“Ready?” Hannah said.
“Yep,” she said, smiling. Sometimes you could make a thing less bad by pretending that it wasn’t bad at all.
“Do you want us to come?” Blue said.
“No need,” Hannah said. “We can say goodbye here.”
“I got this,” Maya mouthed, winking at Blue. She had to believe she could still convince Hannah to stay. Aloud she said, “I’ll be in the car.”
She grabbed the keys and walked out.
It was going to be a hot day. The air already smelled like a furnace. She slipped into the driver’s seat, looked away as Hannah hugged Blue and Renee. The passenger door opened and Maya handed Hannah the bagel and coffee.
“Thanks,” Hannah said, peeking into the bag and setting it on her lap. “Smells good.”
Maya backed out onto the street. Too fast. Hannah braced. The car filled with the weight of impending separation. They passed the beach, the ocean, the promise of vacation. They passed two young girls on bicycles. They passed the girls they’d been.
“There’s gotta be something I can say that’ll change your mind,” Maya said.
Hannah was watching the girls recede into the distance. “I wish.”
“You do?”
“I know he’s probably fine. If it was something really bad, Vivian would tell me to come home.”
“Right. Okay. I don’t get it. Why leave, then?”
“Deer!” Hannah said.
“What? Oh, crap!”
Maya slammed the brakes. The deer, stopped in the middle of the road, stared at her with blank, unblinking eyes.
“Jesus Christ on a cracker,” she yelled. “Why do they just freeze like that? Dumb animals.”
“She can’t help it,” Hannah said. “It’s how she’s wired.”
“Seems counterproductive,” Maya said. The whole point of life was to keep going. Any living creature was bound to get run over if they didn’t know that. “So, if you know Henry is fine, are you leaving because of me?”
“No,” Hannah said. “That’s not it at all. I don’t know how to explain. It doesn’t even feel like a choice, honestly. Everything just gets too...much. Like the world gets in too far. I can’t keep it out. There’s no boundary. And then it’s too painful to stay. To stay anywhere, really.”
Maya pressed lightly on her horn. The deer ran off into the shrubbery. She pulled out onto the tree-lined highway, the low early sun throwing light in her eyes. She tried to imagine what Hannah was describing but she couldn’t. Not at first. But then she remembered herself in the bank, trying to get the loan. The sense of something intolerable building inside her. What was it? The possibility that she wouldn’t be okay. That some pressurizing force would shatter her to bits. She considered mentioning this to Hannah but she couldn’t bring herself to. She didn’t want to give darkness a voice. She wanted to forget it. “That sounds awful,” she said.
Hannah held her gaze. “It is.” And then she added, “There are worse things.”
Maya thought of Henry. Maybe they both did.
She didn’t want their last moments of the trip to be sad.
She turned and cracked a mischievous smile. “Do you realize we just left Renee and Blue alone together?”
“With access to kitchen knives,” Hannah said. She made a stabbing motion and they burst out laughing.
The air lightened. Hannah took the bagel out of the bag, unwrapped it. “Just what I needed, thank you.” She gave half to Maya and then took a bite of the other half. Briefly closed her eyes to savor it. “Mmm, perfectly buttered.”
“I used your trick,” Maya said. “Remember when you taught me that?”
“Aww,” Hannah said. “I totally do. We were so little.”
“It’s stupid, but it’s the only food trick I know. It’s like being passed down a special recipe. And it really does make a bagel taste better.” Maya cleared her throat. She wasn’t saying what she meant. What she meant was that it had felt like mothering when Hannah taught her how to butter a bagel. What she meant was that Hannah was important to her in a way that other people could not be, in the way that only the people who raised you could be. And sometimes friends raised each other. Sometimes they were the only ones who did. But unlike family, there was no shared home to return to for vacations and holidays. As soon as they graduated, they were off on their own, no longer a unit but four divided parts. And this was what she hated most about being a grown-up—not having a gang to experience the world with. Her friends used to be her net. Without them there was nothing, there was falling.
Don’t go, she thought. But she couldn’t make herself say it. She’d always been good at asking for things—for a couch to crash on or a ride or a job lead. But it was asking for heart things that she had trouble with. It would reveal too much, hurt too much if anyone said no.
They reached the station. Happy people with weekend bags were stepping out of train cars, reuniting with their already tan family and friends who’d come to retrieve them. Summer joy in their faces.
Hannah put her hand on the door, turned to her. “I love you,” she said.
“I love you too,” Maya said over the words stuck in her throat.
She hugged Hannah hard. “Give Henry a kiss for me.”
Hannah nodded and climbed out, her slender figure moving toward the ticket booth. She turned and waved and Maya waved back.
Maya waited until Hannah paid her ticket and disappeared inside the train. She kept waiting as the train pulled away with its loud goodbye, just in case, just in case.
But Hannah was gone.
BLUE
Blue stood on the front porch, leaning against a pillar, smoking a cigarette. She peered out at the grassy yard, the cars passing beyond the fence like a slow-moving train. A large cloud ambled above, washing the color out of the day as if with a sponge. It was way too early for smoking. It was all she could think to do.
Back in high school if any of her friends were struggling, Blue knew exactly how to fix it. A quick dose of fun with a pinch of recklessness was always the cure. Cut school together or drive just fast enough to cause a little scare or do something a tiny bit illegal—shoplift a candy bar or jump a Metro stall or sneak into a movie theater. Things that said we are young, we are alive, nothing can stop us, none of this matters! It was so easy, then, to move through things, to exist only in the present. Before too many losses had accumulated. Before the world got in.
But no more. Hannah had taken something with her when she left—not just a piece of the whole of them but some secreted hope that, with time, the damage of that night would lessen rather than root and grow tentacles. Blue felt hollowed out by it and surprised by how heavy a feeling emptiness could be. This was the problem with people leaving. They didn’t just go away—their absence created a phantom presence, a haunt of sorrow in their place.