His voice is low, urgent. “I’ve been trying to help her. She just—”
“How? How have you helped her? By getting her high? By helping her forget who she is? You never talked to me. Or my aunt and uncle. My cousin. You could have told us. How bad it was. You didn’t. And I know why. You didn’t want her to be mad at you. To push you away like she pushes away anyone who tries to help her. So you’d rather have her like you than have her healthy. You’re a fucking coward.”
He flinches. “I know you don’t believe I’ve been watching out for her, but I have. It’s all I do these days. I’m not dealing anymore. I’m not giving her pills. She promised she was going to stop. If I try to bring it up, she pushes me away. You’re right, she does that. But I can’t help her if she doesn’t let me in. She can’t break up with you. But she can with me. If I’d lectured her, or if I’d told you—she’d have shut me out. For good. I thought if I could just show her she didn’t need the pills—”
“So, what, you thought you could kiss it better?” I shake my head. “God, you’re one of them.”
“One of who?”
The train lurches, and I have to work very hard not to be pushed up against this creep.
“Guys never paid attention to me until my parents died. I never knew that was a factor in male attraction, but apparently it is. Suddenly, boys at school who are not my lab partners are talking to me. It’s not because I’m the new girl. I think they like the idea of saving me, of being some knight in shining armor. They want to swoop in and get a little rush of oxytocin. I think they like the drama of it. We’re these tragic figures to them. Being with us is like starring in an indie movie.” I stare him down. “In your case, though, I bet you thought she could validate you somehow. Right? Like maybe you could be good again if you got her clean. Either way, it has nothing to do with Hannah and everything to do with you.”
I’ve never said this out loud, and I’m suddenly wondering: Is Ben one of those guys, too? Because Riley was the only boy who ever showed interest in me all throughout high school, and yet suddenly a brilliant, MIT version of Ichigo Kurosaki meets me and wants to be with me after one night of astronautical engineering. Carl Jung would call this synchronicity, but Jung was a mystic more than a psychologist, and his reasoning is therefore suspect.
Drew shakes his head. “So you’re suggesting that the only reason I’d be with Hannah is that I want to use her to feel better about my own piece-of-shit self? Because there would be no other reason to want to be with her, is that it?”
“You are misinterpreting my analysis—”
“I don’t think I am. Not in this case. I think you got an A in AP Psych and you think you know everything. You’re the smartest person on this train, and I’m a lowly dealer. I get it, I do: I don’t deserve her. Maybe if I were like Ben, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. But you’re not accounting for the fact that someone might want Hannah for other reasons. Because she’s beautiful and she sees the world in a way no one else does. She walks her own path, even when it’s confusing and hard. She actually takes the time to get to know the kind of people the rest of the world writes off. No. All those things are irrelevant in your calculus.”
“Don’t tell me about my sister. You’ve known her for two seconds. You’re not the expert on her.”
Drew’s eyes flash. “And you are? You live with her. You supposedly know her better than anyone, right? But here’s what I don’t get, Mae: If you’re the expert, then how the hell did she get on the pill train to start? Because when I met her, she’d been on that ride for a while.”
The T jolts to a stop. I can hardly breathe. My coat, sealing me in, a straitjacket. I feel like Mom, this enclosed space taking out all the air. All those elevators she hated getting into. I understand now, why she wanted to take the stairs.
I hate him. I hate him so much. I hate him more than climate change deniers.
“Except for when she was sober this summer, your sister’s been swallowing pills for a year and a half,” he says. “I’ve only known her since October. So how is this all my fault? Where have you been? Where have any of you fucking been? I’m the only person in this whole city who sees her. Who can’t stop looking.”
His words hit me with the force of the wave. He’s right. I didn’t do anything until it was too late, and even then it was Mom and Dad who figured out what her problem was. This is my fault. My parents drowned, and there was nothing I could do about it. My sister has been drowning for months, and I’ve been standing on the shore so close—but instead of looking out for her in that water, jumping in and pulling her out, I’ve had my eyes on the stars.
Selfish. I’ve been so selfish.
Maybe I didn’t try to save her because a part of me knew that I’d have to give up Annapolis to do that. I’d hoped flushing her pills or calling Micah would do the trick. I was trying to pass her off to him, wasn’t I?
I was willfully ignorant. The biggest crime you can commit.
Drew stands. “Call the cops. Call the damn mayor, if you want. I don’t deserve her—that’s true. But she’s the one good thing in my life. And I know I can be a good thing in hers. And you’re not keeping me from her.”
I reach up and grab his arm, squeeze so hard he winces as I pull myself up. He’s tall, taller than Hannah, even, so I have to stand on my toes to say what I have to say properly.
“You’re right: You don’t deserve her.” I swallow. “But … you’re also right about me. I have to … to recalculate my course.”
He nods.
“Here’s the thing, though,” I say. “You almost took her from me. In a way, you already have. Her addiction isn’t your fault. It’s no one’s fault. But easy access to pills—that is your fault. Not talking to my family so we can all keep her safe—also your fault. If you really love her, you’ll stay away.” I drop my hand. “Our family can’t handle one more disaster, and that’s all you’ll be. You’ll hurt her. You already have. And she’ll hurt you. That’s what she does. And then she’ll feel bad about it. And it will make everything worse. We’ll take it from here. Okay?”
Drew grips the bar above us as the train takes a sharp turn. “The difference between you and me, Mae, is that when I look at your sister, I don’t see a problem. I see a solution.” The smile he gives me is sad, and old. It’s seen a lot of things maybe I haven’t. “She’s so much more than any of you have ever given her credit for.” He leans forward. “And I’ll tell you a little something I’ve picked up as a dealer. The pills, they have nothing to do with the stuff everyone thinks users take them for. Hannah doesn’t take them because of the wave or the abortion or because she fell in with the wrong crowd.”
“But … why, then?”
“I think you need to spend some time getting to know your sister better, Mae.”
The train stops, and Drew turns, folding himself into the trickle of bodies exiting at Harvard Square. I stare after him long after the doors shut and the train starts again.