I nod. “Breakup nails.” I look down at my hands, at the chipped polish, the nails I’ve bitten so much they bleed. “What’s gonna happen to us?”
“It’s already happening,” she says softly.
“God, I miss Micah so much. And I saw him just, like, twenty-four hours ago.”
I don’t remember what it’s like to be mad at him. Absence maybe does make the heart grow fonder. I don’t know.
“You guys have been together for three years—you have nothing to worry about.” Mae’s lips turn up a little. “He worships you.”
I give her a sly glance. “Maybe you’ll find a nice Boston boy. Or girl.”
She shakes her head. “No. I have to stay focused. There’s no point. I’m joining the military in July.”
I never thought about it that way, but she’s right. If Mae gets into Annapolis, which she will, she’ll be in the navy for the next nine years. Then she’ll be in Houston or wherever astronauts live these days. Russia, maybe. God, that’s far.
It hits me then. I haven’t just lost my parents and Micah. I’ve lost Mae, too. Somehow in all of this, I’d forgotten that there are more goodbyes.
I slide my hand under my pillow, touch the tiny envelope of pills. Later. I will be able to float later.
“Sometimes I … It feels like they’re … here. Sort of. Can you…” I take a breath. “I know you don’t believe in this stuff, but—can you feel them?”
She looks up at me. “Yes.”
I blink. “Really?”
I thought my sister would give me that look. The science one.
She nods. “But I still think that’s just our imaginations playing tricks on us.”
“Where do you think they are now?” I ask.
Mom believed in Something Else. I do, too—I just don’t quite know what it is. It’s the feeling I get when I go to Saint Cecelia’s and light candles with Gram or when we’re doing Kirtan chanting at the yoga studio. Places Something Else lives full-time.
“I think they’re somewhere in Malaysia. Decomposing.” She looks stricken. “Sorry. I just mean—”
I shake my head. “I know what you mean. But you’re wrong. They’re out there—their essence, spirit, something is out there. A knowing thing. A remembering thing.” I rest my palm against the place in the middle of my chest where I feel Something Else. “I think we all have a part of that—in us. Our soul, maybe, or just. I don’t know. Carl Jung called it a collective unconscious. I read that in one of Mom’s books. Like all of humanity has this giant spirit hive mind we can tap into.”
She raises her eyebrows. “I didn’t know you read Jung.”
There’s a lot people don’t know about me. Don’t see. I just shrug. “He’s cool.”
“Stephen Hawking thinks it’s possible we … encrypt ourselves on the universe when we go. I mean, this is a really simplified explanation. He wasn’t able to prove that, though, and now he’s gone. So it’s possible you and Carl Jung are a little correct.”
I roll my eyes. “But only if you can prove it.”
“Well, if you can’t prove it, it’s just a theory. It might be workable, but it’s still not conclusive.”
Sometimes my genius sister can be pretty dense.
I run my finger over the charm that used to be Mom’s—a blue-and-white circle, smaller than a penny. It’s this Greek thing, supposed to be protection against the evil eye. Mae would never wear something superstitious, but it makes me feel closer to Mom. I don’t know why she didn’t wear it in Malaysia. Maybe she was afraid it’d get lost when she was swimming. Maybe it would have protected her somehow.
“Mae, I know you’re a scientist. I get that. But you can’t tell me you don’t believe there is something, anything, out there. People have pretty much proven the existence of ghosts. And Mom’s intuition—I mean, how could she know things were going to happen before they did? And remember how Yia-yia would always know she was going to get a letter in the mail and from who and then it would be there, in her mailbox? Or, like, how the cards are always right? Something is behind all that. I mean, look how complex we are. You can’t simply evolve into something that composes a symphony or choreographs a ballet.”
“You’re talking about ‘God.’”
“Not God with a capital G. But a knowing … presence. Something so much more evolved than us that we don’t even have words to describe it—you know?”
“Like colors?”
“Huh?”
She scoots closer. “There is so much we can’t view with the naked human eye. We can’t see infrared or ultraviolet—which means we only see a fraction of the colors in the universe, unless we have the aid of scientific instruments. But those colors—they’re there, even though we can’t see them.”
“I guess that’s what I mean. Yeah.”
Mae’s quiet for a moment. She’s got her thinking face on. “Sometimes I think about how there are billions of galaxies in the universe—maybe more. And my mind short-circuits, just trying to imagine that. We’ll only ever get to see the tiniest FRACTION of it. Or I think about how our individual lives seem so important, but we’re just blips on the timeline of human existence.”
“But blips matter. Think about the Butterfly Effect—how one tiny act somewhere on Earth can change the whole course of history.”
Mae smiles. “You sound like Mom.”
“You sound like Dad.”
These were the kinds of talks that we used to have around the dinner table—never arguing, just passionate conversation and lots of questions.
I lie down, stare at the ceiling. This one doesn’t have cracks.
“We’ll never see them again,” I whisper.
Mae lies down next to me and slips her fingers through mine. “No.”
And I think, with her here, with the possibility of Something Else: Maybe I don’t need the pills. After these ones, I mean. Maybe I can stop.
We fall asleep, hand in hand, curled against each other, like twins in a womb. When I wake up, Mae is gone.
So are my pills.
This right here, this is the Three of Swords card, each blade sticking into a heart: Betrayal.
Here I thought we were having a moment, and all she was trying to do was steal my fucking pills. Did she lie awake, waiting to make sure I was asleep?
I throw off the covers, ready to tear into her, but then I stop, because I can already see how this will play out. This argument in which I try to reason with the Queen of Swords—the embodiment of logic—about how it was wrong of her to flush her sister’s stolen opiates down the toilet.
I’m tired of losing things: pills, pride, people.
There is no point arguing, defending yourself. Everyone just decides who you are—that you’re a zero, a druggie—and nothing you do or say changes that. Once you get labeled an addict, that’s it. You’re fucked for life. That’s why at meetings they don’t let you say, Hi, I’m Hannah and I WAS an addict. No. You have to say, I AM an addict.
They never let you fucking forget.