When I step in the house, Nate shuts the door and then fixes me with a look of pure disgust.
“There is vomit all over your coat. Did you know that?”
I look down. So there is.
“Huh.”
“Is that her?” Aunt Nora calls. She rushes into the room, stares at me. “Where have you been? It’s nearly two in the afternoon!”
“The train.”
“What?”
“I was riding the train,” I say.
She looks at Nate. “Is that a euphemism? Does riding the train mean—”
“No,” he says. “I don’t think so.”
The one she’s thinking of is riding the dragon. But it doesn’t feel like a dragon, Oxy. It feels like a phoenix, maybe. Because, after, you’re just ash.
I pull off the coat, my boots, hat. All in a pile. Water all over the rug. Nice rug.
God, it’s hot in here. Why the hell is it so hot in here? I pull off my sweater.
“I need some water—”
“Tony, get the car,” Aunt Nora’s saying over her shoulder, her voice sharp. She crosses to me, stares at my arms. They are covered in a red rash. “I’m taking you to the ER.”
“What?” I try to pull away, but she has an iron grip. “I’m fine—”
Aunt Nora’s shaking her head. “I can’t believe I didn’t see—”
Mae appears on the stairs, a shadow. “I should have told you sooner.”
At first, I think she’s talking to me, about Micah, about lying to me, but then I see she’s talking to my aunt. Because she told her. About the pills. I stare at my sister.
“You fucking bitch.”
Mae flinches as the words come out of my mouth.
I need a pill. Now. I need a pill, fuck, fuck, fuck.
“I trusted you,” I say. The tears come, fast and hard.
She shakes her head. “No, you didn’t. You don’t. You never told me about getting pills from Drew, or that you wanted to be with him and not Micah. You hid the last postcard Mom and Dad sent us—I found it in your room. You didn’t tell me about anything.”
“Well, now you know why I didn’t trust you, you fucking narc,” I snarl.
“Enough,” Nate says.
“Oh, of course. Defend Mae. She’s your favorite and Dad’s and everyone’s. Of course, of course, because I’m Just Hannah—”
“Just the ONLY SISTER I HAVE.” Mae is shouting. I have never heard this sound from her. It freaks me the fuck out.
“I know you’re on a Class B narcotic right now and it might be challenging to fully comprehend what I am about to tell you,” she says, “but do your best, Hannah: I DON’T WANT YOU TO DIE.”
“Well, that makes one of us,” I say.
She stares at me. “You are so unbelievably selfish.”
My sister stands above me—in every way—looking down, her arms crossed, and I am so sick of her up there, always up there, being perfect. The heir and the spare.
“I don’t want your help. I don’t need your help. That doesn’t sound selfish to me. I’m fine on my own. I’m sorry I’m not some scientific problem you can solve, Mae. You don’t get a goddamn gold star for this one.”
“Hannah, honey, please stop—” Aunt Nora starts toward me, but Nate shakes his head.
“She’s fucking high, Mom. You can’t reason with her.”
“You want to go to space, Mae? I’ve already been there,” I shout. “Zero gravity, Lucy in the sky with diamonds. Your fucking Starman is up there, too. Everything you study for, all the answers you’re looking for: I already know them. I don’t need advanced physics and Annapolis to feel weightless. To know the universe doesn’t give a shit about me or you or anyone on this fucking rock. The universe does not have our back.” I head toward the kitchen, toward water and the car in the garage Aunt Nora’s about to force me inside. “As far as I’m concerned, the sooner you’re in outer space, the better. Maybe you can do the Mars mission. Doesn’t it take, like, four years just to get there?”
Her eyes fill—Dad called them tropical eyes. Blue, like the bluest ocean—and I hate her, I hate her.
This entire family, drowning in salt water.
29
Mae
ISS Location: Low-Earth Orbit
Earth Date: 25 November
Earth Time (EST): 19:08
Not all the soup in the world can fix this.
While they’re at the hospital having Hannah drug tested and talking to doctors about how to make her better, Nate and I try to make minestrone, but once everything’s cut up we realize we’re out of stewed tomatoes. We give up on the soup.
“Ever heard of the comic Lenny Bruce?” Nate says.
“Comedy is not of great interest to me.”
“Okay, well, anyway, he was super famous. And a heroin addict. I was reading up on opiates after you told me about Hannah and I keep thinking about this thing Lenny said, how he was certain heroin was going to kill him—but shooting up was like kissing God.” Nate shakes his head. “How can we compete with that?”
What could I give my sister that could possibly be as good as kissing God?
“Hannah would love to kiss God. I think maybe that’s all she’s ever wanted.”
I picture her, that night we put on Mom’s lotion, pressing a hand to her heart and talking about the Something Else in her. God doesn’t exist, obviously, but no one can deny the power of that idea. It’s held most Homo sapiens in thrall since almost the beginning of human civilization.
“What happened to him?” I ask. “To Lenny Bruce.”
“He died on his bathroom floor in Hollywood when he was forty. Overdose.”
I hate the Papaver somniferum.
Like Hannah, the poppy that her pills come from grows tall and thrives in temperate climates. It comes in many colors, but we usually associate it with fields of red. Blood red.
They’re pretty tough, for flowers, but the Papaver somniferum only blooms for a few days. Short life span.
The pod is where the trouble is. After the petals float off, you cut into the pod with a knife, catch the milky sap. Let it harden. And there you have it: opium. Smoke it, swallow it, shoot it into your veins. Crushed dreams and ruined lives.
The molecules in the poppy plant can chemically replicate the oxytocin we get from love or friendship or sex, and even that warm, gooey feeling when you’re holding a sweet baby. It’s why it feels so good. It’s an excess dopamine release in the reward center of the brain.
Hannah doesn’t have that sweet baby she wants to hold, but what is a baby, exactly? It’s someone to care for. Someone who looks up to you. Who depends on you. Someone who you want to be your best self for. Ideally, anyway. Maybe that’s her connection to Drew—maybe he provides oxytocin to her the way Ben provides it for me. But she needs a Ben, not a Drew. Not a drug dealer who is making her sicker. But she can get it from me, a little. It’s human connection that gives you oxytocin. Which is a very good argument for me staying in Boston.
I don’t want my sister to end up like Lenny Bruce. I want her to find other ways to kiss God.