Page 143 of Sexting the Pakhan

It’s always the library, even when it is not.

Shelves lean over me like walls. Books are scattered across the floor. The lights flicker above the aisles. Somewhere, glass breaks. Somewhere, a woman screams.

Then I see Zoya.

She’s crouched behind the returns desk, one hand pressed over her mouth, trying not to make a sound. Her eyes find mine across the room.

I try to reach her. My leg will not move.

I look down and see blood on the floor, but it’s not from my leg anymore. It spreads too fast, dark under the shelves, running between the fallen books.

“Zoya,” I call.

She shakes her head, as if she knows something I don’t.

Behind her, the library door opens.

I raise my gun, but my hand is empty.

The sound that follows is not a gunshot.

It’s a child crying. Then another.

Two children crying in the dark.

I look back at Zoya, and she’s holding them now. Two little girls with dark curls and scared faces, pressed against her chest while she tries to shield them with her body.

I try to stand.

I cannot.

The shelves fall one by one.

Zoya looks at me again. Her mouth moves. I can’t hear her.

Then she disappears behind smoke and paper and blood.

I wake with my hand already reaching for a weapon.

Pain catches me before I move too far. My thigh burns under the bandage, and my body reminds me quickly that standing is not an option. I suck in a breath and grip the edge of the couch until the room steadies around me.

Not the library. A small apartment. Morning light pushing through thin curtains. A cartoon blanket over my legs. A pink hair clip on the coffee table.

Zoya’s home.

I’m on her couch because she refused to let me sleep in the kitchen chair and refused even harder when I said I could leave. Karina pointed at my leg, called me “half-stapled,” and threatened to sit on my chest if I tried to move.

I look toward the hallway. It’s too quiet here.

Then something shifts near my feet.

I lower my eyes. One of the girls is standing beside the couch, staring at me.

The one in yellow from last night.

Mila.

She wears pink pajamas with moons on them and has one sock on, one sock missing. Her curls are wild from sleep. She holds a stuffed rabbit by one ear and looks at me with the serious concern of someone who has already decided she has authority here.