Zia felt cold, and she couldn’t warm up. She hugged herself, got as small as she could by wrapping her arms tight around her knees. Nothing felt comfortable, but she laid her head on her knees and closed her eyes. She hoped that if she closed her eyes, everything else would stop. Just for a bit, while she processed everything. Only in the last few weeks had Zia come back from being completely lost in grief over Ronaldo’s death. He had been killed, a fact that was too disturbing and shocking to accept right away. 

For weeks she had been chasing this fantasy, drinking herself silly with pathetic hopes of inner peace. She made herself numb - that seemed like the best course of action.  It actually worked for a while, except when she would really sit and think about what she was doing. Life felt out of control.

Now she knew for herself some true horror. Zia had believed that life could get no worse, until - just hours ago - she woke up covered in blood in a room filled with bodies.

Just the thought of it sent a chill down her spine. Her limbs flew apart and she gripped the sides of her chair. Again she felt weak, dizzy. When her chin began to wobble she closed her eyes tightly, with all her might, and clenched her jaw. She concentrated all of her energy there. Of all things she thought about school, mentally revising the spells and lessons she knew by heart. It was a comfort to recite these things that she knew would never change.

As the panic ebbed Zia’s muscles lost some of their tension, her chest stopped feeling so tight. It was then that the door flew open and with a jolt Zia turned, wide-eyed and terrified that she was in danger.

“You’re Maurizia?” An extremely frustrated and flustered man asked her. She began to nod but before the man had finished speaking her mother burst through the door, knocking him to the side en route to her daughter. A swarm of people entered the room, saying her name and rushing towards her. Ziti! Mauri, Mauri! Zia! Zita! Maurizia! The multiple names she went by blurred together into loud babbling.

Quickly she realized that there was no danger, this was her family. All of them - her siblings at least, and her parents, and Aunt Gia. She saw this through her mother’s hair, since already Zia had been pulled into a tight squeeze by her mother. Zia jumped at her touch and recoiled slightly, forcing her way out of the hug before she even realized what she was doing.

This was so much at once - there was a crowd in the room, and even with members missing, it was too many. Zia started backing up into the far corner, which sent a silence through the room. There was a hush. A silence among over a dozen family members was rare if not impossible. The sisters were always whispering to each other, the boys jabbing each other and snickering amongst themselves. Her mother and Aunt Gia were perpetually mid-conversation.

But as she rejected her mother’s embrace,  they were silent, and all eyes were on her.

All her life Zia had competed with her siblings, trying to prove that she was good enough and  old enough to run with the pack. It was all in a ploy for attention, mostly, which to Zia felt like love.  And they noticed her, of course -- her bright pink hair had certainly caused a similarly loud babbling within her family unit.

Yet now as their glassy eyes stared, Zia wanted them to stop looking at her. She wanted to be by herself and fall into a dreamless sleep, until all of this could be forgotten.