Three of Us

The rain hadn't stopped for two days, and by the second afternoon we had run out of things to fight about.

Neenu was on the window seat with her knees drawn up, reading the same page of her book for the fourth time. I could tell because her eyes weren't moving. Navya sat cross-legged on the floor with a deck of cards she didn't know how to play, shuffling them into crooked piles and then stacking them again. And I was lying on my back on the couch, staring at the water stain on the ceiling that looked like a duck if you squinted, and I had squinted so many times it just looked like a stain now.

Three sisters. Two days. One house that creaked at night like it was trying to tell us something.

"Truth or dare," I said.

Neenu's book lowered an inch. "No."

"I didn't ask you yet."

"You were about to."

Navya looked up from her cards, and her whole face changed, the way it does when someone offers her something sweet. She has the most honest face I've ever seen on a person. Every thought she has just walks right across it. "I'll play," she said.

"Navya, you don't even know what it is," Neenu said.

"I know it's a game. Games are fun."

"It's not that kind of game."

"Then what kind is it?"

Neenu opened her mouth and closed it. She does that a lot. She has a whole library in her head and can't get the books off the shelf when it matters.

I sat up. The rain tapped the windows, steady, patient, like it had all the time in the world. "It's the kind where you tell the truth or you do something stupid. That's it. That's the whole game."

Navya's eyes went wide. "I'm very good at telling the truth."

"I know you are." I got off the couch and sat down on the floor across from her. The rug was old and scratchy under my legs. "That's the problem. You're too good at it. Where's the fun in playing against someone who can't lie?"

"I can lie," she said, and then her cheeks went pink, because she can't, and she knew I knew it.

Neenu closed her book. That was the first victory of the day.

"Fine," she said, in that soft voice she uses when she's already decided she's lost. "One round. Then I'm going back to my book."

"One round," I agreed.

I didn't mean it. She knew I didn't mean it. But she came down off the window seat anyway and sat on the edge of the rug with her braid pulled over her shoulder, twisting the tail of it around her finger. Her sweater was the color of a robin's egg. She looked like she wanted the floor to open up and take her.

I shuffled Navya's crooked cards and dealt them out face down. We didn't need cards. But it gave our hands something to do, and hands are the worst part of a game like this. They give you away.

"Rules," I said. "You pick truth, you answer. No dodging. You pick dare, you do it. No whining. And whatever happens in this room stays in this room."

"Obviously," Neenu said.

"Say it."

"Stays in this room."

"Navya?"

"Stays in this room," she said, solemn as a prayer.

Thunder rolled somewhere far off, and the rain got heavier, drumming on the roof, and the house settled into itself. We were alone. Our parents wouldn't be back until Monday. Nobody was coming. That's the part I keep coming back to when I think about how it started. Nobody was coming, and we all knew it, and the knowing changed something in the air.

"Oldest first," I said. "That's me."

Navya clapped. Neenu twisted her braid tighter.

"Truth," I said.

Neenu blinked. "You're supposed to let us ask."

"I'm setting the tone. Truth." I leaned back on my hands and looked at the ceiling duck. "When I was sixteen I kissed a girl at the lake behind the school and never told either of you."

The silence that followed had a texture. Thick. Woolen.

Navya's mouth opened into a small O. Neenu went very still, and her eyes, those big brown eyes that usually run away from everything, stayed on me. Fixed. Like she was reading a page she hadn't known was in the book.

"Who?" Neenu said.

"That's a second question. You get one per turn." I smiled, and I felt the smile do something to my face I didn't entirely control. "Your turn, little sister."

Navya grabbed her card and flipped it over without looking at it. "Truth!"

"Of course truth."

"I like truth."

"You've never picked anything else in your life."

"Truth is interesting," she said, and she meant it, and that's the thing about Navya. She'll hand you her whole heart if you ask nicely, and she won't even check first to see if you're going to drop it.

Neenu looked at me. I looked at Neenu. The rain kept on.

"Alright," I said. "Truth. Have you ever wanted to kiss someone?"

Navya didn't blush. That's what got me. She just went quiet and thoughtful, her small hands clasped in her lap, and she tilted her head like she was listening to a song only she could hear.

"Yes," she said.

Neenu's braid slipped out of her fingers.

"Who?" I asked, even though it wasn't my turn, even though you're not supposed to do that.

Navya shook her head. "That's a second question. You said one per turn."

She smiled at me, and it was the first time I'd ever seen her use my own rule against me, and I felt something turn over in my chest, slow and warm, like a key in a lock I hadn't known was there.

Neenu stood up. "I'm getting water."

"Scared?" I said.

"Thirsty." She walked to the kitchen, and I watched her go, the long skirt swishing around her ankles, her shoulders hunched the way they always are, and I thought about the lake and the girl and the way the water had been cold and the girl's mouth had been warm, and I thought about how I'd never told anyone until now, and how it hadn't felt like a confession. It had felt like setting something down.

When Neenu came back she had three glasses of water on a tray and she set it on the rug between us like a peace offering. She sat down closer this time. Her knee almost touched mine.

"I'll go," she said quietly. "Truth."

Navya and I looked at each other.

And the rain came down, and the house held its breath, and I understood, with a clarity that felt like cold water on the back of the neck, that the game had already started without us. It had started the moment I said the words out loud. It had started the moment Navya didn't blush.

I just didn't know yet what it was going to cost us.