A Shrine to an Unknown God

VOID

"SHE'S A MORNING PERSON," Dahlia offers. "Maybe she's already up for the day. Her parents already are," she adds. "They leave for work real early. Maybe she got up with them."

Except in my mind I'm seeing long fangs snapping and pythons constricting around throats and the gods who fight them, gods so powerful you can't look directly at them, gods so powerful even millions of miles away they can still boil your skin raw, gods who have razed cities with the flick of a wrist and sent millions to their deaths with the release of a single arrow.

Gods who would not think twice about killing Marisol Moon.

The door opens, Jaden appearing for the second time that morning, just as ruffled-looking. "Marisol, would you shut up—" the words tumble out of his mouth. "What are you—?"

I'm on him in an instant.

I grab his wrists, digging my fingers into his skin so hard he yelps. Who cares if I seem frantic or panicked? I am. Who cares if I scare him, who cares if I hurt him? Marisol could be dead or dying. That's all that I care about. Every second I spend caring about something other than her is a second I can't afford to lose.

"Where is she?"

"What!?"

He tries to rip his arms back, his eyes darting, afraid, but I'm stronger than him, so much stronger.

"Your sister. Where is she?"

"I don't know!" he admits, still trying to tug himself away from me. "I don't know, man, okay? Just let me go, Jesus—!"

"Antigone!" Dahlia grabs onto my shoulders, trying to pull me away from him. "Let him go! You're hurting him!"

"He's just a little kid!" Ezra adds, grabbing onto my arm.

"Tell me," I insist, because he knows, he knows, this little fucker's got to know. "Or I'll tell your mom you were on Fortune." That site that Marisol caught him on when I first met him. The one that sent him into such a panic when he thought his mom would know he'd been on it.

"The fuck is Fortune?" asks Dahlia.

"4chan?" Ezra suggests.

"And pornography," I add. "I'll tell her you were watching so. Much. Porn." I don't get the taboo around pornography that all you prudish Americans have, but the word—and the threat of being exposed for watching it, although I have no idea whether he does or doesn't—turns his face completely red.

"That's no fair!" he whines. "You can't just make up fake threats against me. Our economy would collapse."

"Antigone, leave him alone," Ezra begs, pulling at my arm, though he's practically just a paperweight.

"Does that really matter, though? If it is or isn't real? The only thing that'll matter is which one of us she believes." I tighten my grip. He flinches. "Tell me where your sister is. Because if you don't, and something's happened to her—I'm going to kick your scrawny little ass."

"Antigone!" Dahlia scolds.

"He's a child!" Ezra insists.

I would never "kick his scrawny little ass," which is something that Marisol's threatened to do to Ezra on multiple occasions, always joking. Jaden's innocent, and mortal, and, like Ezra said, a child. Besides, I would never use violence unless I had to. But he doesn't know that.

Except—the threat of getting his ass beat doesn't seem to faze him. Instead, he seems to soften at the possibility that Marisol might be in danger.

"What would—" he stops, recomposes himself. Tears blink in the corners of his eyes. "What would happen to her? Is she in danger or something? Is it the mob?"

Jaden Moon is twelve-years-old and has already lost one of his two siblings this summer. Kennedy's death is far too fresh for me to be making threats like that. I see it all play out in his head: another black tux, another funeral, another wake, all things I've come to recognize with the western mourning process from movies and TV shows. Another empty bedroom.

No wonder he's the way that he is.

"She might be." My grip softens as his expression does the same to my heart. "I don't know yet, Jaden, I'm sorry."

"Look, I have no idea where she is. I swear. I thought she was in here. But she's been getting nightmares lately. Sometimes, when she can't sleep, I'll hear her go to Kennedy's old room. I don't know if she feels safe there, or closer to him, or what."

"Where is Kennedy's room?" I ask.

"Down the hall."

I rush out of the room, Ezra at my heels. I turn to look behind me and watch Dahlia hug Jaden tightly against her, her face clenched like a mother embracing her son. As they part ways, she apologizes to him and rubs his cheek. Then she joins us out in the hall.

"First door on the left," she says.

Inside, the lights are off, and with the sun still not-yet-risen and the moon already set there's nothing but darkness seeping in through the half-shut blinds. I can see well enough by the light of something that looks like a phone screen, but isn't.

Marisol is curled into a ball in the corner of her bed, the flannel blankets all bunched up around her. I can't see much more in the room than the blankets and her brown skin, lit blue by the screen held over her head.

She drops the thing beside her and starts sobbing as Dahlia flicks the lights on.

"I just—I miss him so much," she whimpers.

She's got herself up in a blanket burrito that she struggles to get out of. So Ezra and Dahlia surround her on either side, wrapping their arms around her, and I nestle myself up against her back, resting my head on her shoulder. We need no discussion to plan this. It just kind of happens, all of us intuitively knowing that Marisol needs us to be here for her.

"Shh, baby, I know, it's okay," Dahlia says as she rocks her from side, effectively rocking Ezra and I as well. "It's hard, isn't it?"

"I just—I feel so—like there's a void inside of me or something. And it opened up when he died, and there's all this—all this ice, and any second it's going to shatter and—I've been having these nightmares lately. Of the crash. Of him dying. I can't stop reliving it. It's on constant replay in my brain. I can't eat, I can't sleep, I can't do anything without seeing that stupid fucking plane, and his face as—and last night. Last night, I just kept getting this awful feeling in my chest. Like I did before the crash, like something was going to happen. Like someone I loved was going to die." She paused to take a breath. "I haven't slept properly in two weeks."

"Were you playing Nintendogs?" Ezra asks, nudging the small, hot pink, phone-like device that Marisol had been using when we came in.

She starts to laugh between her sobs, which makes her hiccup. "Yes! It's all I have to do anymore, since my parents took my phone and computer away and locked me inside this house! And—me and Kennedy, we always used to play it together, on his DS before I got my own. And he'd never—he never let me do anything, he only ever let me bathe the dogs. So I'd give them such long baths that the game would have to stage an intervention."

"I remember that." Dahlia strokes her hair as Marisol leans against her chest. "And whenever he let me play, he let me do whatever I wanted. God, you used to get so pissed at him."

Listening to them talk about somebody I never got to meet and never will, I feel more than out of place—I feel like I'm intruding. But I don't care. I'm just glad to know that Marisol is okay and that I can be here for her now, that we all can.

Marisol sighs, and she and Dahlia sit there for a moment in silence, stroking each other's hair, sniffling. Ezra and I awkwardly lean against them. Then Marisol fumbles out of the blanket and climbs to her feet.

"I need to show you guys something I found."