Chapter 3

When I get to the kitchen the next morning, my mom has already eaten breakfast by herself.

The night before, while I was getting ready to go out, she made dinner as soon as my dad said he’d be home on time. It was a tough day for them both, and more than anything, she needed his support, but of course, he didn't show up. I wonder which motel it was this time. How much he spent. What whore he chose.

Since the first year of Iris’s death when the betrayals became blatant because he no longer bothered to hide them -these cycles have grown even more intense. At least once a week he doesn’t sleep at home, and the next day they lock themselves in their room and hurl such heavy insults that this place becomes a purgatory and, listening to it all, I want to die. I know he’s a piece of shit. I've already accepted that. The disappointment, the disgust, and the rage are feelings he planted and forced me to water. But to disappear on a day like this, when my mom is more fragile than usual, is a new low.

"Hi, Mom," I greet her, turning on the coffee maker.

She doesn't even look up from her teacup.

"Good morning," I try again.

No response.

An uncomfortable feeling settles in my throat.

With the mug in my hand, I stare at her for long minutes.

"About Caleb last night, it won't happen again."

Silence.

It's embarrassing to find myself wishing she would say something, even if it's just to curse at me and unleash all that pent-up anger. Her expression in the early morning, when she saw Caleb next to me, was a warning that an argument was coming. Part of me dreaded it. The other part was resigned. At least, she would have a reason to look me in the face. Yet, all she does is take a deep breats a drag so heavy it makes it clear I'm an annoyanc and takes the last sip of her tea.

Silence.

I am insignificant.

When she gets up and leaves the kitchen, I swallow the burning lump and clear my throat. Luckily, I'm good at this, at pretending nothing happened, just like she pretends I don't exist. But even if I try to deny it, I miss her. I miss who Maite Salles used to be. As impartial as she was, that version at least looked at me over Iris's shoulders. She saw me. She exchanged a few words. She cared. I sit down in the chair with my mug and stare at the photo frame on the shelf.

My dad, her, Iris, and me.

All laughing.

It feels like it happened in another life. We were different people. I think we were irreversibly transformed after that tragedy. The emotions we think we control are exactly the ones that control us. They never die. They're just drowned deep down, but they always end up returning to the surface, more desperate, more thirsty.

Betrayal. Depression. Obsession.

I was left with the last one. I remember spending the first night awake, researching what it felt like to burn to death. What happened to the human body in those last minutes. How much Iris agonized before she plunged into the darkness forever. In some chats, this is considered the worst way to die. Besides all the excruciating pain and the sensation of your body cooking, the skin on your neck can retract enough to strangle you. It’s almost like a slug coming in contact with salt, writhing in torment, disintegrating into a luscious mass and melting to death. I wonder if smoke inhalation spared her from a long suffering or if she was conscious enough to smell her own flesh burn. The autopsy report had the answers, but no one but me wanted to know, so I could never satisfy my curiosity. "Your sister is dead," my mom said, "knowing how much she suffered is sadistic." I didn't insist. She was right. The funeral with the closed casket was too much for all of us. There was a huge portrait of Iris right above it, her perfect face, brushed like a work of art, as if it could push away the notion that a girl with a twisted face lay there. Even with the flowers and air fresheners in the chapel, sometimes we could feel a waft of air heavy with the smell of burned meat.

Still, I couldn’t stop thinking about the fire. It was stronger than reason. A masochistic need to torture myself. The worst physical pain Iris had ever faced was when Sara, her best friend, shut the car door and crushed her hand, breaking four of her fingers all at once. The pain was so intense that my sister peed herself in front of everyone. The urine ran down her pencil skirt while she screamed in agony. I remember how she looked at Sara—the one we’d known since childhood, the one who did Iris's homework, who spent hours at our house, who rolled out a red carpet for her to walk on, always so, so kind and sweet—and she spat, "You fucking bitch!" I was in shock. I had never seen Iris talk to her like that. That’s why I know that if my sister could haunt me, I'd see her standing at my bedroom door every night before I went to sleep. "You fucking bitch! You let me die!" Sometimes, I admit, I imagine this. Iris watching me. Cursing me. Blaming me.

I was totally obsessed with the subject for a few weeks until I concluded that if I really wanted to understand what she went through, I would have to lock myself in a room and let the fire consume me. Otherwise, it was better to forget and move on. To accept that she was gone in the worst possible way. That her last minutes of life were terrible and painful and that nothing, ever, would change that.

That's what I did. I moved on.

Now, I'm strangely feeling the same fixation as those nights, but on something peculiar. The obsession forms dangerous roots around something I should ignore, but it's stronger than I am. I pull the black card from my jeans pocket and examine the three-headed dog that begs to be deciphered. I scan it with my cell phone camera and wait. Nothing happens. I slowly slide my thumb over it, trying to feel the raised letters, and I notice a tiny sequence of numbers in the bottom right corner. Against the light, they glisten a bit more.

-23.517635, -46.703601

I have no idea what they mean. Given the strange sequence, it can’t be a cell phone number or a document. But if this really has some meaning and leads me somewhere, then there's only one person who can decipher it.