The Chaos of Stars

I know—I know—it was closed when I pulled up on my bike not two minutes ago. Whoever was here is gone.

Or maybe they aren’t. I look up the stairs, only half a flight visible before it turns around a sharp corner. Clutching the knife, I walk up the stairs, each step measured and silent. If they are still here, they know I am, too, because the garage door opened. Hopefully they heard that and ran. But if not . . .

My breaths come fast, my heartbeat racing. I make it to the landing at the top of the stairs, the second-story hall stretching out in front of me. The first door on my right is already open. I peek around the doorframe and then whip my head back so I can process what I saw. Empty. This is the room that’ll be the baby’s, and there’s nothing in it but a scattering of paint-sample squares and some empty boxes.

The next door is a closet. I open it, cringing at the squeaky hinges, and stab inward with the knife.

Nothing.

Three more rooms. The bathroom, my room, and the master bedroom. The bathroom is easily cleared—thankfully they have a glass shower door rather than a curtain. I creep across the hall to my room, painfully aware of how loud doorknobs click if you don’t open them slowly. I push the door, and—

Floods.

The drawers have been pulled out of the dresser and thrown everywhere. There’s a dent in the wall above where one lies smashed and broken on the floor. My clothes are strewn madly about the room. A notebook I had for writing down design ideas has been torn apart, individual sheets scattered among the clothes.

My suitcase is in the middle of the room, literally ripped open, the pockets sliced and gaping like wounds. My closet door hangs wide open, everything flung out. The whole room smells like the weird combination of scents downstairs, magnified.

I take one step in and hear more glass cracking underfoot. I lean down to pick up the only picture I brought—a framed shot of my mother and me, on the banks of the Nile, when I was ten. I’d left it in my suitcase, along with the amulets she forced me to bring. Those, too, are underfoot, each snapped in half.

I don’t—I can’t even—what? Why?

There’s a noise from downstairs and I whip around, brandishing the knife.

“Isadora?” Sirus calls, fear in his voice. “Isadora? Are you home?”

Letting out a breath I’ve been holding for far too long, I close my bedroom door and answer him.

Deena’s still out on the driveway talking with the police officers. While she found time between cataloging the house for any missing items and watching the police dust for prints to tell me she loves my hair, somehow I don’t think it made the right impression on the law-enforcement end of things. I was interviewed four times, most of the questions revolving around whether I knew anyone who might have done this.

I know a grand total of three people here that I’m not related to, and somehow I doubt Tyler is the smash-glass-doors-and-destroy-rooms type.

“Why didn’t you call the police?” Sirus asks, shaking his head as I hold the dustpan for the shards of glass. No prints anywhere; all that’s left now is cleaning up the mess.

“Didn’t think of it.”

“Honestly, Isadora, you don’t live in the middle of the desert with a bunch of gods anymore. There are a lot of dangerous people around. You should have left the house immediately.”

He’s right, of course. It never crossed my mind.

“If something had happened to you . . . I’m just so glad no one was home.”

“Do they think it’s someone with a grudge against Deena?” She knows most of the officers who showed up, and she works for the government, after all.

“She’s never been in criminal prosecuting. The loonies she deals with are usually rich, entitled loonies. They’re the suing type, not the violent type.”

He still looks uneasy. We all are. Knowing it was that simple for someone to come into the house? Everything feels different now.

The front door closes, and then Deena walks in and leans against the wall, surveying the broken door with an exhausted expression, hand absently rubbing her stomach. “They think it was someone looking for prescription drugs. You must have scared him off before he could get through all the rooms.”

“I am the scariest,” I say, dumping another load of shards into the trash with a discordant tinkling.

“I’ll take over here,” she says. “When we’re done with the glass and get something taped up over the door, I’ll help with your room.”

“It’s okay. It’s my stuff, I’ll clean it up.”

“I’m so sorry. Nothing like this has ever happened before.”

“It’s not your fault,” I say. “Just random, right?” But it feels personal. It feels like chaos caught up to me and let me know it’s here with a vengeance.