Everything was under control, except the alarm system shouting for attention, the noise piercing into her headache, except the cracked glass of the windshield. Raíssa pushed aside the slowly deflating airbag, head spinning, and the radio continued its lulling song, stopping only when the broadcast announced the hour: it’s a quarter past two, and we hope you are having a lovely night.
Raíssa fumbled for her phone inside her purse. The crash had not been that bad; the road was wet with rain, and her worn Ford Ka slipped down a small slope, hitting a trunk. The courtesy lights blinked above her head and the faint luminescence of the posts illuminated the road, but the sky was dark and covered by a dense mass of gray clouds.
No signal available, her phone said, frozen on a map. No signal available.
At least an emergency tow truck nearby answered her call, promising to be there in forty minutes. They were one hour away from the location Raíssa agreed to be in on Sunday, where she would meet a couple interested in hiring her as the photographer of their fortieth wedding anniversary. Why can’t they hire someone closer? her mother had questioned. You really always do what you’re told.
Raíssa tried to get out of the car, but failed. Her left foot sagged, tingling vaguely, like the faint presage of a forming injury, but she couldn’t tell what had happened to it. The crash had been too mild; the only blood it drew trickled from her forehead, a single drop caused by a tiny shard of glass or a splinter of wood that flew with the impact. But now her foot was failing to respond to simple orders like move, get up, walk, kick. Nothing. It was like she was carrying a dead piece of meat.
Raíssa dragged her leg along through the damp grass. She stopped for a moment, believing she had seen a rabbit’s foot stuck in the mud, its silver mount and white fur accompanied by the echo of a long-forgotten voice: I can’t believe you ruined my lucky charm . . . But no, the grass was empty save for a discarded pack of cigarettes.
Had an accident on the road, she typed to her mother, then the phone warned again: no signal available. Still, the tow truck would come, the car would be fixed, and that sprained ankle, broken toe or briefly stunned foot would no longer be an issue.
Nothing to worry about—she wouldn’t melt like sugar under the rain, and the quiet of the road at night was better than the city.
A honk took her out of her thoughts. Raíssa jumped back, stumbling, the bright headlights of a Kombi blazing at her. Inside were five or six people.
“Your car is in a rough shape,” said the driver, sticking his head out the open window. “You hurt?”
For a moment, like any other moment she met someone for the first time, Raíssa stood there, paralyzed by fear. The man’s face was blurred—every face was always blurred—colors dissolved with water on the canvas of skin. Under normal circumstances, if she focused, she would see the shape of a nose, the vague dots of the eyes, a line indicating a mouth. If she focused even harder, she would see the face entirely, from the growth pattern of eyebrow hairs to the openness of their pores, but then she would meet another person, and they would all look the same: faceless, homogeneous, indistinguishable.
“I think I sprained my ankle,” said Raíssa, eyes wandering at the other empty expressions inside the van.
The only woman inside slid the door open, revealing a round pregnant belly under a loose dress. Raíssa guessed she was looking at her, maybe encouragingly, as if saying: it’s okay. We’re not dangerous.
“We can give you a ride to my inn,” suggested the woman, and Raíssa was sure she was smiling for the tone of her voice. “It’s not safe for you to wait here all by yourself.”
Raíssa glanced at her car. The alarm had died out, but smoke escaped from it with a hiss.
“That would be great.”
Besides faces, Raíssa was also unable to memorize names, like she was trapped in some sort of personal curse. Once, as a child, she ran into the arms of a woman in a grocery store because she wore the same navy skirt as her mother, just like, only one year later, she got tricked by a classmate who pretended to be her younger sister. Raíssa tried to discriminate their vocal cadences, but she couldn’t find the difference between the high-pitched childishness of a seven-year-old and the five-year-old she interacted with every day.
When the pregnant lady introduced herself, Raíssa swore she would remember the name of her savior. Her name started with an L, and it might or not have ended with an A. It might have been Laura (likely because of its popularity), Larissa (she was young enough to be a Larissa), Laís (she was almost sure she knew another Laís), Lúcia, Luana, Luiza. She had long brown hair, straight or wavy, light skin, from white to tan, her same age (I’ll turn twenty-five in August, she claimed, a month before the girl is due). Under the entrance lights, she had a nose, no longer or shorter than any other, a mouth that could have been thin or fleshy, a pair of eyes with irises, pupils, sclerae.
What she did have was her visible baby bump, not as big as Raíssa first thought, but looking larger and pointier than its five months due to the owner’s thin figure. The men also introduced themselves: J., her husband and associate, who helped her manage the farm-turned-inn; her cousins A. and C., the head of the kitchen and the finances administrator, respectively; B., a friend of the couple; and her older brother, whose initial Raíssa failed to retain.
According to them, they had had a gender reveal party on the previous afternoon, and B. decided to stay for the weekend. Her brother and cousins helped take the gifts back to her mother’s house, since the inn was being refurbished, and they all ended up in that Kombi at midnight, exhausted but exhilarated.
“What about you?” asked Laura, or Lúcia, or Lídia. She was helped out of the vehicle by her husband, and her brother said he would make mate tea for everyone.
“I was hired by a couple to photograph their anniversary, but I don’t even know how I’ll get there now.” Raíssa tried to get up, but her left foot was glued to the floor. The tingling faded, replaced by stings of pain, and it refused to move, no matter how much she tried. “I think I’m hurt.”
“Where?” Laís or Luana hurried to aid her, hooking her arm to hers. Raíssa almost winced, one side of her sore and immobile, trapped inside the car, the other held tight by someone else. When she looked down at her injured foot, the pregnant woman’s eyes grew, and she offered a carefully hand. “Do you think you might have broken it?”
“I probably sprained something,” said Raíssa, then added with a little smile: “You’re going to be a great mom.”
Luzia or Laura laughed, the sound of it amiable and crystal clear, reverberating between her throat and chest. It must have been a pretty laugh, if there was such a thing; the sound of air against teeth made Raíssa wince.
“You have a really particular smile,” said Luciana or Luna. She tapped her own incisors, red nail against enamel. “Just like a rabbit.”
Raíssa stopped smiling. The hand holding her purse stood on her side, knuckles going white, and the other covered her lips, hiding her ugly front teeth. They had been bigger in the past, bunny-like, for anyone to see and point and mock. How big, she didn’t know, as to her they were just as big as other teeth, no matter how long she looked at herself in the mirror, trying to measure that obvious imperfection, invisible to her but not to others.
Those are the teeth I gave you, her mother used to say when she cried about it as a teenager. Try to be a little grateful.
Years later, Raíssa filed them, and she couldn’t tell if it helped or not. In adulthood, no one else mentioned their rabbity look, except for a boyfriend who noticed they had two little white spots on them, like beauty marks, and another who claimed they had a strange texture, like sandpaper. Careful when you suck my dick, he joked, and Raíssa never called him again.
“La,” muttered J., touching his wife’s shoulder. Raíssa looked at him, at the sprinkled raindrops on his short hair, thinking he reminded her of someone. She mouthed a quick thank you, but J. avoided her eyes. Before Laura or Larissa or Laís could finish explaining how she meant that in a good way, the other men called from the kitchen:
“The tea is ready.”
Everyone used to call her Bunny back in school. Raíssa didn’t mind, at first; it was not that hurtful, as far as nicknames go, and she liked the sound of it. The boy who sat in front of her, a Júlio or João or Jaime or some other name, used to playfully pick on her: you have such a bunny smile that, when you laugh, your nose moves like a little snout.
Things had been nice, once.
“Morning,” said a man, and Raíssa wasn’t sure which of the five he was. The word came distorted from his non-existent lips, and she blinked, trying to discern his blurred face. “Are you feeling better?”
Raíssa didn’t remember getting in bed, let alone sleeping. Her last memories were of the strong smell of yerba mate taking over the kitchen. Some of the men preferred to drink from a bottle of iced tea they took from one of the fridges, amber in color, almost brown. Then, the rest was lost: she took the calabash gourd in her hands, mixed the leaves with the silver bomba, mimicking the hosts, sipping from the straw. She remembered correctly that the bitter liquid burned her mouth—her tongue was still tender—but nothing after that.
Raíssa tried to rub her eyes, but her hands were as heavy as sacks of sand. With effort, she realized she was in one of the rooms of the inn, sunlight illuminating the window through an embroidered white curtain, a rufous-bellied thrush singing outside, the leaves and flowers of a blooming yellow ipê casting shadows on the floor.
“I don’t think I’m feeling well . . . ” Raíssa managed to say, dizzy and confused with her immobile limbs and her phantom pain. Her leg, was it because of her leg? Her left foot was nestled over a pile of several pillows, all soft and feathery, a princess protected from a hidden pea.
“You passed out yesterday,” said the man, whom she supposed was J., for the wedding band on his ring finger. He arranged the curtains, opened the windows, and took a tray to her bed. “You’ll feel stronger after breakfast.”
Raíssa looked around. Where was her purse, her phone, her car? Did the tow truck remove her car? She needed to call her mother, her sister, her prospective employers, she needed to get up and get out of there. Yet she couldn’t; the mattress was too pleasant, the pristine white sheets too comforting, and her body refused to tense up and run.
“Here,” said J. He sat on the corner of her bed, his knee poking her thigh. He took a piece of sweet cornmeal cake, still warm from the oven, and took it to her mouth. “It will do you good.”
J. looked at her intently, and she tried to remind herself that she was weak, sick, that she might have hit her head without noticing. They’re helping me, thought Raíssa, controlling the always present instinct of running: the window, the door, dashing furiously through the corridor, jumping to the grass, calling any kind of help. She could break into their cars, she could get a knife from the kitchen, or the fork he was holding, or . . .
Raíssa opened her mouth, accepting it, and crumbs of hot cake slipped from the corners of her lips. Some fell inside her cleavage, finding their way into her bra, fluffy yellow ants between her breasts. J. took one of the crumbs from her blouse in what he must have intended as kindness, but the touch of his square fingers froze her. It was the kick of adrenaline she needed: Raíssa was able to sit down, stiff, grabbing the plate and pulling it to herself.
“I was just trying to help.” J. stood up. “If you need something, call us. I don’t think you’ll be able to get up with that foot of yours like that.”
The farm was surrounded by pink ipês; it’s global warming, said teacher, stretching spring for longer and longer. Raíssa remembered well the trees, sprinkling the fields with color, their rosy flowers adorning every window of the farm, creating a trail of petals in front of the main door. The eight days of the trip would celebrate the last year of middle school, and her mother had spent the past nine months paying for it: a hundred reais deposits along with the monthly fee. It’s such a special moment of your life, she had insisted. You’ll thank me when you’re older.
The school had planned to take them to a beach in the Brazilian Northeast, but many families complained that almost two weeks on the other side of the country was too much time without parental supervision. They’re fourteen, for god’s sake. The other options were just as divisive: the most conservative parents didn’t want to send “literal children” to a beach resort in Angra dos Reis; Florianópolis was discarded after someone found out there was a teen overdose in the same hotel; Bariloche was rejected because they barely know Portuguese, let alone Spanish!
The school settled for a countryside inn equipped with pools, hiking guides, zip-lines and parties every night. There were two nearby waterfalls, and the students were surprisingly free—too free, at times.
“Come,” said Laís or Laura or Lourdes when she entered the room. Her two cousins, with their almost identical complexion, hair color and eyes, could have been twins. “Let the boys lift you up.”
Raíssa heard a low moan coming from her own throat.
“Don’t be like this,” said Luana or Luciana, gently pulling her by the shoulders. A. took her leg from the mountain of pillows like it was a sacred object, and only then Raíssa realized that her foot covered in purple bruises. “We called a doctor and you’ll feel good soon.”
C. lifted her in the air like she was no heavier than a child, going quickly from princess to bride. Raíssa punched his chest meekly, so weak the man didn’t even realize she was trying to struggle.
“No . . . ” Raíssa complained, her voice coming in soft, dry sobs. She looked at her bare legs, exposed under a pair of white shorts she didn’t remember wearing or owning, but her vision blurred again as they took her to the bathroom. “No, let me . . . ”
“Oh, I know you’re not feeling good, bunny,” continued Laura or Lídia, stroking her arm. “It’s the injury. The injury made you dizzy, very dizzy, remember?”
Raíssa closed her eyes. Struggling required too much energy; it was simpler to believe them, lulled by the movement of their steps, every word they said fading into background noise. Just like she had felt ten years ago: suspended, groggy, with scrambled memories that had no beginning or end.
The smell of petrichor, rich and pungent, the stripes of brown soil on her cheeks and forehead, the metallic, salty taste. Raíssa blinked; she was there. She blinked; she was here, taking a bath. The shower dripped on her back, the boys held her by the wrists, soap foam dribbled down the tiles like saliva.
“Call me if you need me,” said Larissa or Laís or Lisa. She closed the bathroom door , and Raíssa found herself alone again.
She was sitting on the floor, naked, a statue in the middle of a pool of tepid water. Her left leg was extended and straight, her long black curls glued to her shoulders and chest. Raíssa breathed in, trying to regain control of her body, and she felt her finger tingling. Why, she had groaned while Luzia or Leila removed her shirt and her bra. Why are you doing this to me?
Because you’re sick, bunny, the other woman had said. You can’t move right now, remember?
Raíssa closed a few fingers, a spasm electrifying her arm. Her foot was dark and sore, and the bubbles of soap disappeared. Drawing another sharp breath, she was able to lift an arm and take the hair off her face. A sting of pain took her underbelly, stabbing each of her back dimples.
For a moment, she stared at the running water, first clear, then pink. The blood twirled, twisting, fading and vanishing into the drain. Raíssa stood up; the blood made her want to throw up. I guess even whores can bleed, said above her, a disembodied, faceless voice followed by a kick. Raíssa had curled into a fetal position, trying to protect herself. The shoe slammed her one more time, right between the legs.
I’m here, Raíssa told herself. This isn’t happening. Not now.
But what was happening?
Raíssa limped toward the clothes, shakily searching for a pad. She found her underwear on the floor, along with a shirt and shorts she didn’t recognize, both white. Another piercing feeling needled her ovaries, and she held onto the sink. A fat red drop fell on the rug. The scarlet circle spread on the terrycloth of the towel, and she scrambled the bathroom for paper.
Why, Raíssa had asked then, her face stained with ugly tears. She was weak; she had always been weak. Running was the only thing she ever did well, whether she was running from her parents, from her responsibilities, from a job, from a partner or from her ex-classmates. I trusted you.
But she never received an answer.
Raíssa sat on the toilet. A blood clot laid on the paper tissue, soft, viscous and dark red. A little string of raw meat; no, not meat, the chopped piece of a person-to-be; she was fourteen, twenty-four, fourteen, twenty-four, nineteen and bleeding to almost death. It was a regular period triggered by stress—it was flesh, removed unwillingly and unknowingly, expelled from inside of her, created against her wishes in the finest natural torture, mourned too late—it was endometriosis, treated as soon as she was diagnosed.
The blood clot stared back at her.
“Raíssa, bunny?” Luciana or Laura called from outside. “Are you okay?”
Back then, there was a girl among the six people surrounding her. They didn’t interact, most of the time: the girl took on the role of sentinel, watching for people who could find what they were doing, and she was the one to lay out the trap. Bunny, she had said on the second party of the trip. She took her by the hand, offered a glass of coke. Can we talk?
Raíssa had followed, a rabbit walking into a wolf’s mouth, trusting this girl, or at least that the place they were in was safe enough. Hours later, the same girl kicked her and pulled her by the hair. If I had the strength, I would smash your stupid rabbit face, the girl spat on her cheek. But she (what was her name, again?) didn’t, so she did what she could: she kicked her again on the stomach, and Raíssa coughed while she called back one of the boys. If you wanna keep going, you better do it fast, or someone will find out.
“I don’t know,” admitted Raíssa. If she was fine, she would climb out of the small window of the bathroom and run into the woods. Run under the beautiful branches of ipê, their yellow petals fluttering around her, and fall on the same grass she had been one day. The grass where she begged and cried and gave up, pathetic and submissive thing that she always was. “Do you have a pad?”
The door opened again, and Laís or Lucia walked in.
“Luckily, yes,” said Laura or Luana, taking a maxipad from one of the drawers. She helped her with the rest of the clothes, then studied Raíssa’s face. “Do you want a hot water bottle? Ibuprofen?”
Raíssa blinked, and for a moment she saw the girl, with her nothing face, a hole for a mouth, eyes painted over endless skin. She closed her eyes instinctively when the woman reached for her cheek, bracing herself for another hit.
“I’m not going to hit you, silly,” said Luciana or Lídia. “We don’t want you to feel any pain.”
The vague murmur of a conversation woke her up. Raíssa didn’t remember the moment they carried her back to the bed, tucking her between the feather pillows and the white blankets, but she knew she shouldn’t be there. The cramps had been numbed by the hot water bottle she was cradling against her stomach, and she remained with her eyes closed, trying to listen as they spoke.
“We have to do it,” said Laís or Luzia, her voice acquiring a religious fervor. “Or we’ll be like this for the rest of our lives.”
“And what if nothing changes?”
“You want our daughter to die?”
A third voice chimed in:
“My sister’s right. We can’t keep going like this.”
“I’ll do it then,” said another man, whom she guessed was their friend B. His voice reminded her of someone, like a relative she didn’t see in many years. “She always fell for what I said.”
Raíssa moved her thumb, her index, middle, ring and little fingers, opening and closing her fist. Slowly, she regained control of her limbs: the other hand, the arms, the knees and even the feet.
“We can’t just force her.” The other woman’s voice was urgent and frenzied, and Raíssa opened one eye to see her pregnant figure, standing in the corridor outside of the room. “She has do it willingly.”
“La,” J. insisted, “this is too much. We shouldn’t…”
“Too much? We lost our luck that week,” said Laís or Laura, pulling her husband by the collar of his shirt. “If it wasn’t for you, my parents would still be here. We wouldn’t have closed the inn. Our daughter…”
J. removed her hands. “Fine, then. It’s my fault. Let’s put an end to it.”
Raíssa covered herself with the blanket, eyes wide open under a white layer of bedding. Six people, five men, one woman. A farm-like inn surrounded by ipês. A brother and a sister, two cousins, two friends. I need to leave, she thought wildly. I need to leave now.
She should have known. She should have known when she changed schools, she should have known when she refused to memorize the names and surnames of those six people, when she didn’t even bother writing them over and over again on her notebooks, cellphone, computer, hands. She knew she wouldn’t remember them, soon, that their faces would fade into a peaceful oblivion and, one day, she would only know them as that guy, or that girl, or those other guys she didn’t even know until they introduced themselves by force.
If she was smart, she would have found better ways to avoid them. Raíssa believed she did when she gave up on college, taking pictures of wedding anniversaries so she never had a client close to her age range. But no, she should have done more—she should have cut their faces from the pictures of the trip and glued them to the wall, ominous reminders of what she could not forget.
But she forgot.
And here she was, back into their trap.
“Bunny?” asked B. from the door. “Are you sleeping?”
Raíssa wiped the tears that had pooled in her eyes, fingers kneading her cheeks into a polite, friendly mask.
“I just woke up.”
“We’re worried about your foot.” B. sat by her side, and Raíssa punished herself again. If she had paid enough attention, she would have noticed the clues: how this man, this man in particular, was so hard to distinguish from J., with their identical body types, their similarly pitched voices, their color palettes. Looking closely, she was able to recall what she loved about him: his piano hands, the way he gestured when he spoke, his woody cologne. “Can I take a look at it?”
Can you meet me there? Raíssa remembered the words, breathed between one kiss and the others, the words of her demise. He knew how she struggled to recognize faces—everybody knew—and he even told her the color of the clothes he would be wearing, guiding her hand to trace the embroidered logo of the shirt, the button and zipper of his pants, the bulkiness of his waterproof hiking shoes.
“Yes,” said Raíssa, considering her situation. It would be no good to fight. It was never good to fight. “Do you think I broke it . . . ?”
B. pulled down the blanket, watching as it slipped down her leg, revealing the thigh under the shorts, the knee, the ankle. Her left foot was still elevated with that same care and devotion reserved to a sacrifice about to be slaughtered.
Raíssa yelped when he squeezed her bruised toe.
“Come on, Bunny, don’t play stupid,” said B. She tried to remember what his name really was: Bernardo, Bruno, Breno, Benício. Or was B. his surname? “You know where this is going, don’t you?”
Bandeira, Barros, Bastos, Bueno . . . The mental list calmed her down, and she nodded, feeling her foot trembling under his hand. It didn’t hurt as much as before before. Maybe she could even stand up on her own.
“Why?” Raíssa asked honestly. “Why are you doing this to me again?”
B. glared at her, his eyes taking some form, a circle within a circle, green or brown around black, white with tiny little red veins. A pale tear duct. Eyelashes. A double lid. Then, nothing again.
“That time, you took something from us,” said B. “We need to take it back.”
The truth was, she already knew why. Raíssa had asked again and again the same question—why? Why me? Why are you doing this to me?—but that was the one thing she had to admit: they offered an answer, but not the one she was looking for. Because you’re too easy, B. had said when she realized the boy over her was not him. I knew you would fuck him too. J. couldn’t say a thing, wearing that shirt, and those pants, and those hiking shoes. We were friends, Raíssa tried to argue with the classmate who sat in front of her and who was always so funny, so nice.
Why? Because you’re a fucking whore, L. simply said, looking at her from above. And, when the boys were not listening, L. glanced at J. I want you to suffer because you knew I liked him too. Why? Raíssa didn’t even know the other three. Because who would say no to fucking some girl for free?
“It’s been ten years, but you still look the same.” The woman in front of her undressed from the previous kindness, her tone turning dry and cold. “Do you remember when you held onto me?”
Raíssa was taken aback by the question. Not “do you remember what we did?”, not “do you remember how I laughed when you begged for my help?”, not “do you remember when you passed out and we thought we had killed you with that hit on the head?” Again, they had no answer to her most pressing questions, only selfishness.
She closed her eyes.
Yes, she remembered. Please, Laís, she had whimpered, her voice a gurgling sound, crawling on the mud of the farm. No one could listen to her pleas because of the music on the other side. It was the last night before the trip ended, and she couldn’t take it anymore. She felt disgusting, disfigured; her black eye had swollen to twice its original size; her tongue burned from all the times she threw up.
Please, please, you said we were friends. Raíssa had grabbed her by the loops of her low-rise jeans, grasping the rabbit’s foot hooked in there. Her hand dirtied it, a slab of brown over the white fur, and the weight of her split the foot from its silver case. The amulet rolled on the ground, each drop of rain on mud dirtying it more. Please, I’ll be good, Laís, I’ll never do anything bad again . . .
Then, the kicks. Laís, yes, her name was Laís. Laís screeched in anger, trying to retrieve the rabbit’s foot, but the more her manicured hands dug into the mud, the more the mud soaked the filthy foot. She kicked Raíssa again. My grandmother gave me that, Laís had said, furious. Look what you did to it.
“I remember.”
“Then you get it, don’t you?” Laís rubbed Raíssa’s left leg, then nodded to one of the men. “It’s perfect, Bunny. If I have yours, we will never bother you again. You just have to say yes.”
Raíssa looked at J., who avoided her face; at B., waiting by the side of the bed. Then, she made up her mind.
“It’s only fair, isn’t it?” Raíssa said, and all of them looked at her with hungry eyes. “There’s only one thing—I don’t want to feel pain.”
“Then let’s take her to the kitchen,” hummed Laís, back to her gentle mood. She petted Raíssa’s forehead, removing the strands of black hair from it, and gestured for her husband to pick her up. J. didn’t move, staggered, mouth slack, and B. took the lead.
He lifted her from the bed, and she leaned against his chest, closing his eyes. Raíssa heard his racing heart, the palpitations under his rib cage, the smell of his woody cologne against her cheek.
“I’ll pick the painkillers.” J. hurried down the steps, and Raíssa peered at his shadow with the corner of her half-closed lids. A forgotten cellphone laid on the entrance, next to the main door, over a familiar green purse, left there like a drunk person had just arrived home. He returned with a blister pack, a bottle of gin, a tourniquet. “I can call the others to buy stronger anesthetics when they come back.”
“This will do,” said Raíssa. She smiled at him, and he turned his face away. “Thank you.”
B. left her on the wide wooden table of the kitchen, over a tablecloth as white as her clothes. Next to it was a single-bit ax, presumably the one they used to shape the trees outside, and a bottle of antiseptic. Raíssa sat in the middle, and took a couple of pills with three gulps of gin.
“Oh, Bunny.” Laís rubbed her own belly affectionately. “You know what? I’ll name my daughter after you. You can even be her godmother, what do you think of it? When this is over, all those bad times will stay in the past, and we can all be friends again. More than friends—family.”
“Yeah, that would be great.” Raíssa smiled at her too, her toothy grin appearing under her upper lip. “Can I go to the bathroom first?”
“I can take you,” offered J., extending his arms, but Raíssa shook her head.
“I’ll be back soon.” She glanced at Laís, who gave her an understanding nod. “I just need to . . . You know. Clean myself.”
“Take your time.”
Raíssa limped toward the corridor. Her left foot never hit the ground in front of them. She turned right on a corridor, and opened and closed the door of the bathroom. She touched the floor with her toes, then the heels, then the entire sole. It didn’t hurt that bad anymore.
Foot by foot, she went to the entrance to retrieve her phone and purse. Raíssa typed an emergency text, then two, then three: her mother, her sister, a friend. She looked back. They were still in the kitchen, and she could hear them talking, laughing, relaxing. She stared at the storm brewing above their heads.
Like a rabbit, she had always been fast. And, who knew? Maybe she would even find a lucky charm, lost in the grass.
Originally published in A Study in Ugliness & Outras Histórias (a collection).
