and walked toward the sophomore building, daffodils blurring together in the corner of her vision as she sped away.

“Hey, Amina!” Paige called after her, but she just waved, pretending they were finished with a conversation that they’d never actually started.

“What’s for dinner?” Amina asked, coming into the kitchen late that afternoon.

Kamala sat on a stool sorting red lentils. “Meen curry, rice, cabbage. I’m making dahl too, but for tomorrow.”

She put her backpack down and headed into the pantry.

“Is Akhil back?”

“Yes.”

“Cool.” She grabbed a fruit roll.

“Don’t bug him, nah? Poor thing was woken up all night.”

“Yeah, okay.” Amina headed up the stairs, kicking her shoes off before going across to Akhil’s room. His door was half open, his socked feet dangling off the edge of the bed. Amina watched the rise and fall of his back from the doorway.

“Get out.”

“You’re not even asleep.”

“Get out anyway.”

She walked around his bed to his desk, pulling out the chair and sweeping a collection of ripe-smelling T-shirts to the floor. “So what did they do?”

“Tests.”

“Yeah, no duh, but, like, how was it?”

“How do you think?”

“Did they give you a brain scan?” she asked.

“They monitored my sleep. Put some sensors on. Woke me up a few times.”

“Was Dad there?”

“Mostly.”

“Did it hurt?”

Akhil said nothing.

“Well, anyway, it’s over, right? I mean, did they find anything?”

Her brother was silent except for the socked foot wagging at the end of the bed.

“Hey,” Amina said. “Do you remember that That’s Incredible! about the guy with the twin stuck in his head? Remember, the guy with the headaches?”

“GET OUT!” Akhil yelled, head rising from the pillow, and she sprang from the chair, heart thwacking.

“Jesus, psycho, I’m just asking!”

But he was up already, up and coming at her and taller, if possible, than he had been just the day before. She tried to dodge him, but Akhil grabbed one of her arms, twisting it behind her back and jamming her wrist between her shoulder blades.

“Ow! Ouch, Akhil, stop!”

He threw her into a headlock, dragging her across the floor. When he reached the door, he threw her out, slamming it behind her.

“Dickwad!” Amina yelled at it, cheeks burning. What the hell had brought that on? It had been years since he had put her in a headlock, and she was pissed to find out she was no more able to get out of it than she had been when she was eleven. She kicked the door, hard.

“Fuck off!” Akhil yelled.

“You suck!” she yelled back.

“Amina!” Kamala called from downstairs. “What in God’s green name are you doing? Leave him alone! He’s had enough for one day.”

It was Paige, of course, who would give him the comfort he needed. Amina watched them at school the next day out in the parking lot at lunch, clearly in too deep of a conversation to bother going off campus. Akhil sat on the hood of the station wagon, and Paige stood in front of him holding both of his hands while he talked. When he leaned into her, Amina looked away.

The dinner Kamala made the next night was just short of delicious. The culmination of two days’ work, it had started out of familial love but met with anxiety in the final hours of preparation, as Thomas came home and spoke to her in low tones in the kitchen.

The result was a botched favorite family meal. Kamala’s idlis, usually light, now sank into slightly-too-smokey sambar. A strange tang infected the coconut chutney. The mango lassi for dessert was much too pulpy, but still everyone made sure to swallow every last drop, as if tipped off by their own organs to avoid the coming conversation. Finally, Thomas folded his hands.

“You can’t drive for a while,” he said.

“What?” Akhil frowned. “For how long?”

“It depends.”

“On what? What did I do?”

“You didn’t do anything.”

“Then why are you punishing me?” Akhil leaned back in his chair, glaring at his father.

Amina saw her parents’ gaze meet, retreat. Silence.

Akhil leaned forward. “Dad, you can’t just say it depends and then not tell me. You have to tell me what so I can know what the rules are. I mean, it’s only fair.”

“We have to do some more tests.”

Akhil’s lips hung open. He blinked. “What?”

“We need to do a few tests at the hospital, starting next week.” Thomas took a deep breath, spreading his palms wide. “Your sleeping patterns show evidence of adolescent-onset narcolepsy.”

Akhil stared at him, the color leaking from his face.

“There’s a possibility that you need to be treated,” Thomas said.

“Narcolepsy? Like I fall asleep?”

Thomas nodded.

“But I don’t do that anymore.” Akhil looked at his mother. “Mom, tell him.”

“I don’t think it’s such a big deal,” Kamala said.

“What?”

“I don’t see why this sleeping is so different from the other sleeping,” she said to Thomas. “So he sleeps! Last time, I told you, it was nothing, no big deal, growing boy, in my head, nah? Now he’s better, and you think it’s some big crisis.”

Akhil turned to Amina. “Tell Dad that I don’t sleep like I used to. Apparently he hasn’t been around enough to notice.”

Amina looked at her father. Akhil kicked her under the table.

“Ow! Jesus!”

“Tell him!”

“It’s …” Amina cleared her throat, scared. “You do, though.”

“What?”

“It’s different now. It’s not that weird long sleep-forever thing. Now you just pass out for just a little bit. Sometimes. Anywhere.”

“What?”

“Something is wrong with you! I don’t know!” Amina looked at her father pleadingly. “I’m not the doctor.”

Akhil turned back to Thomas. “So that’s why you took me in for those tests? You said you were looking for sleep apnea!”

Thomas nodded. “We were looking for everything. Apnea was a possibility. Narcolepsy was also a possibility.”

“But you didn’t tell me that.”

“I wanted to be sure.”

“Oh, so now you’re sure?”

“No, not entirely. But we need to look into it if we’re going to treat you—”

“Treat me? Like I’m your patient?” Akhil’s voice shot up a scale.

“Not mine. Dr. Subramanian’s.”

“You’re going to let that guy fuck with my brain?”

“Akhil, we’re not going to do anything to your brain—”

“Bullshit! You’re going to fucking lobotomize me! You’re going to … what do you think? That you can just change me?”

“What is he talking about?” Thomas asked his wife, but Kamala shrugged, arms crossed tightly over her chest.

“God only knows what things you and your son will say to each other. So? Now he’s angry. Brilliant, Thomas.”

“I told you, this isn’t something we can ignore—”

“Of course it isn’t. When I tell you, it’s some silly joke, right? Some silly woman with her head on outwards. But when you decide, then it’s a problem.”

“This has nothing to do with that. How many times do I have to say—”

“I’m not going,” Akhil announced. His parents looked at him. “To get more tests. I’m not going to do it.”

“You have to,” Thomas said.

“You’re not touching my brain.”

“Of course I’m not; the testing isn’t invasive—”

“I’m telling you, I’m not going.”

“Son, don’t make this worse than it is, okay? All I’m saying is that we need to figure out what it is. That’s all.”

“And then what? We find out I’ve got narcolepsy, and then? What’s the cure?”

“Why get ahead of yourself? We’ll just have to take it slow. First figure out what we’re dealing with.”

“We? We? What, you’re going to stick around for this like you care?”

“Of course I care! Don’t be silly!”

“Bullshit. You’re never even fucking here. You don’t even …” Akhil looked at his mother, at Amina, at his father’s mouth, which was already opening in rebuttal. “You don’t even like us.”

Thomas’s mouth snapped closed. Akhil’s eyes turned bright pink, and for an awful moment Amina thought he might start crying, but he said nothing else.

“You think I don’t like you?” Thomas asked, almost laughing, but then he stopped, a deer in the forest listening to an unwelcome stillness. He looked from Akhil to Kamala to Amina.

“You think I don’t like you?” he asked them.

No one answered. The question blew through the kitchen, over Akhil’s pained eyes and crossed arms, brushing a stray strand of hair from Kamala’s furrowed head, and finally pressing against the base of Amina’s throat, so that even if she could have figured out what to say, she wouldn’t have been able to say it.

Thomas’s head dipped. He took his plate to the sink and stood in front of it, his silhouette buzzing in the fluorescent light.

“Someone has to work,” he said quietly.

Amina looked at the table, its glaze of crumbs and splotches, the arced footprint of oil left from a jar of mango pickle. From the corner of her eye, she saw her father lean heavily into the kitchen counter.

“You need to get the testing,” Kamala said.

“What?” Akhil asked.

“You do.”

“Mom, you just said—”

“And now I am saying different.”

“Based on what?” Akhil said, spit flying across the table. “Dad? His fucking … patriarchy? You’re just going to sit there and take it like some goddamn pushover? IT’S THE 1980s, MOM. YOU ARE ALLOWED TO HAVE YOUR OWN OPINION.”

Kamala shut her eyes and exhaled slowly, as if to expunge every last trace of the sentence. “No driving until you do.”

“What?”

“It’s not safe.”

“Since when?”

“Since now.” Kamala stood up from the table, her eyes scanning the living room, then marched to the couch, where Akhil’s backpack lay.

“Wait!” Akhil shot up. “Wait, what are you doing?”

“I want the keys.”

“No! I mean, you don’t have to take them. I won’t drive. I promise. I swear.”

“Then it won’t matter that you don’t have the keys.”

“But when do I get them back?”

Kamala hovered over the bag, looked at her husband.

“Once we know the severity of your case,” Thomas answered.

“And what if it’s severe?” Akhil asked.

Amina saw her parents look at each other again. Kamala licked her lips. “Then you don’t drive, but that’s not the end of the—”

“I don’t drive ever?”

“Not until we know that you won’t hurt yourself or someone else,” Thomas said.

Kamala reached for the backpack, but Akhil cut her off, grabbing it with one hand and fending her off with the other. His eyes were wide and white in their sockets, his face sweaty.

“Not on weekends? Not even to prom?” he asked.

“Give it to me,” Kamala said, motioning.

“No.”

“Give it.”

“No!”

The tug-of-war that ensued was brief, silly, catastrophic. Kamala latched on and yanked the bag in her direction, while Akhil pulled it in the other. Amina watched from the kitchen table as her mother leaned away with all her weight like some sort of sari-clad warrior. Akhil leaned back. There were grunts, groans, curses, and just as Akhil began to get a better grip, his mother redoubled her efforts, straining harder, her whole person intent on winning, so much so that she failed to see the decision when it flickered across her son’s lips in a cruel smile. He let go suddenly, and the bag slammed into her face, sending her backward, hard. She landed flat on her back. For a moment, the rest of the Eapens were silent, staring at her arms and legs akimbo, sari splayed, the backpack where her face should have been.

Amina was standing, though she didn’t remember standing up. Her father moved quickly, shoving Akhil away and lifting the backpack. Under the nylon and the zippers, Kamala lay blinking, one eye shut in dismay.

“Don’t move,” Thomas said. “Just sit there for a moment.”

Kamala raised a hand to her cheek, pressing it gingerly. She stared at the blood that dotted her fingertips.

“It’s a small cut,” Thomas assured her. “Don’t touch it. Amina, get the hydrogen peroxide.”

Amina turned and ran to the pantry on legs shaky with heat. It was cool in the pantry, full of the smell of soup and pickle, and she wanted to stay there for a moment, hidden, until whatever needed to happen out there had happened. Her mother groaned. Amina stepped on a bag of basmati to reach for the cotton balls, Band-Aids, and peroxide.

“Oh my God, Mom,” she heard her brother say.

Amina walked past him on the way back and almost felt sorry for him, kneeling on the carpet, looking like he wanted to melt into it.

“Get ice in a bag,” Amina’s father barked as she handed him everything, and she ran back to the kitchen, opening the freezer. She grabbed out two trays of ice and then looked frantically around the kitchen.

“Where are the plastic bags?” she shouted.

“Oh God, Mom.”

“Under the sink,” her mother said, her voice weak, and Amina grabbed one. She emptied the trays into it and ran back. Akhil hadn’t moved an inch, but Kamala’s hands were roaming her face, patting her features as though they were Braille.

“What else?” Amina asked breathlessly, feeling suddenly important.

“Do we have a steak?” her father asked.

“Lamb only,” Kamala said.

“Get me the lamb.”

“I’ll get it,” Akhil said.

Kamala flinched as the cotton ball was pulled away, her cheekbone swelling fast into a bulbous arc. Her eye jerked in its socket, red and bloody-looking. Amina gasped.

“It’s okay,” her father said. “There are some broken blood vessels, so it just looks bad. Can you see my fingers?” He held up two and cupped his hand over her mother’s other eye.

Kamala nodded.

“How many?”

“Two.”

“Good.”

Akhil returned, lamb in hand. When his mother’s bloody eye fixed on him, he began to cry.

“Can you sit up?” Thomas asked gently. “We need to check your head.”

She sat up. She held her head in her hands like a bowl full of something that might spill easily, while Thomas felt up and down her neck and around the back of her skull.

“You’ve got a small bump here,” Thomas said, pressing, and she let out a little cry. “I want you to follow my fingers with your eyes.”

The checks turned up nothing. Kamala’s vision was fine. She did not appear disoriented, or even upset, really, just deeply, deeply quiet. She sat on the couch, head buffeted between ice and meat, eyes closed. Akhil sat with her. He still could not look at her without his mouth trembling, so he sat with his face turned away. For their part, Amina and her father kept busy by cleaning up the kitchen, finding Tupperware to match the leftovers and scraping the turmeric stains from the stove and countertops. They stacked and lined the dishes up by the sink, and while Thomas swept the floor, Amina filled the basin with hot, lemony soap-water.

“I’ll do it,” her father said, setting the broom to the side.

“It’s okay, Dad, I’ll—”

“Sit.”

It was hard to tell from his tone whether he meant it as an act of kindness or punishment, but she knew better than to argue. Amina looked at the couch and knew she did not want to sit in the pained current between her mother and brother. She walked instead to her book bag, still resting on the kitchen counter where she had set it earlier, and pulled her camera out.

Would Thomas even appear with all the bright light bouncing off the tiles in front of him? Amina had no idea, so she adjusted the settings a few times, hoping she would catch the S-shaped shadow curling up his back as he washed dishes, the few suds that rose in the air like bits of dander. She turned around, walking into the dining room to take a picture of the splattered and stained tablecloth. From that distance, she took a few shots of her mother and brother on the couch, faces flashing blue with the changing television screen. She pulled her focus tighter and saw that Akhil’s mouth was moving. Then Kamala’s. Then Akhil’s again. Who knew what exactly it was that he was saying, or what Kamala replied, or why, ten seconds later, they looked at each other and laughed a little before settling back into silence. All Amina knew was that by the time her father was done with the dishes, they had turned to Hill Street Blues and were watching it side by side, the bright brass of the keys held safely in her mother’s hands. Thomas stood in front of them, wiping his hands dry on a dish towel.

“I see you’ve come around,” he said to Akhil, who said nothing back, his gaze hardening. Amina took the picture.

“I understand it’s very difficult, these moments,” Thomas continued a little too loudly, as though he was being recorded for posterity. “Nobody likes these things life hands us. But part of becoming a man is understanding how to face them head on instead of running all the time. It’s time you knew how to do that.”

Why is it that fathers so often ensure the outcome they are trying to avoid? Is their need to dominate so much stronger than their instinct to protect? Did Thomas know, Amina wondered as she watched him, that he had just done the human equivalent of a lion sinking his teeth into his own cub?

Akhil’s gaze broke away from his father’s, shifting to the driveway in one beat. His mouth pursed, as if sucking on a secret, and with a flash of clarity, Amina knew what it was. It popped into her head cleanly, like a blade so sharp she couldn’t even feel the cut. She stood, the camera pressed to her face. Akhil looked at her through the viewfinder, fury swirling around him like invisible wind, daring her to say anything. She shut her eyes and took the picture.

CHAPTER 4

The next afternoon, Amina stood in the space between the door to her room and Akhil’s, clenching and unclenching her fists. She couldn’t take it anymore. It was a horrible sound, and its showing no sign of stopping in the ten minutes she’d waited outside made her brave enough to just go in.

Akhil was crying in his bed. Really crying. Crying in a way that she hadn’t seen since they were kids and he’d accidentally dropped his Star Wars light saber out the car window, all that would-be heroism shattering into plastic junk on the highway.

“Get out,” he said, but even this was whimpered so weakly that she couldn’t take it seriously. She sat at the bottom of his bed, not knowing what to say. The Greats smiled down at them maniacally.

“Paige is going to dump me.”

“What? She said that?”

“She will when she finds out.”

“What do you mean? You didn’t tell her?”

Her brother took a sticky breath, trying to swallow before he said, “Not really. I can’t. There is no treatment that works. I looked it up today; it’s all just a bunch of shit they try on you and almost none of it changes anything.”

Could that be true? Amina thought of their medicine cabinet, all the pills and candy-colored syrups. “Well, maybe Dad knows of something that will—”

“Dad can’t do shit about this! It’s a disease!”

“But …” Amina licked her lips nervously. “I mean, you don’t even know that you have it for sure.”

“You’re the one that said it! I fall asleep all the time for no reason, right?”

Amina found a cuticle and bit it, wishing she’d never said anything to anyone ever as Akhil started crying again. “Well—”

“Well, nothing! Don’t you see, you stupid kid?” he gasped. “It’s never going to change for us! It doesn’t matter how much we grow, or change, or try to become like everyone else, in the end, we’re fucking deformed, and they will know it. We’re too fucked up to love.”

Amina thought of her father standing in front of the sink, of Kamala’s uneaten pot roast, of Akhil’s twitching face during the Big Sleep, of the Salem house that kept getting taller, story by slanting story, in her dreams. She thought of the moment she could have grabbed Jamie’s hand but didn’t.

“It’s going to be okay,” she said loudly, mainly to stop the thinking.

Akhil didn’t say anything.

“She’ll still love you,” she told him, her voice strong in the place of any real conviction, and when he still didn’t say anything she realized he’d probably fallen asleep again. Great. Another failure on top of a failure. She looked up at the Greats. You bastards, she thought. Do something for him already.

“You think?” Akhil asked softly, startling her. “You think she’ll still want me?”

“Of course she will,” Amina said, relieved. “Just tell her.”

Thank God for Saturday mornings. A reprieve from the familiar, a day unworn by routines. Anything was possible. The week might still be redeemed. Amina made her way down to the kitchen, surprised but not unhappy to see her father staring into the cupboards.

“What are you looking for?”

“Coffee.”

“Next to the spices. With the red top.”

Thomas pulled down the tin of Nescafé and opened it, taking a hesitant whiff before nodding. “You want some?”

“Gross.”

“Right.” He took the tiny plastic cup out of it, ladling a spoonful into a mug. “What are you looking for?”

She was looking through the paper for the horoscopes for any indication that Dimple missed her, or barring that, that someone was on the verge of falling in love with her. Thomas watched the kettle with remarkable concentration.

“Know what we need?” he asked a few moments later, and she looked up, the line Someone special has taken notice of you momentarily disorienting her.

“Huh?”

“A coffeepot with an alarm clock attached. You know? So that when the alarm clock goes off, the coffee starts brewing. So by the time you get to the actual kitchen, there it is — a full pot of coffee! — just waiting for you. Neat, huh?”

“Sure.” She looked down at the paper to read his horoscope. “Okay, Dad, today for Leo says—”

The phone rang, cutting her off, and Thomas answered it.

“Cindy!” he said, as though to a long-lost friend. It was the way he always talked to the nurses who called. “What’s going on?”

“What?” Thomas said. “No, he’s home, why?”

The voice on the other end said something, and Thomas covered the receiver and turned to Amina.

“Check the driveway for the station wagon,” he said, his voice calm. He spoke back into the receiver. “What time did you say they came in?”

Queen Victoria was sitting in front of the door as she approached and made no effort to move as she turned the handle.

“Let’s go, Your Majesty,” Amina said, and the dog got up with some canine groaning, shuffling aside as Amina opened the door. She stood blinking in the morning, the heat of the coming summer warming the tops of the trees and chasing puffs of cotton down from the branches into the driveway.

Akhil’s car was gone.

“How bad are the burns?” Thomas said as they drove, phone jammed between his shoulder and ear, and Amina heard a burst of static in reply. He was driving fast, his arms shaking, and the pack of traffic they were moving in dropped back like dogs until there was nothing but clean road and sky in front of them.

“Okay,” her father was saying. “Okay. Was he at all responsive when he came in?”

Next to him, Kamala read every movement of his face.

Amina looked out the window, staring at the fence of green poles that divided the highway until they blurred together to reveal the cars driving in the opposite direction on the other side. They zipped by at an astounding speed, and she counted them frantically as she heard her father hang up, as her mother said, “What? What is it?”

“Let’s just get there,” Thomas said.

Sanji Auntie came barreling through the sliding glass doors like a maddened hippo, salwar bunched around her hips, wet hair clumped to her forehead. When she saw Amina she walked quickly across the room, shouting, “Are you okay?” and smothering her with a hug before she even had time to answer.

“Are you okay?” Sanji said again, holding Amina firmly back and looking at her.

“I’m fine. It’s Akhil.”

“Daddy said something on the phone about a car accident?”

Amina nodded. “The ambulance brought him in. The ER recognized him and called Dad.”

“So they’re inside? You’ve been waiting out here alone?”

Amina nodded again, suddenly feeling very teary. Sanji sat down in the chair next to her and pulled her onto her lap, which should have felt ridiculous but didn’t. She shut her eyes tightly and pressed her face into her aunt’s neck.

“Poor thing, must have been scared, no?”

Amina nodded and let herself cry a little as Sanji Auntie rubbed her back in circles, talking up a storm.

“… almost didn’t hear the phone ringing because I was just getting out of the shower, but then I thought I’d check and your father told me and I came running. Uncle is on the way, and Bala and Chacko are at home with Dimple, who is so worried about you. I told them we would call as soon as I heard anything. Poor thing. But don’t worry, nah? Akhil is okay. Mummy and Daddy are just scared right now. But he’ll be fine.”

“Okay,” Amina whispered.

Sanji Auntie didn’t say anything but kept rubbing her back, which helped a little. Out the window Amina saw more flashing lights, and another ambulance pulled up. This time, when the EMTs hopped out to open the back she made sure to look away. Sanji Auntie inhaled and sighed, shifting Amina on her lap. She started to say something and stopped.

“What?” Amina asked.

She sighed. “I’m just thinking, this is a bad place, no? How about if I take you to the Kurians’? You can wait there instead?”

“What about Mom and Dad?”

“I’ll tell one of the nurses to tell them. They can come and pick you up later. This is no place for you to sit.”

Amina sat up and looked at the steel doors, feeling a little guilty.

“It’s fine, Ami, Mummy and Daddy would want you there instead anyway. Shall I just call Bala?” Sanji scanned the waiting room. “Come, there’s a pay phone.”

They walked across the room to the far corner, where two of the three pay phones were occupied. Sanji picked up the third and, after listening to a dial tone, dropped in a quarter. Amina watched a man sink into the chair she had abandoned, checking his watch.

“I have her,” Sanji Auntie was saying into the phone. “Shall I bring her over to see Dimple? I don’t want her waiting here with so much of awful things in this place.”

Bala Auntie’s voice squeaked over the line, and Amina thought she heard someone saying her name. She looked to her side.

“Ami.” It was her father. Amina caught a blurry flash in his eyes, and he looked away. Pink. His eyes were terribly pink. Behind him, Amina’s mother stood, holding something in her arms. A cat. A baby. Amina squinted and saw Akhil’s leather jacket.

“Kamala, what happened to your eye?” Sanji Auntie said, and Kamala looked through her like a window. And something stopped then. It might have been her breathing or the sirens or every beeping monitor in the hospital, but in those seconds, Amina saw how smooth and hollow her mother’s eyes had grown, how stripped of perception. When no one said anything else, Sanji Auntie hung up the phone.

“There was an accident,” Thomas started to say, then didn’t say anything else.

One hand covered Sanji’s mouth, and the other flew to Amina’s shoulders, as if to steady them. Someone somewhere was saying no, no, no, no.

“What?” Amina heard herself ask, even as her father looked at her, even as she knew. “What?”

Kamala held the car keys in front of her like a flashlight, guiding herself across the parking lot to the car door with steady steps. Behind her Thomas followed, and behind him, Amina and Sanji.

“Kamala, Thomas, let me drive you all home, please,” Sanji Auntie said again, and Kamala shook her head.

“We’re fine.”

“You’re not fine, ben, how can you be fine? It’s nothing to me; Raj and I will come back to pick up your car this evening—”

“No,” Kamala said firmly, unlocking the door. “No, thank you.”

Sanji stepped away from the car, watching as they got in. She pulled up the tip of her salwar and tugged the bulbous fruit of her nose with it. She bent down to place her palm against the backseat window, staring at Amina as the car started up.

“Call me,” she mouthed, and Amina nodded. She backed up as the car pulled away.

It was instantly worse without her there. They weren’t out of the parking lot before Amina felt the silence slam down swiftly between them, smooth and relentless as concrete. Kamala shifted the car into gear, and Amina watched her father through the passenger seat mirror. Strangely, he looked normal to her now — calm and fatigued, as he always did when he came back from work, but okay. She could not see her mother’s face.

“We need to call Chacko and Bala,” he said as they got on the highway.

“Sanji will.”

“We should call them ourselves.”

“You call.”

Outside, the cars passed blurrily, buffeting against them with a pop of wind before breaking away into the horizon. Kamala moved into the left lane.

“Where are you going?” Thomas asked.

Amina looked out the window and saw they were headed up I-40.

“The car,” Amina’s mother said.

“Later, Kamala. We’ll see it later. They haven’t gotten it off the mountain yet.”

“Today.”

Amina felt her father’s gaze through the rearview mirror. He leaned over her mother and whispered something to her in Malayalam, but she shoved his head away.

“So? She’ll stay in the car. So what.”

“I need you to stay in the car,” her father was saying. He had opened the backseat door and was kneeling next to her, looking into her eyes. “I need you to stay here, okay? Can you do that, Ami? Will you do that for me?”

The car was parked at the side of the road. Outside, the mountain air smelled like pinions and rock and gas and ashes, and Amina nodded. She watched as he turned and ran to catch up with her mother, who was already stalking up the bend toward the guardrail, her black braid bouncing against her back.

Watching her parents through the window, Amina was sure they were in the wrong spot. The road looked much too itself, the same twisted vein of asphalt they always rode to the peak, the same low guardrails that held the tops of the evergreens at bay. Two white pickup trucks and men in orange jackets greeted her parents, pointing below with gloved hands. Her parents turned and looked.

What was it that they saw that day? What had happened to Akhil’s car that rooted her father to the spot as her mother turned around, first walking toward the road, then carefully kneeling on it, her eyes flickering shut? And were they forever lost to each other in that moment, completing the severing that had begun on the last trip to Salem, or did their connection fray more slowly, as the everyday weight of what had happened came to bear down on them? Amina would never know, but for days she could not close her eyes without seeing her parents as they had been right before they looked down, the tips of the evergreens spread out before them like waves, the New Mexico sky blank and white as eternity.