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“I just …” She looks around the library as though it’s a cage. “Look at all this!” She kicks at the newspaper she’s put under her easel to catch the paint. “Look atme. I should be able to handlemyself,and now I have tobegto make something happen. I’m supposed to …”
She sits down at her easel, shoulders slumped. “The world’s not fair. We should be able to help your brother. We should be able to do some good.”
I go to her and gently lay my hand on her shoulder. She’s so consumed with her sadness that I don’t think she even realizes it.
“Maybe we can,” I say, but it sounds weak. “Maybe we’ll have our chance.”
“I always said I was going to be on my own,” she says bitterly, almost as though she misses those days, as though she wishes life could be simple again, even if it were colder. “… to myselfbecause I didn’t speak to anybody else. I always promised myself that.”
“Why would youwantto be alone?”
God, what a hypocritical question. She makes a slight scoffing noise. “Before, I thought it was easier that way.”
“And now?”
“I don’t know. It’s hard to think when everything happens so fast. It feels like a fever dream.”
“Yeah, tell me about it,” I say, looking out the window, thinking of the brief looks in the computer room, remembering his lips pressed against my body, the protective strength I feel every time we hold each other.
We don’t talk for a while, and then I see another painting beneath the baby sketch. The corner of it shows where the paper has flipped back. I fold over the rest, revealing a sketch of a serious-looking woman.
“This is nice,” I say, hoping to change the subject. “Who is it?”
“Oh, just …” She gets all choked up. “… how I imagine my mom looked
before …”
She doesn’t have to say anything. Like with Mikhail and me in the cave, bringing all that misery into the light is sometimes impossible. “You haven’t had it easy, have you?”
She gives me a serious look. She probably doesn’t realize it, but she looks exactly like her sketched mother. “Neither of us has,” she says.
I force a smile onto my face. Judging how Lia looks at me—like I’ve lost my mind—it comes across as abrupt, but I don’t care. I need to focus on what I can do right now. When working on a complex math problem, you chunk it and make it manageable.
“Shall we get some fresh air? I saw Ania shooting some hoops.”
“Basketball?” Lia says doubtfully. “I’m not exactly the athletic type.”
“What, and I am?”
She raises her eyebrows, then nods and stands up. “Maybe it would be good to get some sun. I wanted to get some sleep, but then …”
“Feel too wired?”
“How did you guess?” she asks sarcastically, but not in a mean way.
I smile, wondering if this might be the start of a friendship that lasts years. Maybe one day, we’ll even be family. Again, I remind myself,Chill. I seriously need to relax and stop letting my thoughts skip ahead so quickly to the future.
“Come on,” I say, taking her hand. “Let’s do it.”
“I’ve just never been a sports person,” Lia says, bouncing the ball several times as she looks over at the hoop.
Ania stands at my side, looking small and fragile in her bright sweatsuit. She has delicate, youthful features. From how she’sconstantly glancing around, seeming on edge, I wonder if she’s as anxious as I often get or worse.
“It’s not like there are any stakes,” Ania says. “Miss. Get it. It doesn’t matter.”
Lia throws the ball, then gasps when it bounces off the backboard, spins around the rim of the hoop, thenjustabout topples over the edge, not going in.
“That was so close,” Ania says, brightening up. “Wow, Lia, well done.” Ania turns to me, making me smile immediately. There’s something so magnetic about her when she looks at me like this. “Yourturn.”
