Page 59 of The Infinite Light of Dust

“Going somewhere?” I asked her as she greeted me.

She nodded. “I’m going to meet my parents at their hotel. They’re staying for a little while.”

“That’s good,” I told her, realizing how uninterested I sounded. “Not good, given the circumstances, but I’m glad you get to see them and be with them right now.”

She smiled, waving her hand. “I knew what you meant.”

“Sorry.” I nervously brushed my hand over my chin. “I’m a little out of it.”

“I think we all are.” She kissed my cheeks and yelled bye to Karina, who I assumed was in her bedroom.

I moved with caution, as if I was approaching a war zone. Little did I know, I was. Her room was a disaster, clothes thrown everywhere in little piles that looked like visible land mines. She was standing by her dresser, tossing clothes over her head.

“Karina?” I said her name slowly as I approached her.

She didn’t turn around. Had she found out about her mom’s return on my way here? Her brother must have called her.

I moved closer to her and put my hand on her shoulder.

“Are you okay? Why did you leave your dad’s?”

Her eyes were bloodshot with lilac circles under them. Her lips were a deep pink, and I could see the blue veins in her forehead. She looked exhausted, mentally and physically. She looked away, avoiding eye contact with me. I began to feel more than a little on edge.

“I couldn’t sit there anymore. I have to work tomorrow since Mali is leaving, and my house is a mess.”

It wasn’t the time to point out that she was in the middle of covering her bedroom floor with clothing. On cue, she tossed a purple sweater over both of our heads.

“Do you need help cleaning?”

Both of us were on edge. I tightened my light grip on her shoulder and turned her around to face me. She opened her mouth, then closed it. I was about to blurt out that I just met her mother, but she lifted her hand up to cover my mouth.

“I don’t want to talk about it. Or anything. I want to clean my house and have a normal day. I feel like I’m losing my mind, Kael, and I can’t talk about anything that has happened in the last seventy-two hours. So, please, I know you want to talk it out and have a therapy session, but can we just pretend like everything is fine and have a normal night as twenty-one-year-olds? Please?”

That was the last thing I wanted to do, but I couldn’t imagine how overwhelmed she felt. I didn’t blame her for wanting to ignore everything and pretend, but I knew that disassociating usually caused more pain in the long run, so it was difficult for me to agree to her plan. I did anyway, nodding in silence while my mind screamed at me to fix this for her, to take her pain away. It wasn’t possible, and I knew that but hated it all the same.

“Thank you. I don’t want to fight with you or talk about how I feel or what the future means. I want to be a twenty-one-year-old girl manically going through my clothes and ignoring reality for a bit.”

I sighed. “Okay. Let’s ignore reality for a bit. What exactly are you doing with these clothes?” I looked around the room. How could one person have this many clothes?

“Not sure. Donating them? I need a fresh start. A new style. I wear the same clothes all the time and I can’t afford to buy new ones, so I want to get rid of at least half and restyle the rest. Oh, and I bought hair dye. Want to help me dye it?” She was speaking a mile a minute.

My eyes found the box of hair dye on her dresser and the pit in my stomach grew. I wished I had her ability to be so spontaneous, changing parts of my identity every time something was out of my control, but I wasn’t programmed that way. I was a dweller, a hyperfixator.

“Sure?” I agreed to her plan, and we spent the day organizing every inch of her house, dyeing her hair dark brown, and ordering Chinese takeout.

As the hours passed I began to settle, coming to the realization that maybe sometimes the answer to handling trauma was to temporarily shut it off. Processing it immediately didn’t have to be the only response. Karina’s sporadic yet meticulous way of thinking was contagious, but I knew deep down that the clock was ticking and Karina’s bottled-up emotions were going to explode without a warning.

Chapter Thirty

Karina

I found myself at my father’s house by choice. What a complicated emotion regret is. I had gone from declaring that I was never going to see my father again to driving to his house after work. I hadn’t called ahead, so I was relieved that his truck was parked in the driveway and the interior lights of the house were on. It was so hard to make sense of what I was feeling when it came to every aspect of my life. Everything had changed so rapidly, and I couldn’t get a grip on it. Before I could mentally spiral any longer, I got out of my car and walked up the sidewalk and onto the porch.

Estelle was the one who answered the door. She was dressed casually, in dark jeans and a white scoop-neck top. Her hair was down, like she had let the air dry it, which surprised me, but it looked effortless and pretty on her. I wanted to tell her that, but my father’s voice sounded out between us.

“Who is it?” he asked, clearly in a bad mood. The tone of his voice sent me straight back to my childhood. It had been an awful idea to come here. What the hell was I thinking?

“Karina,” Estelle and I responded in unison.

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