“What’s that smell?” Denny wrinkles his nose. His words come out all garbled, with his mouth wide open for me to inspect his teeth. I have to make sure he’s brushing properly. Ma and Baba decided to go to that fundraiser tonight, so it’s up to me to babysit my siblings to make sure they’re doing their homework and getting to bed on time. “We must all make a good impression,” he says when he told us, solemn, not in his usual joking manner. Ma grumbles a little at this, even as Baba tries to put a positive spin on it. About how attending these events will help him make connections for his job.

“And it’s good for the girls,” he continues. “A bit more independence.” Ma turns away at this, as if not ready for the idea.

We have a decent enough night. All of us get along, which is a rarity in itself. Denny finishes his math homework with the promise of an episode of his robot show after dinner. I heat up leftovers: noodles Ma made yesterday with pork, cabbage, and carrots. I pull out the container that has all the sauces, and we each take our pick. Me: hoisin. Tina: sriracha. Denny: ketchup…which both Tina and I make gagging noises at and tease him mercilessly about.

Tina goes upstairs to finish her homework in her room. I work on my assignment on the kitchen table to keep an eye on Denny, but even down here I can hear the sound of the bass through the ceiling. Probably more dance practice, like usual.

I noticed the smell earlier but thought it was coming from outside. As I lead Denny over to say good night to Tina though, we can smell it wafting around her door. Something sickly sweet, that I can almost taste at the back of my throat. Like incense, cloying and medicinal.

“Are you burning something in here?” I knock on the door before pushing it open, remembering the time last year when she snuck candles in her room and fell asleep and burned the edges of her curtains. Almost lit the entire house on fire.

“Hey!” Tina sits on the floor on her yoga mat. She turns to glare at us, scowling. The video continues to play behind her, the light bouncing off the ceiling. It’s a woman demonstrating some sort of pose. A chant fills the air, slow and rhythmic, like the sound of the wood block, interspersed with chimes.

“You’re…you’re twisted like a pretzel,” Denny declares, giggling.

“Not funny, brat!” Tina rolls onto her knees and throws a stuffed animal from her bed in his direction. It bops him on the head before falling to the floor.

“Ow!” Denny yelps, hiding behind me. “Who’re you calling a brat? You’re a brat, and you stink!” He pinches his nose with his fingers.

“Tina…we can’t use candles in the house, you know that,” I remind her, as gently as possible. “And you should apologize to Denny for bopping him.”

“I’m not burning a candle!” Tina grabs something off her desk and throws it at me. It hits me on the leg and falls on the carpet. A little glass vial, with a label on it in Chinese. A character I can’t understand. Underneath, in tiny letters, it says: ESSENCE OF CLARITY. Some sort of essential oil. That’s why the smell is a bit familiar. A little like the traditional Chinese medicine stores that Baba would take us to when he needs to pick up packets for his high blood pressure and cholesterol. Ma used to make us drink them sometimes, the ingredients that look like dried twigs that she would cook down into a soup in a special pot. The taste made me want to throw up. Tina would never drink it, but I could be bribed to if given ice cream after.

“It’s a diffuser, obviously.” She scowls at me. “Now, will you two get out?” She snatches the glass vial out of Denny’s grasp as he bends down to try and grab it, then places her hand on his shoulder, guiding him out. She glares at me over his mop of hair, gesturing for me to leave too with a thrust of her head.

Denny and I are left outside, staring at one another, bewildered at her animosity. Then he sneezes, and he starts giggling. I can’t help but laugh too. He might be a baby sometimes, but he’s still my little brother. He still looks up and listens to me…for now. Like Tina used to. He tucks his hand into mine to walk him to his room.

After tucking Denny in and turning on his night-light, I close the door gently and notice Tina’s door is ajar again. I heard the water running earlier when I read Denny his nighttime story. The sound of music trickles out. She’s still awake. I should say good night and apologize for bugging her when I know she wouldn’t make the same mistake again. She was genuinely distraught last time when she burned her curtains; she even cried, promising she would be more careful from then on.

I push the door open with my shoulder, stepping into the room. That scent is even stronger this time, and the chanting louder. It sounds like muttering, the same syllables repeated over and over again, accompanied by that steady woodblock.

“I shouldn’t assume you were burning candles again. I know you wouldn’t forget. I was just worried.” I extend the olive branch, voice low, as to not startle her.

Tina is now at her desk below the window. Her makeup mirror is to her left, only revealing half her face on the reflective surface. It’s so dark in here, the only light in the room from the soft yellow beam of the desk lamp. It makes her look like she’s floating in space. A girl glowing in the darkness.

“Whatever,” she says, still sullen, face all scrunched up.

“I was only trying to make sure—”

“Yeah, you’re checking up on me. Making sure that I’m doing what I’m supposed to do,” she says, then her voice goes up again in that mocking lilt. “Report everything back to Ma, be their perfect daughter.”

I feel a twinge of annoyance. “I said sorry,” and it comes out sharper than I intended.

“I don’t care,” she says. Her fingers have stopped on the keyboard, but she still stares at her screen, refusing to face me. “Maybe you should get a life of your own instead of being so obsessed with mine and what I’m doing. You never think for yourself.”

“Tina…” Her words sting, like she intends them to.

“Just shut up and get out!” Her voice rises up, high-pitched. The bruise on my ankle suddenly burns, as if fire licked my skin. I have to look down to check that nothing is touching me. The lights flicker at that moment, and I look back—for a second, even though she’s looking straight ahead, her reflection in the mirror turns toward me.

What in the actual fuck?

“Get out!” she yells, her voice cracking, splitting into two. A growl. A shriek. Her shoulders rise up almost to her ears, her entire body trembling. With anger? Or something else?

The reflection in the mirror continues to stare at me. Not moving.

And then smiles.

Just like the man in Chinatown with the yellow uniform.

I’ll see you again. His voice sounds in my head, crystal clear.

I stumble back into the hallway, in time to see her raise her hand and then the door slam shut. But she didn’t get up out of the chair at all. Impossible.

I run into my room and shut the door. My pulse races like I ran around the track, my mind trying to make sense of it. I crawl under my covers and squeeze my eyes shut, force myself to take deep breaths. My sister’s face floats before me. Her face whole. Her face split. Half of her laughing, while the other half has her part of the mouth open in a scream—a cry?

Sometime in the middle of the night, I hear the back door opening downstairs. My parents returning from their event. Their voices wash over me, bringing a sense of normalcy back into the house.

I convince myself it’s all in my imagination. The stress, the pressure, the expectations. It’s all getting to me. I’m the one who can’t be trusted. The dark distorting my vision. My imagination making things up that aren’t there.

I am safe. It’s not real. I am safe. It’s not real.

At school I try to pay attention to the lectures. Take notes on solving algebraic equations. Attempt to memorize the structures of the cell. But the feeling of unease continues to follow me, even as I try to shove it out of the way.

It was just a bad dream.

The rest of the week passes by, uneventful. Except the smell gets worse. The upper level of the house becomes permeated with that strange scent that only Denny and I seem to smell. I wake up in the morning to it stinging my nostrils. Tina continues to be on her best behavior. Washing the dishes, taking out the garbage without being asked. The music she plays has changed to a steady chant, a peculiar droning of syllables, repeated over and over. It doesn’t seem to bother my parents when Tina reassures them it’s for a school project.

After the weekend, I’m glad to be back at school, away from Tina’s increasingly bizarre behaviors. When I started at Westview, I was coming in midyear, still trying to recover from the shock of pushing back on my parents’ demands and succeeding. But in a way I didn’t expect. I have more freedom now, and yet the pressure seems more present than ever. Keeping up with the classes, the increased number of assignments, community service, tentatively returning to piano. One misstep and it could all crash again. My hallucinations returning is proof that I am barely holding myself together.

I can’t let anyone know, and yet I desperately want to find someone who might be able to understand.

One day I take my lunch out in the back to eat on one of the picnic tables in Westview’s lone courtyard, which has a basketball court and the saddest little patch of grass.

There’s a few girls I’m friendly with who are already out here, and they wave at me to join them. Showing me that I’m not a total social pariah. I sit down beside them and open up my dish of glass noodles. It’s one of Ma’s specialties, filled with cabbage and carrots, mushrooms and dried shrimp. Usually I would devour it, but I’m not feeling much of an appetite. They talk about one of the assignments they have coming up, a course I’m not in, so I don’t have much to say. I take a bite and let my thoughts drift….

A shadow of something falls from the sky, like it flew off the roof of the building, hitting the cement before me with force—a mangled form of twisted limbs. I gasp, a bite of noodle going down the wrong way, and cough violently.

“Are you okay?” The girls all stare at me—concerned that I’m going to choke and die before them—instead of staring at the real horror. The figure on the pavement.

Keep it together, I tell myself. It’s not real.

He landed without a sound, and then drags himself forward, leaving a bloody trail behind him. His neck is bent sideways, half of his face flattened from where he struck the ground. One of his eyes is gone, but the other turns in its socket, bright red with blood, looking up at me. His mouth opens, and all I see is bloody gums and broken teeth. One hand stretches out toward me, the angle of the elbow all wrong.

“Ruby?” another girl asks, and I force myself to turn to her, to pretend that everything is fine.

I clear my throat. “Choked on something,” I mumble, taking a swig of my drink. The conversation resumes around me.

The door beside us opens, and I look up to see that boy again. The now-familiar red jacket he’s shrugging on over his school uniform. He quickly descends the metal steps, not even glancing in our direction. When he walks by, he looks down, and ever so slightly, his mouth pulls back in a slight grimace. So quick that I almost miss it.

With a jolt, I realize he sees him too. The mangled body on the pavement. If he sees him, then that means it’s not all in my head. It means that it is infinitely worse. It’s all real. Everything that I’m seeing. What happened in the alley. What’s happening with Tina.

I could keep on sitting here, pretend that nothing is wrong. Watch the boy with the red jacket walk away. I could smile with the girls like I don’t see the guy grinning at me from the ground with his broken teeth. But a sharp pain digs into my leg, reminding me that the bruise is there, and the sound of my sister’s door slamming without her getting up.

I throw all the pieces of my lunch together, mutter the first excuse that jumps into my head. He’s almost at the gate. I can feel my lunchmates’ eyes, curious, burning into the back of my head as I hurry away.