33
Mae
ISS Location: Low-Earth Orbit
Earth Date: 5 December
Earth Time (EST): 15:37
Boston is a small world.
River is on my train, her eyes closed, palms on her thighs. Outright meditating on the subway. Her hair is covered by a turban so that she looks like a young Zadie Smith, and a thick scarf with a diamond pattern is tossed around her neck like a feather boa.
Mom, you would love her.
When she opens her eyes, I switch seats so I can sit down next to her. “You weren’t kidding when you said you could meditate anywhere.”
She laughs. “Gotta get your serenity on when you can, my friend. Especially during finals season. I would tell you never to go to grad school, but I doubt NASA would like that.”
Who am I if I’m not the girl who’s going to be an astronaut? I know I can’t assume that taking Annapolis off the table means I won’t be an astronaut, but it might make it harder, and it’s already almost impossible.
I sink into the plastic groove of the chair. This tiredness, it must be what getting old feels like.
“What’s on your mind, Mae?”
I’ve only been to Dharma Bums a few times, but River’s a regular at Castaways, too, so I’ve gotten to know her a bit these past few months. She hasn’t heard the whole Winters saga, but she knows about the wave, and a little about Nah.
“My sister got out of detox last week.”
“That’s heavy.”
“Yes.” I pull at my gloves. “I’m trying to help her, but she … she’s depressed. I don’t know how to fix it. I’m not a neuroscientist. Nothing I do works. She broke up with her boyfriend. Both of them. If I could just figure out how to help her, how to fix this—”
“Then everything would be all right?” She raises an eyebrow.
“Well, not everything. But some things.”
She cocks her head to the side. “How are you, Mae?”
“Me? I’m fine. But Hannah—”
“Mae.” Her voice is soft. “How are you?”
I swallow. “I feel … like I’m on a spaceship with a hole in it.”
River nods as she runs her fingers through the ends of her scarf. “I think everyone feels that way, at one point or another. The First Noble Truth, and all.”
Life is suffering. These Buddhists don’t go for the happily ever after. I think that is why I like so many of them. Normal people don’t talk this way, but I have never been good around normal people. It’s nice not to talk about TV or celebrities or diets.
“I keep trying to make sense of everything,” I say. “But I can’t. All the ways I know don’t work. This guy in her life—he’s a jerk, but he said something that was right. That I don’t know my sister. And so I’ve been trying this past week—asking her questions. Just sitting with her. Trying to understand her. But it’s not working. Nothing makes her happy.”
“Ever heard of hungry ghosts?”
I shake my head. “Buddhist thing?”
“Buddhist thing.” The train stops, and River glances at the door. “You on for a little longer?”
I nod. “I’m meeting Ben at Castaways.”
“Okay, then.”
River shifts so she’s facing me better. The people around us have earbuds in or are reading books or tablets. Someone is talking loudly on their phone. Something about broken Christmas lights and a cat. All of us bundled in coats and scarves even though it’s stuffy in here, holding bags from holiday shopping or backpacks heavy with books for finals studying. The floor is wet with melted snow. This is a good place for a dharma bomb to go off.
“In Tibetan Buddhism, hungry ghosts are these demons who keep trying to fill the holes inside them with people and things and experiences, but nothing ever satisfies,” she says. “Never fills the hole. Never gives them lasting happiness. It’s a fucked-up, never-ending cycle of misery. They live with the illusion that happiness comes from outside themselves, so they keep looking for the thing that will give it to them. Until they realize there is nothing in this world that will give them happiness, they will keep starving.”
I stare at her. “Like in Bleach.”
“What’s that?”
“This manga series I love. There are these monsters that the main character has to fight—they’re called Hollows. Ghosts who haven’t passed over. They terrorize the living because they have unfinished business, and they roam around, trying to feed their souls, but it doesn’t work, and then Reapers have to kill them for good or send them to a better place.”
“Cool. When I’m done reading about gender constructs in the eighteenth century, I’ll have to check it out.” I laugh. Wow, am I glad I chose the sciences. “Yeah—hungry ghosts are definitely hollow. That’s a good way of thinking about it. It’s like when you’re sad, and you think a new girlfriend or a new haircut or outfit will make you happier. But you get those things, and you still feel empty inside. Our suffering comes because we think people or things are for keeps. They’re not. Or we think they’ll solve our problems. They won’t.”
“My sister’s a hungry ghost,” I say. “I think she’s been one for a long time.” I frown. “But I don’t understand why. I mean, it would almost make sense if I were the one with the problems—being a foster kid, all that. Hannah had this perfect life—my parents, good school, money. She’s so pretty. When she’s not on pills, she’s really funny and weird, but good weird. I know she has depression—even before my parents died, I knew that. I just don’t understand why. Or how to convert her sadness into something like happiness.”
“You can’t make her better, Mae. That’s Hannah’s job.”
The train lurches to another stop—I glance at the sign on the platform. One more.
“But she can’t do her job—of getting better. She needs help. She needs me. Or … someone. Something. I don’t know.”
I feel like I’m saying Ben’s favorite words more and more these days. I hate that I can know so much about astrophysics and so little about human beings. Drew was right about me getting an A in AP Psych, but I don’t know how that happened.
“Do you think you can control what’s going on inside her?” River asks. “Or that you can fill the hollowness she’s experiencing?”
“No. But I can show her how to do that—like meditation, right? Or figure out who can help her. I can’t just accept my sister’s depression, or addiction. Then I’d be accepting Hannah ruining her life. Wasting it. My parents—if they saw what was happening to her … I can’t give up on her. That would be wrong. Selfish.”
River’s quiet for a moment. Twists a silver ring around her middle finger. When she looks up at me, her eyes have a slight mist over them.
“My brother died a few years ago,” she says. “Heroin overdose.”
People say things to me: I’m sorry, Oh my god, I didn’t know. Silence, I have learned, is golden. I rest my hand over hers. River’s fingers tighten around mine.
I am so afraid I will have to say those same words to someone someday: My sister. Died. Overdose.