We watch the sun go down outside the windows from the bed and the couch and the floor where we end up lying for most of the day. The first thing Penny does the next day is go into the bathroom and check the door, and he comes out looking annoyed, so when he goes to the door to the hallway and it doesn’t budge I’m not surprised.
He hits it with his fist, waking Ava up, but Nua just rolls over. I pull a pillow over my head and murmur, “I’ve never gone this long without food before.”
“I have,” mutters Ava, and I look out from under the pillow at her. “What, why?”
“Not on purpose,” she says through a yawn, her eyes still closed. “But when I was getting sick, I could hardly breathe before the medicine, and then when I first got on it it was so, I don’t know, aggressive, it made me sick to my stomach every time I looked at a plate.” She rubs her eyes, and looks over at me. “Good morning.”
“Morning,” I say softly. My stomach groans. Shiv the cat stands up at the foot of the bed and comes up between us, putting her tail in my face, and I rub my nose.
“That’s why I didn’t give the first ones to him,” she continues after a moment, softly, as she pulls the cat to her chest. She buries her face in the blankets, and I look at her. She closes her eyes. “Didn’t want him to get sick like that too, and since I wasn’t on the red ones very long I figured it wouldn’t be so bad to stop them. But then he had to stop them, because she stopped them, and I guess I had my other meds so it wasn’t as bad for me, but for him, they, they just stopped.”
“You couldn’t know, it’s not your fault,” I murmur, and she opens her eyes to look at me. Shiv purrs, and Ava smiles slightly as she says, “You’re never supposed to give anyone else your medicine.”
I smile a bit too, and reach out for Shiv too. She sniffs my fingers, and then allows me to touch her head. “You were trying to help him. He knew that, he knew it wasn’t your fault.”
“I don’t think I’m ever gonna stop thinking about it,” she says quietly, and I smile slightly, stroking Shiv’s orange head. “About him? You shouldn’t.”
“What are you two murmuring about over there?” asks Penny loudly from the couch, and Ava sits up with a sigh, throwing the blankets off her, and off me and Nua by extent. He groans, grabbing for them, and then rolls onto his back. “Ugh.”
“Well,” says Ava. “This sucks.”
“Is it worse than before?” asks Penny, and Ava shrugs. “All I know is that everything was just fine when I could smoke a pack a day.”
“You literally died,” says Nua through a yawn, and she scoffs. “I had it under control.”
Bayan gets up and goes to the bathroom, and Nano hops up onto the couch in his spot. She puts her head on Penny’s chest, and he grins a bit, stroking her head. “How long is she gonna keep us in here?”
“How long was it when you were fourteen?” asks Nua through another yawn, and Penny shrugs. “Just overnight.”
Sloan scratches Chloe on the head and doesn’t say anything. Nua makes a noise, rolling over a bit, and his hand falls on Ava’s stomach. It hits the cat, and she startles, jumping up to her feet, and hisses at him. He just pulls the blankets over his head and goes back to sleep.
There is really not much else to do. I rest my head on Ava’s chest, and I can see when Bayan comes back out that Penny crawls over to lie his head on his shoulder. I smile a little, reaching up to pet the cat, listening to Ava’s heart beat, Keol’s heart, I can feel a line of stitches under my cheek and Ava runs her fingers over some of the other ones. Her nails are bitten down to the beds and she just stares at the ceiling, at the canopy over her bed, and then she looks down at me. She smiles, and runs her other hand over my head, and I sigh, and close my eyes.
We do not have to wait so long today, though. Only a little while after we all wake up there is a rattling at the door, and Ava sits up. Nua groans again, but she slides off the foot of the bed and picks a sweater up off the chair as the door unlocks. Penny sits up too, off of Bayan, and then their mother opens the door, balancing two plates of food along her arm. The room is quiet, and Ava lifts her chin, looking at the food. “Is that for us, or the dogs?”
Lilly doesn’t say anything, just leans down and places onto the ground the two plates she’s holding in her hand. She smiles slightly as Chloe and Nano lift their heads, then come bounding over to feast.
Ava’s cat is winding itself around her legs, and she stares at her mother, her jaw clenching. The twins’ mother just jerks her head over her shoulder and then leaves the doorway.
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Penny follows.
The rest of us do too, after a moment, and we go down to the dining room, where a full lunch is lain. Abigala is sitting already, next to where I sit, at Lilly’s right hand. The smell makes my stomach clench in hunger. It would be just like her to invite us down and then forbid us from even a bite, but Lilly silently takes her place at the end of the table and gestures for us to sit, too.
Ava takes the head of the table again, Penny on her right and Nua on her left. I sit once again between him and my sister and after another moment of hesitation Bayan and Sloan sit down. Lilly doesn’t say anything.
She starts to eat. Penny does too, and soon everyone except Ava is shoveling the food down our throats. But Ava just stares at her mother across the table. Lilly looks at her. “Ava, dear, eat something.”
She snorts, pushing her chair back a little, and then props her feet up on the table next to her plate, crossing her ankles. Nua moves his plate away from her and Penny makes a face but he does not show any sign of slowing down with his food. Lilly sighs. “Ava-”
“I’m twenty years old, I’m still allowed to rebel,” she says flippantly. I look at her, remembering from just a few months but a lifetime ago the same phrase coming out of her mouth but cloaked in a ribbon of smoke. She winks at me, picking up her fork and twiddling with it. “I still have some questions, mother.”
Her mother swallows, then gestures to her. “All right, then.”
“Why are we here?” she asks, point-blank. “What do you want from us?”
“Actions have consequences, my dear,” says her mother bluntly. “You ran away from me, I took you back. That’s how it works, right, Aberworth?”
I almost choke on my chewing. Ava’s eyes flash. “What about you, then?”
“What about me?” Lilly asks, and Ava laughs. “What, are we stuck here now? Confined to the dining room and bedroom? What do you have to get out of all of this, or is this just another move in your chess game of a government?”
“I’m doing my job,” says her mother.
“And ruining lives while doing it,” says Ava, poking the prongs of her fork into the palm of her hand. “You hurt people, Mother. Penny got no cookies for a week after you caught him stealing out of the jar when we were seven. What do you get? Actions,” she says, tapping her fork against the table, “have consequences.”
“I taught you from the time you were young to behave,” says Lilly quietly. It’s as if the rest of us aren’t there, not even Abigala, not even Penny. “I didn’t raise a rebel.”
“And yet, you got one,” answers Ava. “Two, actually.”
Penny grins at their mother, but doesn’t contribute. His sister continues. “And what about my job? How have you explained my absence to them? Especially since, you know, even though I died I didn’t die, they surely must have heard about that. Or are you grooming Abigala to take over that position of my life as well?”
When neither Abigala nor Lilly answers, Ava snorts, throwing her fork down on the table. “I’m wounded, Mother, I always thought you needed me.”
“I never needed you,” her mother says quietly. “You were a blessing, Ava, that I didn’t ask for.”
They stare at each other for a moment. The room is deathly quiet, save for Penny’s fork scratching against his plate, and then Lilly says again, “Ava, eat something.”
She laughs, shakes her head, and takes her feet off the table. Then she stands up. Her mother hits the table in exasperation. “Where are you going?”
“The pool,” says Ava over her shoulder. And no one makes a move to stop her.
The rest of the meal is awkward. Ava is what we have in common in this house, and when Penny decides he’s done he stands and leaves the room without a word. Nua follows, and I glance at Abigala, then follow as well.
Penny goes into the living room, then onto the porch. I feel the salt of the air hit my face as I step out into the backyard. The ocean waves crash in the distance, but Penny’s moving towards his sister, who’s standing at the edge of the pool, as if about to jump in.
“Ava,” he says quietly as he reaches her, slipping an arm around her. She leans his head on his shoulder, but doesn’t say anything until I’m close behind her. She looks into the depths of the water, then says quietly, “You should’ve seen the first time he tried a flip.”
“His back was bright red for days,” I agree softly, and she manages a smile. Penny looks over at Nua, who mouths, Keol, at him, and he nods slightly. “Ava-”
“This is where he did it,” she whispers, sliding down to the ground. She lets her feet fall into the water, and Nua sits next to her like he was the first time I was with them all out at the pool. Penny sits next to her too. “Owen?”
She nods, leaning back on her hands. After a moment she says, “Oh.”
She stands again and takes Penny’s hand, leading us around the fountain towards the flower garden. “I made this for you.”
Penny grins, looking out over the garden. “Did you.”
I look back at the fountain, and Nua follows my eyes. Keol used to lay on the stones with his arm over his eyes, just listening to the water flow. I look up at it, squinting a bit in the light, and Nua slips his hand into mine. And then Ava takes my other hand, and I look at her. Her fingers are trembling and she looks pale, like she used to. “You should eat something.”
“Way ahead of you,” murmurs Penny, looking back towards the house. Bayan is here suddenly, and he puts a tray down on the stone wall of the fountain, with coffee and with Ava’s yogurt and blueberries. She looks at him, raising her eyebrows, and he doesn’t say anything. After a moment she sits, and eats.