Some days Emilia walked all the way to the high school and stayed there for half the day. Other days she walked straight to the elementary school. But each day she worked on that classroom. And when the automated call about her absence would come in the early evenings, Emilia was usually the only one home to answer it. Or she’d be the first to the phone. She wasn’t as worried about getting caught as she should be, and she didn’t understand why. Maybe because she knew she could explain to Ma that she just didn’t feel like being around anyone and Ma would understand.
But she’ll hurry the visit to the psychologist, Emilia thought. Still, it was a chance worth taking.
And maybe going to a psychologist wouldn’t be the end of the world?
No, be okay, Emilia told herself.
All she wanted was to stay in that classroom. Safe. Where she painted each of the origami crows using the glitter paint and a small brush from a watercolor paint set she’d found in a kindergarten classroom. And she sat in the little patch of sun that came in from the window, and one after another, she painted those birds, until they were shining. She tilted them this way and that, watched the way the light reflected off them. She took in their small brilliance, getting lost in it, so she could forget the cold outside and the ugliness of the world.
Emilia searched Ma’s closet for thread. She knew there was some in an old sewing box stuffed under the extra winter blankets. Emilia remembered when they’d gotten the string and crochet needles. She saw how Ma walked into the store and carried them around with her for a bit before casually dropping them into her purse as they walked, pretending to search for something. That was how Ma tried to pick up crocheting.
It’s supposed to help, she would say, but Emilia never understood. Especially when Ma only became frustrated and threw the string and the needles across the room.
But now here they were, the spools of string, from all those years ago. Most of them were brand-new. And underneath them, an old photo album Emilia hadn’t seen in years. She opened it, getting lost for a moment in so many aching memories of her family. There they were on that trip to Jones Beach. And here was a picture of Emilia in front of their house on her first day of kindergarten.
Emilia closed the album and shoved it, along with the string, into her backpack and carried them to the elementary school.
In the school janitor’s closet in the basement, she found a chair that could be used as a table to display more of her items. She carried it past the chorus room, past the art room, up the stairs to the ground level, singing “Ghost of John” to herself. This was where the kindergarten through second-grade classrooms were.
Little Emilia, what did you know, what did you know? she thought as she walked down the hall to the other set of stairs, which led up to the third- through fifth-grade classrooms. Emilia hurried, not just because the chair was heavy and slipping from her grip, but because she thought she felt the ghost of herself. And she was afraid to turn around and see little Emilia. To see her, knowing the future she didn’t know yet.
Don’t follow me, she told her.
The chair banged against her shins. She’d have bruises. She bruised easily.
Maybe I’m not strong. Maybe I’ll never be, Emilia thought.
But once she got into the classroom, she started working. There, she snipped piece after piece of thread in varying lengths.
She punched tiny holes in her birds with a rusty hole punch she’d found in another classroom. Then looped the thread through those holes and tied a slightly bent paper clip to one end. She climbed the ladder and tacked the metal edge of the paper clip into the soft cork ceiling.
And she filled that room with hundreds of her glittering birds.
Later that week, Emilia went through the photographs, wondering what she could do with them. And she brought more items she found around her house—the salt and pepper shakers she was sure her mother wouldn’t miss. And her father’s battery-run boom box and cassette collection, old romantic songs in Spanish that she used to think were funny but made him melancholy, like poetry. They filled her with sorrow now, too. She also brought chipped teacups and cracked bowls Ma kept in the back of a cabinet because she said it made her sad to throw them out. Emilia had never understood before, but now she thought she did. She brought anything else she could find. Anything else that felt right. Emilia filled that room. And she worked.
She used the cans of paint that had been waiting. And she set out the candles. And blew up the air mattress with the bike pump they’d always had to borrow from their neighbor when they were little, but that she took without asking this time when she saw his garage door was open.
You can have anything you want, Emilia.
This.
She wanted this. A sanctuary, a beautiful place to escape the cold and all the terrible feelings swirling around inside her, filling her more and more. A place where she could be safe from Ian’s confused and pitying looks, Ma and Tomás’s worry, the rest of the world, which up to now had spared her the publicity but might still, at any moment, combust. They’d hate her, ask her why and how. Questions she’d asked herself a thousand times since finding out about Carl Smith but still couldn’t answer. Emilia took a deep breath and closed her eyes; being here helped stop the relentless thoughts of Jeremy Lance and what she’d done to him. How I ruined his life. And his mother’s life. And why do I see, keep seeing, his face in my memory?
She snapped open her eyes and a glimmering crow caught her attention. Emilia pushed away the thoughts that had crept in and instead looked around at what she’d built over the past few weeks. She stared at each item, beautiful in its own way. And the wall that had taken up most of her time. She sat on the air mattress, taking it all in, over and over again. It was done. There was nothing more she could do.
She opened the window just enough for some wind to sway her paper birds. She lay down, watched them shiver and shimmer above her.
What more can I do? she thought. Because she didn’t feel like she was done. The room seemed complete and incomplete. There must be more she was supposed to do here. To feel complete. Normal. She wanted to feel complete and normal and whole.
Will I ever be?
The paper crows fluttered above her.