I sit on that train and ride it all the way to the end of the line, ride it like my sister did that morning when she was alone and cold and desperate and scared.
He’s right: I don’t know her. Not really. I thought I did. But I had to ask her what she wanted because I had no idea. And when I think about her now, the only adjective that comes to mind is broken. I don’t know when she stopped being the person who sang along to Hocus Pocus or the fun girl who worked at the coffee shop by our house. The one who went to bonfires with surfers and loved jumping into waves and making goofy playlists.
I guess I wasn’t looking.
Jean Cocteau—artist, writer, filmmaker—said of opium: I owe it my perfect hours. It makes me so sad, to imagine Nah’s perfect hours being ones that are all alone, hiding, filled with pills to help her forget the wave and whatever made her start taking the pills in the first place. Covered in vomit, her lips blue from cold. Skin breaking out in a rash. I want to help her see what Ben showed me about time, how it can be a gift. How a minute, if you really let yourself live it, can be everything.
The past few days, I’ve been kicking my research into high gear. Thinking I was working the problem. I thought maybe if I could figure out why the pills were so attractive, I could provide an alternative. As though it would be a simple bait and switch. What, exactly, are the pills giving her that life isn’t? And then how can I give her that thing in a healthier form?
But I don’t think it’s that simple. I’ve been trying to give Nah answers instead of asking her questions. It took a drug dealer, of all people, to point out my error. A drug dealer who is probably a lot smarter than I’ve been giving him credit for. Another error on my part.
I need to find a safe way to help my sister face whatever it is that got her started on pills in the first place. All that sadness she had even before the clinic and the wave. I think the answers might be at Dharma Bums, but I have to conduct more tests until I’m certain.
When the train stops at Kendall, I step off and walk toward the cushion that’s waiting for me. The silence. The something—or Something Else—that hides in there, waiting for all of us.
this is what dying looks like.
Mirror
Room 365
Boston Children’s Hospital
see what you are made of.
Toilet Seat
Room 365
Boston Children’s Hospital
sit in a circle
stay there until
the beginning has no end
Door
Group Therapy Room
Boston Children’s Hospital
the miracle can go fuck itself.
Suboxone Package
Medication Dispensary
Boston Children’s Hospital
diamonds are a girl’s best friend.
Opioid Addiction Hotline Sign
Copley Station
Boston
31
Hannah
Somehow I knew he’d be here. Waiting for me.
Drew sits beneath my angel like an offering. It’s snowing again, and the flakes swirl around him, around her. It is so quiet here. Day fading to night. The garden empty, too cold for strolling.
He stands. Slow. He’s afraid I’ll run away again.
“They won’t let me see you.” His eyes are dark, a night sea. “I came. To your house.”
“I know.”
I heard his voice last night after I got back, even through my closed bedroom door upstairs. The one that no longer has a lock.
His voice, like the last lifesaver on a sinking ship, floating just beyond reach. For just one second, I wanted something more than a pill.
“Did you … I called.” He laughs softly. “I even emailed you.”
“I couldn’t have anything in … there.”
There.
Sweating through the clothes Aunt Nora brought. Shivering under starchy hospital sheets. My bones grinding against one another, muscles spasming, my body a traitor, punishing me. The nightmares, the wave and Mom in that grave and Dad running away from her, toward Rebecca Chen. Me, alone on an island in the middle of a sea and nobody will ever find me because I am invisible, I am invisible. Waking up alone, cold, cold, make it stop.
Finally saying, out loud, I want to die.
“You didn’t tell me,” I say, “that it was my dad who said we should do right by the miracle.”
His face wobbles a little. “I didn’t know if … it was weird? Me looking him up.”
I shake my head. “Not weird.”
Beautiful. Perfect. But not weird.
Drew is in front of me now, and his cheeks are so red from the cold, he must have been out here forever, waiting. He whispers, “Hannah, can … can I hold you?”
There is pure agony on his face, and so much hope. And fear. I don’t know what to do with that.
I’m just trying to keep the lights on.
“Please,” he says.
“Why?”
I’m the shell you throw back into the ocean, not the one you put into your pocket. I’m just a shell, I want to tell him. There is nothing here. Nothing left inside.
“Because I love you.”
My eyes fill with the ocean.
He steps so close I can feel his breath on my cheek. “I love you so much, Hannah, so fucking much, and it’s killing me right now, not touching you.”
Through the blur of tears, I see this rope he’s throwing me, trying to pull me in to safety.
Take it, someone whispers. Take it, Hannah.
Despite everything, Mom is still a hopeless romantic. She always has been.
I fall forward, against his chest, and Drew’s arms come around me and he holds me close and tight as he lets loose a shuddering breath.
I look up at him and I try to find the words, but he says softly, “Wait.”
Then he pulls off his gloves and runs his hands up my neck, his fingers trailing along my jaw.
“You should have a scarf on,” he murmurs.
I smile. “At least I’m not wearing sandals.”
A spark of light flies across Drew’s eyes, like a bit of the meteor shower I once watched with Dad. It had been just us two—for once, without Mae. One of the best nights of my life is tucked away in this boy’s eyes.
“I’ve wanted to kiss you from the moment you came up to me at school,” he says. “I didn’t want to sell you pills, Hannah, I wanted to kiss you. But I thought the pills were the only way to get you, to get anyone, to see me.”
Maybe we see each other because we’re both invisible.
“Drew…” I reach up. Grasp his hand where it rests near my cheek. “You don’t have to—”
“But I do. I have to say this.” He grips my shoulders. “I’m so sorry, so goddamn sorry, for what I did to you. To everyone I sold to. But especially you. If anything had happened to you … I don’t think I could have … When Mae told me you were in the hospital, and I knew you were hurting so bad and I helped put you in there, it fucking tore me apart.” His eyes fill. Spill over. “I don’t deserve you. I know that. And your family’s probably right, that I should stay away, but I just … I feel like that wave brought you to me. It washed you up on my shore. I wish it hadn’t, for your sake. I wish your parents were still here, but they’re not and I am, and, Hannah, I think we can help each other do right by the miracle. You already do—you’re my miracle. Fuck, that’s so cheesy, but you are. And I’m not him, Hannah. I’m not Micah. I would have come that day.” His voice breaks. “I would have walked into the clinic and told you that you didn’t have to do it if you didn’t want to. And if you did, I would have gone in that room with you—I would never have let you do that alone, unless you wanted to. Because I see you, Hannah. I see you. Your kindness, your creativity, the way you give the whole world the middle finger, and—”