Image 1 of 3
Image 2 of 3
Image 3 of 3
Want to sample before you buy? Read on:
Siva has been so long under the mountain, so long tracing tunnels ascending and descending, she can no longer tell where earth meets sky, nor what lies above and what below. Or if the world beyond the rock walls and chalcedony-ridden veins still exists.
#
Sometimes Siva thinks of Meghan. Sometimes of her parents. Sometimes the walls retreat a little. But not enough. Never enough.
She is drowning in stale air laced with her own exhalations.
And when she sleeps, she dreams memories of the outside world.
#
The clap of Mrs. Hatch’s hands brings Siva back to the present, the flight of seagulls she was watching wing by outside the window lost to the fisheye of faces all turned her way. Mrs. Hatch puts her hands on her hips, waiting. “Are we boring you, Ms. Pillai?”
Siva looks down at her desk and folds her hands across the lap of her jeans. “No,” she whispers.
“Louder, Sivasakthi. I don’t think the entire class can hear you.”
Siva swallows and speaks up. “No, Mrs. Hatch.”
“Excellent. Back to your textbook.” The cheerleaders giggle from the back of the room and Mrs. Hatch slams her hand on her desk. “That means everyone.”
The squad roll their eyes at each other, but quiet down and settle in. When Mrs. Hatch turns her back on the class to write on the blackboard, Meghan leans into the aisle to slip a piece of paper across the gap. Siva meets her halfway and snatches it as quietly as possible. She unfolds it carefully, keeping an eye on Mrs. Hatch’s back. Pits? Tonight?
Siva scrawls back a yes and holds it out low across the aisle for Meghan to take.
#
Siva tucks her wallet into her jeans, tosses on a jacket and her Vans, and slips out the window of her second-floor bedroom just before midnight. She climbs down the side of the house with only the scuff of her sneakers on the siding to give her away, her movements deft with long practice. Her mother long already in bed, and her father not due home for hours yet.
The walk from King West Village up to Christie Station isn’t a short one, but the spring night is cool and the city wet with fresh rain. The soles of her shoes squish on the pavement as she skirts construction and the other night owls wandering Trinity-Bellwoods and Little Italy on her way north.
Meghan waves to her from the payphones on the southwestern edge of Christie Pits park in front of the parking lot outside Banjara.
