There was nothing to be done. Everything was as it should be. He sat on the bed. The sun came in hot through the window, making him sweat despite the air conditioning; he got up, closed the blinds, and sat back down again.
His feet wouldn’t stay still on the carpet, his toes following the tracks from the vacuuming he’d given it the day before. It was the oddest thing; his body usually weighed so much more than it should. Usually it was a fight to get up a flight of stairs or to get through his homework without falling asleep. Usually, he could admit, it was hard enough making his way through conversations without losing his train of thought.
This was the most energy he’d had in months. Maybe even a year. There still wasn’t color, exactly, but things had definitely sped up. He didn’t remember the world feeling this way: overbright, too jagged, his heart hammering—he was probably tachycardic. It was very unpleasant, the way everything was rushing and pulsing inside him.
That stupid quiz. Why hadn’t he filled out that stupid quiz? Dream job: doctor. It wasn’t hard. He’d written the word a million times, made plans a million times more complicated than a stupid senior-year career quiz. All he’d had to do was fill it out and none of this would be happening. Mrs. Marry wouldn’t have looked at him like he was an idiot and she wouldn’t be worried about him now, wouldn’t call to explain that the Alcide family’s oldest son, the young man following in his parents’ footsteps, couldn’t manage to answer ten simple questions.
He bent over and tried to breathe into his knees. The temperature had spiked in the room. That was why he was sweating. He couldn’t—he had—that stupid, stupid quiz. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected to happen when he turned it in without filling it out, but he’d hoped...he’d thought...but it was all still here.
He got up and went to the bathroom.
He locked the door behind him. It wasn’t anything. His younger brothers and sisters always knocked, but you never knew. He sat on the edge of the tub. The porcelain was cool through the denim of his jeans. It might’ve been nice, given how overheated he was, but it was strangely distant. His legs weren’t his, that was the problem. They were very far away.
Somehow, he’d gotten Marie’s manicure scissors. She was constantly complaining about her eyebrows, and had several different tweezers, and she would sometimes trim them with these scissors, and she usually kept them in the drawer, but right now they were in his hand.
He tugged up the sleeve on his left arm.
He wondered how much force it would take. He wasn’t going to do anything. There wasn’t anything to be done about any of it, not really. He was simply wondering.
* * *
The next thing he remembered was sitting on the floor in Ruby’s room beside her bedroom door. His youngest sister was only six, and while the whole not-spoiling thing meant that the rest of the kids shared bedrooms, no one could stand the repetition of her constant practicing, so they’d all agreed as a family that she should have a room to herself.
Her decoration choices leaned toward hot pink and garish purple and extravagant frills of fabric on any object that would stand still, but all frivolity vanished the second she picked up her instrument to practice. Then she became an intent general poring over tactical maps. More driven than any of the adults who fostered her gift.
The family had begun adoption proceedings for Ruby during a brief Catholic missionary trip to Jamaica a few years ago and she’d had trouble adjusting to the States. It had been a twist of fate, Ruby finding the violin. She had literally walked into a street performer playing outside a shop at the 16th Street Mall one weekend while the whole family had gone to lunch for Marie’s birthday. Tobias had given Ruby a couple of dollars to put in the woman’s case, but Ruby hadn’t seemed to realize what the money was for. She’d stood still as a statue, listening; they’d had to drag her away. It was the most interest she’d shown in anything since she arrived from Jamaica, so a few days later, she’d had a cheap practice violin of her own and lessons with a local teacher who’d been throwing around words like prodigy and generational talent by the end of the first week.
Now, barely two years later, his sister played Mozart and Bach and Beethoven for hours in her bedroom every day.
Tobias loved being in Ruby’s room. All right, granted, it was annoying to hear the same bits of music repeated ad nauseum, but by the end of each session she usually gravitated to pieces she knew in their entirety. She so rarely became distracted—a miraculous thing in a six-year-old—and the rest of the household was so respectful of her practicing time, that it was downright peaceful in Ruby’s room.
Quiet. It was so quiet here. No noise could possibly reach him past the music.
He listened to her play for what seemed like ages, until it registered that his shirt was soaked, that the half a roll of toilet paper he’d wrapped around his forearm hadn’t been able to sop up the mess after all. He’d forgotten about it, and he’d let up on the direct pressure too soon.
He couldn’t let Ruby see the blood.
He stood up and let himself out without speaking.
And froze in the hallway. He could smell diri kole cooking, the thyme and garlic scents familiar and normally delicious, and hear his other siblings downstairs talking to Papa, and he realized he’d lost a fair bit of time. It was time to eat. It was dinnertime, and Manman was coming
