I keep my eyes closed, shake my head.
“We have to do this, Nah.”
I am so tired.
“Fuck the Red Cross. It won’t bring them back.”
She sighs. “I’ll do it myself. I don’t want them to be so far away.”
I’m such a selfish piece-of-shit junkie. Why couldn’t I think of that? Of doing right by them.
“Jesus.” I groan. “Just help me up.”
We get me vertical, and when Mae’s out the door, I slip another pill in my mouth before following her into my parents’ room.
“They said hair is good. Toothbrushes. Stuff like that.” Mae holds up two ziplock bags, and I take one, then follow her into the master bathroom.
“I’ll do Dad’s,” she says.
For a second we stand there, staring. At the rug I puked on when I drank too much vodka at Julie Cirna’s party, back when we were thirteen. The shower curtain with the kitschy Paris theme that Dad hates—hated—and Mom loved. The orderly row of Dad’s bottles of cologne and aftershave and shaving cream. I can see him, running the razor down his skin, Mom brushing out her long, witchy hair. Talking about the book club they didn’t want to go to or if we should grill out for dinner or just get tacos.
“This is fucked up,” I say.
Mae squares her shoulders. “We’re gathering data. That’s all we’re doing. Okay?”
Mae World must be really nice.
I open the drawer between the two sinks and grab some of Mom’s hair out of her brush. It’s darker than mine. I hold it up to the light and notice strands of gray that twist through the black. That bit of silver is like a switch that turns off any bit of light inside me. It’s so dark in here.
“I feel bad about teasing her,” I say.
Mae looks over from her search through the cabinet on Dad’s side of the counter. “What about?”
“A few months ago, I noticed she had a gray hair and I gave her shit for it. Just kidding, you know, but I could tell she was upset.”
“Doesn’t seem like her.” Mae carefully places one of Dad’s used razors in her plastic bag. “She’s always said she can’t wait to be that old lady with flowing gray hair. Miss Rumphius.”
“I know. I thought it was weird. I mean, she’s all about au naturale.”
It hits me then, with the force of the wave itself.
“She’s never going to be an old lady,” I whisper.
We stand there, holding our bags. It’s like an upside-down version of when we got goldfish that one time, after Dad won them in a carnival game for us. We each took a goldfish home in a Ziploc. Mae reaches out and takes the bag from me.
“I’m gonna mail them. Want to come?”
I shake my head. In about an hour, once this next pill kicks in, I won’t be here anymore. I’ll be on Asteroid B-612, the Little Prince’s planet, with my thorny rose and the prince, too. Let the tigers come with their claws—I won’t give a flying fuck.
“Micah will be here soon,” I say.
“Oh.” She shrugs, looks like she might say something, then changes her mind.
I see Mom’s perfume, a special rose blend that Cynthia makes, and bring it up to my nose. Mom is pulling me in close for a hug, leaning over me to check my homework, twirling in a spray of scent before she heads out the door. I raise the bottle and spray it just above my head, then turn in a slow, slow circle as a shower of rose petals rains down on me.
Mae hesitates by the doorway. “I’m going by school to pick up homework and stuff. Later. Do you need me to grab your assignments?”
“Are you serious?” I hold Mom’s perfume close. “Our parents are dead and you’re worried about homework?”
I’m a mean junkie. Nice sober. I don’t know why.
Her fingers twitch. That stress thing she does. A tell. Dad said she would have been terrible at poker if she ever had her hands above the table. Otherwise, she’d kill it. Freaking sphinx, most of the time.
“Look, it might help, okay?” she says. “You can’t just sit in that room, Nah, taking pills and—”
“What is wrong with you?”
For once. For once I would like it if she could freak out. Acknowledge that this is really bad and I am not crazy for feeling like we just drove off a cliff.
“With me? You’re the one who’s high—”
“Our parents are dead, Mae. We are literally collecting fucking DNA samples and you want to go get your homework?”
I’m shouting. I don’t care.
“What else am I going to do, Nah?” Her hand grips the doorway. “I don’t have a Micah to come hold me and kiss me and love me. The only person I have is you, and you’re not here, not really. Not when you’re on that stuff. So what am I supposed to do?”
We stare at each other, surrounded by my mother’s scent. Let the tigers come with their claws.
“You didn’t even cry,” I snarl.
As soon as I say it, I wish I hadn’t.
Her blue eyes darken a little. Like clouds covering the sun.
I don’t care. I really, really don’t fucking care. She is the enemy. The one who will try to keep me from floating and I want to fucking float, okay, I want to go away. And I want her to go away, too, I want to be on my planet, alone.
“I’m going to bed,” I say.
She zips the bags shut. Won’t look at me. “My cell’s on. If you need me.”
Mae goes, and maybe I should feel bad about snapping at her, but I don’t. Not really. I’m starting not to feel bad about anything, which is nice. I see why they call them painkillers. They really do kill the pain. Murder it.
I take Mom’s brush to my room and set it beside a candle, like it’s a relic. I don’t know whether or not I want them to be found. I hate the idea of them being separated. Dying alone. So if they were both in the grave, then maybe it meant they were together until the end.
I’ve imagined the wave so many times. In one version, Mom and Dad are together at the beach. They hold on to each other as the water covers them. They die in each other’s arms. But I know that isn’t possible. Mae said the water was too strong. Something about force and acceleration. Nerd stuff. I don’t know.
In another version, they’re at their bed-and-breakfast, and they make it to the roof, but it’s not high enough and the water sweeps them away. Or they cling to palm trees that topple over. Or a piece of metal decapitates them. Or a floating car crushes them.
There are so many ways to die.
I lie back down on the rug in corpse pose and stare at the ceiling. Maybe it’s my imagination, but the crack seems bigger.
i ignored the last call I got from my dad because i was watching a movie on TV.
Kitchen Cupboard
4302 Seaview Lane
Venice, CA
9
Hannah
My parents have been dead for one week.
I am running out of Vicodin.
Fuck my fucking life.
It’s early evening, and shadows crawl over the carpet. I don’t know when that happened—the sun leaving. It was here, just a minute ago. Whatever. I live here now. On this carpet.
There’s a soft knock on my bedroom door. Someone is always knocking on the fucking door. No one can take a hint. I make sure the rest of my pills are in the envelope inside the throw pillow, not on the desk. Then I turn on the bedside lamp.