Open Window

The window was open because Ariane opened it. That's the first thing I remember, before the shame, before the sounds I made that I couldn't take back. The screen was missing. It had been missing for weeks, a square of torn mesh folded on the floor beside the bed, and I'd meant to tell Tita Linda about it, but I never did. There's a lot I never did.

Ariane pulled me up the stairs. Her hand was cold and dry, the grip of someone who'd been waiting all afternoon for the house to go quiet. Tita Linda had fallen asleep in her chair again, the one with the floral cushion, her mouth open, the telenovela still running on the television. The volume was low enough that you could hear the ceiling fan clicking. Click. Click. Click. Every rotation sounded like something being counted.

"Come on," Ariane whispered. "She won't wake up. She never wakes up."

I followed. I always followed. That's the thing I keep coming back to when I lie in bed at night and the ceiling fan is clicking and I can't stop my brain from replaying it. I was fifteen. She was seventeen. She knew things I didn't know, and she wore them like jewelry, like something you could see from across the room and want.

The second floor of Tita Linda's house was really just one big room and a bathroom. The stairs creaked on the fourth step and the ninth step, and Ariane knew to skip the fourth. She stepped over it like it was a puddle. I remember thinking, she's done this before. She's brought someone else up here.

The room smelled like mothballs and old paper. There was a bed with a bare mattress, no sheets, and a wooden dresser with one drawer that didn't close all the way. Ariane sat on the edge of the mattress and patted the space beside her. The window was behind her, a dark rectangle with the night pressing in. I could hear a tricycle passing on the street, the engine sputtering like a cough that wouldn't clear.

"Sit," she said.

I sat.

She leaned in close. Her breath was warm and smelled like the mango she'd eaten earlier, the one she'd cut with a knife she licked clean. Her hair brushed my cheek. I held myself very still, the way you do when a moth lands on your arm and you don't want to scare it off but you also don't want it there.

"Gusto kong marinig ka, Rain," she whispered. Her lips touched my ear when she said my name. "Kahit alam kong may makakarinig."

I didn't understand at first. Or maybe I did, and I just didn't want to. She pulled back and looked at me with those eyes that always seemed to be laughing at something I couldn't see. Then her hand was on my knee, then on my thigh, then somewhere else, and I made a sound. A small one. Like a hiccup. Like something escaping.

Ariane laughed. Not a mean laugh. That's what I told myself later, when I was alone, when I couldn't sleep. It wasn't a mean laugh. It was a delighted laugh, the kind you make when you find money in an old jacket, when something surprises you in a good way. But it didn't feel good. It felt like being watched.

She did it again, and the sound I made was louder. I tried to swallow it. I bit my lip until I tasted copper. But she knew what she was doing. She'd had practice. The laugh came again, brighter this time, and she turned her head toward the open window, and I understood.

The neighbors. The house next door was close enough that you could pass things between the windows if you leaned out far enough. There was an old man who lived there with his daughter, and sometimes I'd see him on his balcony at night, smoking, the orange tip of his cigarette moving in the dark like a firefly that couldn't find its way out. He was there now. I couldn't see him, but I knew. The cigarette smell drifted in, mixed with the mothballs and the mango and Ariane's shampoo.

"Louder," she whispered. Her hand moved faster. "Let them hear you."

I shook my head. My throat was closing up. I wanted to push her away, but my arms felt like they belonged to someone else, someone who was watching from the doorway, someone who couldn't move. The ceiling fan downstairs was still clicking. Click. Click. Click. Tita Linda was still asleep. The telenovela was still playing. The world was still going, and I was making sounds I couldn't stop.

Ariane laughed again. She was enjoying this. Not the way I thought she would, not the way I'd imagined when I used to think about her at night, alone in my own bed. This was different. This was a performance. I was the puppet, and she was the one pulling the strings, and the audience was somewhere out there in the dark, listening.

I closed my eyes. I tried to go somewhere else. I tried to be on the beach in my hometown, the one with the black sand, where my father used to take me before he left. The waves there were loud. They drowned everything out. But I could still hear Ariane's laugh. I could still hear my own voice, high and thin, like a bird being stepped on.

When it was over, she pulled her hand away and wiped it on the bare mattress. She stood up and stretched, her arms over her head, her shirt riding up to show the small of her back. She looked out the window and waved. Just a little wave, casual, like she was greeting a friend across the street.

"Good night," she called out, soft and sweet. Then she turned to me. "You should go down first. Tita might wake up."

I couldn't move. My legs were shaking. I was still sitting on the edge of the mattress, and I could feel the wet spot beneath me, and I could feel the shame settling into my skin like a stain that wouldn't wash out.

"Rain," she said. Her voice was different now. Flat. Bored. "Go."

I went. I skipped the fourth step and the ninth step. I walked past Tita Linda, still asleep, still open-mouthed, still dreaming whatever old women dream about. I went to my room and closed the door and lay on my bed and stared at the ceiling.

The fan in my room was clicking too. Click. Click. Click. I counted the rotations until I lost count. Then I started over.

I could still smell her shampoo on my skin. I could still hear her laugh. And somewhere, in the house next door, the old man was finishing his cigarette and putting it out on the railing, and I knew, the way you know things you don't want to know, that he had heard everything. That he would hear it again. That this was only the beginning.