It seems like there’s one on every corner. Not that I’m complaining.
He grins, and it looks good on him. “We Bostonians have very discerning taste.”
I follow him down a street lined with brick town houses that have been turned into fancy boutiques and upscale stores that feature expensive winter coats in the windows. Halloween decorations abound. A few Christmas displays are already up. It’s the loneliest thing, maybe, knowing that this year will be the first one we don’t bake cookies with Mom or help Dad put lights around the tree.
The Dunkies is in what once would have been a garden apartment, tucked beneath a toy store. We get our coffees “regular,” which is Bostonian for lots of cream and sugar. Then we head over to Copley Square and sit on the steps of the library, which looks like it should be in Paris or Berlin, maybe, with its statues and decorative iron lamps. I stretch my legs out and sigh as the warmth of the coffee burns my hands, as that pretty little Perc finally kicks in. More mellow. Takes the edge off. I have to remember how functional I can be on fives. Tens are like, Byyyyye, world.
“Better?” he asks.
I nod. “I feel warm and fuzzy again. Thank you.”
“You’re very welcome.”
“What do you do when you’re not selling drugs or ditching with me?” I ask.
“I play guitar,” he says. “Read. Go out.”
“A drug dealer who reads for fun?”
“I’m not just a drug dealer,” he says.
“What do you like to read?”
“Fantasy. Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, that sort of thing.”
I raise an eyebrow. “You love Harry Potter, don’t you?”
“Hell yeah, I do. I have a Gryffindor scarf.”
“Not Slytherin?”
“The Pottermore quiz doesn’t lie: I know it’s hard to believe, but I’m one of the good guys.”
I think I kind of believe him.
“I’m a Hufflepuff,” I say.
He laughs, soft. “I like Hufflepuffs. They’re sweet.”
“You just don’t know me yet.”
“Guess I’ll have to change that.” I can hear the smile in his voice, but I can’t look at him because I like looking at him too much, I think. “So, Hannah From LA, what does a Hufflepuff do when she’s not ditching school and popping pills?”
“I used to hang out with my boyfriend. Go to the beach. Work at a coffeehouse near the boardwalk. Yoga. Tarot.”
“So I read fantasy, but you live it,” he says.
“I guess so.” I smile a little. “Maybe I have magical psychic powers.”
“I’d love to see those in action.”
“I’ll read your cards sometime.”
“It’s a deal,” he says.
The square between the library and Trinity Church is filled with people. Tourists, maybe, but lots of locals hurrying around with briefcases and backpacks.
“Everyone here seems like they have somewhere to be,” I say. “Why do they try so hard?” I watch them go, go, go. “It clearly doesn’t make them happy.”
“East Coast hustle,” he says. “Big dreams, big money. They’re trying to get to happy.” He shakes his head. “Like it’s a place. But they’re trying to get out of the cold, too. Not like in LA, huh?”
“I lived five seconds from the beach. You don’t hurry in Venice, unless it’s to catch a wave.”
“You surf?”
“My boyfriend does.”
Micah with his shaggy sun-bleached hair and tan skin. The thought of him makes me anxious.
“Do you think your boyfriend would be mad that you’re hanging out with some dude who sold you pills?”
“He trusts me,” I say.
“What’s he like?”
I smile a little. “Fun. Pretty chill—surfer, you know. I don’t know how I would have gotten through the past month without him. He and my dad were really close, but he kept it together, you know? For me. He’s loyal like that.” I take a long sip of my coffee. “Usually.”
“Usually?”
I shrug. “It’s a long story. What happened with you and your ex?”
He grimaces a little, rubs his palm against the back of his neck. “Just too different. We broke up at the end of last year.”
“Miss her?”
He frowns. “Sometimes. But not really. We weren’t right for each other. She’s the captain of the soccer team, goes to church.”
“Were you dealing at the time?”
“Yeah. That’s part of why it was never gonna work out,” he says. “But I also felt like … I couldn’t be me with her. Like I had to be this version of me she wanted, but the real me—she didn’t want that.” He runs a finger around the rim of his cup. “I want to be all in with someone. You know?”
And that’s the thing about Micah. He’s not all in. Not anymore. And I don’t think I am, either.
I nod. “Yeah.”
We get up and head back toward the car. We’re waiting to cross the street when I notice a woman with a tiny belly rest her palm against it, almost protectively. Something about that gesture stops me cold. Then it hits me, a sudden knowing, like the kind Mom used to get. My body floods with heat, and I’m so angry I can hardly breathe.
I grab Drew’s arm because for a second, it feels like the earth opens up beneath my feet and if I don’t hold on to something, it’ll pull me down.
“Hannah? What’s wrong?”
There’s a reason we can’t wait.
Rebecca Chen, when I met her at the funeral, before I read the emails: resting her hand on her belly and saying, I’m feeling a little under the weather.
“She’s pregnant.” The crosswalk signal goes green, but I just stand there. “Holy fucking shit.”
“Who?”
“My dad’s…” I don’t know what to call her, but I look up at Drew, and he gets it.
His eyes widen. “Shit.”
And just like that, things get worse.
16
Mae
ISS Location: Low-Earth Orbit
Earth Date: 18 October
Earth Time (EST): 13:05
The way to survive space is to keep asking yourself, again and again: What is the next thing that can kill me?
It’s not paranoia. It’s good common sense. Chris Hadfield, ace astronaut, swears by this question. It’s what’s saved him countless times in space.
By always thinking about what could potentially end you, you’re staying one step ahead of death. Sure, it will find you eventually—that’s just the law of nature. But it doesn’t have to be today.
The problem is, of course, that there are a lot of things that can kill you.
Faulty jets in flat spins going Mach 3.
Waves.
Your sister shutting you out of her life entirely.
Nah hides in her room all day, and she purposefully avoids eye contact with me or wears dark glasses so I can’t check her pupils. I don’t need to. Every time I see my sister, she is on something. I wouldn’t have known the difference before because I don’t do stuff like that—however, this past year has been an excellent education in drug addiction. But I can’t talk to her about it. There’s a wall between us now.