“Where do you want me to meet you?”
I am so grateful. It’s sad how grateful I am that I don’t have to spend the night looking for someone who feels as desperate and sad as me, someone who might know where I can find more.
“You remember that angel statue in the Garden?” I ask. “On the corner of Beacon and Arlington, but kind of hidden?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll be there in half an hour.”
“Okay.”
This evening my angel looks especially fierce. Dark storm clouds are gathering behind her, and leathery leaves the color of my mother’s spiced pumpkin soup swirl around her every time there’s a gust of wind. We are alone in our little corner of the Boston Public Garden. Just past the wrought-iron fence are the elegant stone buildings of Newbury Street—hotels and shops and cafes. Places for the living.
“Hello,” I whisper to her.
She says nothing, just stares beyond me, one arm uplifted, scattering crumbs from her bronze bowl.
The way her wings cut into the sky—she makes me want to pray. The angel on Mom’s Judgment card is in the sky, too, hovering over three open caskets with a mom, a dad, and a child. She’s woken them up with her trumpet. In front of them is a body of water, but it’s not scary, not the wave.
“Wake us up,” I whisper to her.
From this nightmare of them being gone. Of me being here, buying more diamonds.
“Tell me not to do this.”
But she’s silent.
I sit on the stone lip of the statue and, because no one’s looking and because I can’t help it, I pull out my Sharpie and write a little acorn.
I slide to my knees when I’m through, stare up at her like she’s one of the icons in Gram’s church. I wish I could light a candle. Or conjure my mother’s ghost. Read her death yoga like cards or tea leaves. I don’t know why she hasn’t visited me in Boston. Maybe it’s too cold here. Or maybe Mae’s right, about how disappointed my parents would be if they saw me now. Maybe Mom knows, and she can’t stand the sight of me.
At some point, Drew kneels down beside me.
His eyes slide over my face when I turn toward him. “Does she talk to you?”
Everyone is always trying to figure me out, but for some reason, it doesn’t bother me when Drew does it. Maybe because I’m trying to figure him out, too.
“No.” I look back at her. “Maybe someday she will.”
He hands me a cup of coffee from Dunkies. “Thought you might need this.”
“You go the extra mile like this for all your customers?”
“Just the pretty ones.” He stands and reaches out a hand to help me up. He doesn’t let go right away. “You’re freezing. Again. Where’s your coat?”
I shrug. “Forgot.”
He sets down his coffee and starts to take his off. “Drew, I don’t need—”
“I’m only doing this for the favorable review,” he says. “Five-star dealer service.”
He lays it over my shoulders and, oh God, it’s so warm. He’s so warm.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” He picks up his coffee. Takes a sip. Watches me out of the corner of his eye. “I’m sorry about … I’m not trying to be a dick. About you running out.”
“Okay.”
“It’s just, I sell them for recreational purposes and, I don’t know, I feel like maybe—”
“Did you just come here to lecture me? Because if that’s the case, you can take your coffee and—”
He rests a hand on my arm. “Consider what I have to say the warning label on the packaging. I know it’s hard, with your parents and—”
“I’m leaving,” I growl.
I turn, but he grabs my hand.
“Hannah.”
His voice is soft and gentle, and I hate him for that, for his kindness that might be pity, but might not be. I try to shake him off, but he holds on.
“What the fuck, Drew?”
“I’m just trying to watch out for you. I have to be able to sleep at night.”
“Me, too,” I say. “That’s why I want the goddamn pills.”
“Let me help,” he says.
“This—the pills—this is how you help me, Drew. Okay? You said you wanted a role, right? That’s why you do this. Tell your Jiminy Cricket to shut up.”
“I don’t—I think I should…” He takes off his beanie, runs a hand through his midnight hair, a mess of waves.
He’s not going to give me the pills.
I will spend the rest of this freezing-as-fuck night looking for a dealer in a city I don’t know and I am so sad and I hate myself and I broke the entire International Space Station and—
I burst into tears. I can’t help it.
“Hannah, no,” Drew says, eyes wide. “Hey. We can … Please don’t cry. I’m sorry.” He takes my coffee and sets it down on the ground, then wraps his arms around me. For some reason, this makes me cry harder. “I’m really sorry. I’m just worried about you.”
I hear Micah: I can’t carry you. Drew will realize that soon enough, too.
I push him away.
“I have to go.” The first raindrops begin to fall. And of course I don’t have an umbrella because, where I come from, rain doesn’t exist. “You know, you should find a new role, because this one? You suck at it, Drew.”
He pulls an umbrella out of his back pocket. “Here.”
“I don’t need your umbrella.”
He bites back a smile. “Yes, you do.” Then he looks at my feet—a pair of flats, no socks. I can’t feel my toes. “Hannah.”
It starts raining harder now, but I can’t carry you.
“I can take care of myself.”
Let the tigers come with their claws!
He opens the umbrella and holds it over me. “Just so you know, I find your stubbornness really attractive. So you might want to tone it down.” He wraps an arm around me. “Come on. I’ll walk you to the T.”
We walk. Through the garden paths, onto Beacon. Past the pretty shops and old stone churches. I am so cold. He is so warm.
“My sister found them,” I say. “She flushed them. And I—I got so mad and I…” A sob breaks out of me. “I did something horrible to her. And I can’t fix it.”
Drew stops. It’s raining harder now, the drops playing a soft, insistent song against the umbrella we’re squished under.
“Hannah?”
It’s dark now, and he is a smudge of charcoal above me, soft and shifting.
“Yes?”
“You’re alive,” Drew says softly. “And she’s alive. You can still fix it.”
But that’s the problem: Mae’s the one who knows how to fix things. I just know how to break them.
When we get to the train station, Drew slips something into my pocket.
“Ten Percs. That’s all I’m giving you. Then we deal with this the good old-fashioned way.”
“What’s that?”
Drew smiles. Doesn’t say anything. He wraps my fingers around the umbrella handle. His eyes find mine for just a moment, and I forget all about the pills and the rush of people around us and the rain and the everything. Then he backs away, into the storm. He’s instantly soaked, black hair slicked down, gray eyes bright in the streetlights.