“Nate would never give her something like that,” I say. “Plus, he’s not into that crap. He’s an actual rocket scientist. He has better things to do than get high.”
He’s rolling his eyes. I can tell. I can hear. “Then someone at school gave them to her.”
“She doesn’t know anyone.”
“Look,” he says, “she’s got some kind of hookup, Mae—someone is dealing to her. That’s the only way to get pills like that.”
“A dealer? Like, a drug dealer? No. That’s … No.”
That weird circus girl on the boardwalk is one thing. She and Nah were friends. Dealers make me think of guys in leather jackets and alleys and knives and, oh my god, CARTELS—
“This could be like that show on TV you guys like!” I say. “The one where everyone is on meth and then those scary guys from Mexico come and—”
“Mae. Just…” He sighs. “I know you are super … You’re a good girl, and that’s cool, but please trust me when I say that whatever it is you’re imagining is not at all true. Okay? Some kid at school is helping her out, and that’s it.”
“But that is totally out of my control! How can I find this person, how can I stop them—don’t you see this is a total all-systems fail?”
He’s quiet.
“Micah! You have to help me fix this. She’s drowning.”
“Just give her time, Mae. I’ll be there at Christmas and I’ll talk to her in person about all of it. I promise.” The background noise on his end gets louder. “Hold on a sec.”
I hear a girl’s voice, soft. “Hey, you. We’re gonna head down soon. You almost ready?”
A tingling sensation spreads across my fingers. The last time I got this feeling was the wave, and before that, it was when Riley came over and had this look on his face and then he told me his family was moving to China and that he didn’t want to do a long-distance relationship.
Vibes. Bad ones. Maybe this is data I should consider more seriously.
“Yeah,” Micah says to the other voice. “Five more minutes.” A door shuts. It’s quiet again. “Mae? Look, I have to go. I’m coming for Christmas, right? And it’s already October, so I’ll be there before you know it and I’ll sort it out. Okay? Just hold tight.”
“I’m sorry, Micah, do you have something better to do right now than discuss the fact that your girlfriend whose parents just died is maybe suicidal?”
“Whoa. What the hell?”
Finally, I can’t stand it.
“Who was that girl?”
“Huh?”
“That you were just talking to. Just now. That girl.”
A pause, then: “No one. Look, is Nah around? Maybe I should just check in with her for a sec. But then I really have to go.”
No one.
No one isn’t no one unless they are someone.
“Are you cheating on my sister?”
Another pause. One that is long enough for me to enter the quantum realm, where particles do not follow the natural laws of physics, where anything can happen. Quantum leaps. Where you can suddenly jump from one place—the land of having a big brother who loves your sister and is part of your family—to another: the land where this big brother is a lying, cheating bastard who just might be the death of her.
Unless I can somehow fix this, my sister just lost her real-life version of the Little Prince.
“You’re so lucky my father’s not alive, Micah.” This voice, this cold, hard voice, is not my voice. It is the voice of Commander Mae Winters, who is reaching Mach 2, about to put a two-million-dollar plane into a forced tailspin. It is me, suddenly, right now, getting ten years older. “Because if he were, he would tell you to your face what a sorry excuse you are for a human being.”
Micah loved my father. His dad is a total loser who lives in Michigan and calls him once a year. My dad wrote Micah’s letters of recommendation, checked his trig homework almost every night, and took him hiking up in Malibu Canyon, just the two of them, every Father’s Day. It is the cruelest thing I could possibly say to him.
He breaks down. Huge, heaving sobs tear through the phone.
And I don’t feel a damn thing.
I hang up.
I don’t have time for his grief.
17
Mae
ISS Location: Low-Earth Orbit
Earth Date: 23 October
Earth Time (EST): 18:00
Nah is holed up in her room. I knock, then try the door—she keeps it locked now. She doesn’t answer. She hasn’t been eating lunch with me for the past week at school, either. I don’t know where she goes. We’re strangers now. I know my lab partner better.
I wonder if Mom would say something about energy. She was big on that. Mom would assert that not telling Nah Micah is cheating on her is manifesting as negative energy, affecting my energy field. She would say that Nah is picking up on my deceit on a psychic level and responding by throwing up her own protective energetic barrier.
I’m starting to wonder if Mom was on to something.
I also know that, because I can’t rely on Micah to save the day, I need to get my family’s help. It’s time.
“I’m going to Castaways,” I say through the door, through the atmosphere and debris that separates us all the time now. “Do you want to come? Free coffee. Brownies.”
Nate has invited me to come study with him tonight at the coffeehouse Ben works at—more accurately, he has ordered me. He thinks I worry too much about Nah and that I need to get out of the house. He has no idea. Ben has the closing shift and is promising free coffee and whatever we want from the pastry case. Sugar and caffeine are excellent motivation for crossing the Charles River.
If I am being completely forthright, Ben is excellent motivation. It’s been three weeks since that night in the living room, and I haven’t seen him since. The timing isn’t right. But I want to. See him. And my resolve to stay completely focused is wavering.
I press my ear to the door. It is silent.
“Come on, Nah,” I say. “How can you say no to brownies? They’re your favorite!”
I know what would get her to open this door. All I have to do is tell her the truth about Micah.
I have never missed my mom as much as I do right now.
“Nah, please. Talk to me.”
There’s a thud, then shuffling, the lock clicks, and the door opens. My sister stands before me, a wraith.
I try my best to smile. “Hi. Did you hear anything I—”
“I’m tired, Mae. Okay? I just want to be alone.”
Micah is cheating on you.
“Oh—okay.” I slide my foot past the doorway, in case she tries to shut me out again. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, though.”
“I do.”
Hannah. Our rose. She needs Mom’s soft voice—grow, grow, grow. But if you’re anyone other than Mom and you say grow, she’ll wither, just to defy you. Stubborn blood, that’s what Yia-yia used to say. Karalis blood. Can’t push her. You do, she’ll go the opposite way.
I need a Hannah whisperer.
“What if … I just hang out with you instead? We don’t have to talk. Or go anywhere. I can do my homework—”