I did warn him. But then he brought in Heisenberg and wormholes.
“I told you: I’m patient. And you did say you needed space. But.” He tucks my hair behind my ear. “I don’t think you’re being fair to yourself. Mae, you need to have a life. It’s not healthy—”
I think we are about to have our first fight.
“Ben, my sister is very sick. I’m all she has.” I look around, but no one seems to be paying attention to us. It’s finals week—everyone has better things to do than eavesdrop on the barista and his girlfriend. “You’re an only child, and both your parents are alive. Nobody in your family has a serious disease. I don’t think you understand what I’m dealing with! I can’t just frolic around with you all the time.”
I’ve hurt him, I can tell. I am SO BAD WITH WORDS.
“I wish I could explain with numbers,” I say. “I don’t mean to be rude about it—”
“I wasn’t talking about me when I said you need to have a life. I know where I rank on your list of priorities. And I’m right where I should be, all things considered.” Ben clears his throat. “I want you to go, Mae.”
I freeze. Is he breaking up with me? I stare at him, and he must know what I’m thinking, because he reaches over and takes the mug out of my hands and then takes my hands, kisses the palm of the one that’s shaking the most. Because I hold him. He’d said that before. I hold him in the palm of my hand.
“I meant Annapolis,” he murmurs.
I close my eyes. Breathe. The feeling I had when I thought he was breaking up with me: hunger.
“I thought you’d be happy I was staying,” I say. “Long-distance relationships don’t usually work out.”
His lips turn up. “I’m in love with a future astronaut who’s going to be four hundred kilometers above Earth. I’ve had to make my peace with the whole long-distance thing.”
There it is again: love.
“Well.” I pull my hands away, gulp down the scalding coffee. “You don’t need to worry about that for a while now.”
“You told me that without fighter pilot experience, you were seriously hampering your chances of becoming an astronaut candidate.”
I wanted to be as well-rounded as possible. Mission essential from both a military and scientific standpoint. I wanted to be a commander. Now I’ll just be another rocket scientist. Much easier to ignore.
“I’ll need to distinguish myself even more as an engineer, but not everyone chosen is military. I’ll still … be in the running.”
I don’t care what River says about not being able to help Hannah. Her brother—that was different. Heroin: that’s a very hard drug, the hardest. Yes, it’s technically the same thing as Nah’s pills, but my sister’s not sticking needles into her arm. And once she’s had time to process the grief and—
Ben hoists himself onto the counter, slides across it, and jumps down next to me, then pulls me close. For just a second, the roaring in my head stops. Hug meditation.
Goddamn you, Heisenberg. My person, in the chaos. But you lose people all the time, in chaos. It’s the easiest way to lose someone. In crowded train stations, for instance. In amusement parks. In waves.
River’s wrong. There’s no freedom in the chaos. None. If you ask me, I don’t think the Buddha knew how to work the problem.
Ben runs his fingers through my short strands of hair. “I want you here, always, but … it’s your dream, Mae. You can’t stay for your sister. It won’t make her better. And you’ll regret it, maybe lose your chance. You’ve worked so hard—”
“She’s all I’ve got, Ben.”
“No,” he says, soft. “She’s not.”
“I know you mean that.” I rest my palms on his chest. “But there are so many variables that can prove you wrong: women named Cathy or Rebecca, waves in Malaysia. Heroin and OxyContin and cancer and all the things, all the things that could take you. So many THINGS.”
“Mae, it’s too late.”
“What?”
“It’s too late to worry about the variables. You and me—this is already in motion.” He rests the tips of his fingers against my cheeks. “Let me put it this way: We’re on the rocket and it’s already blasted off. Anything—everything—could go wrong. But we just have to sit back and—”
“Ride the ride?”
He smiles. “River strikes again.”
I nod. “I saw her on the train today.”
“Dharma insurgency?”
“I was ambushed.” I sigh. “I don’t know what to say, Ben. You and River want me to give up on my sister, and I can’t. I won’t. It’s way too early to back off. I’ve got my whole life ahead of me—hopefully. But she might not.” I rest my cheek against his for a moment, breathe in his coffee-and-wind scent, which is really the most wonderful thing, then step away. “And, honestly, you saying these things—about how I’m not being fair to myself, not making healthy choices—it’s not helping. I know you mean well. And please don’t take this the wrong way, but I’ve only known you for two months. You don’t know what’s best for me. But I do.”
He swallows, nods. “All very astute observations. I’m sorry for pushing. I just … It breaks my heart, not thinking of you in your uniform, or up in those fighter jets.”
“It breaks mine, too.”
Saying that out loud makes me feel more naked than that night he climbed through my window.
Ben pulls me close again, hugs me hard. I can feel all the things he wants to say but won’t. I’ve never had someone be disappointed in me. I hate what it does to me on a cellular level.
My phone rings. Aunt Nora.
“Mae?” Her voice is a code red, high and shrill. “Hannah’s not in her room. Is she with you?”
Sound waves, traveling. Grandma calling: Honey? Something’s happened.
I stare at Ben, the phone falling from my hand. I see Hannah in my mind, asking me to name a star after her. Talking about the Little Prince.
Ben’s picking up my phone, talking to me, his brown eyes—my mother’s eyes—searching mine.
“Mae? What’s wrong? Who was that?”
“I think my sister’s going to hurt herself.”
I want to die.
Courtyard Table
Copley Library
Boston
34
Hannah
I decide to watch.
For once, just once, I want to see someone read my words.
I want to see what their face does.
If they care.
If they feel the same way, too.
I don’t think I’m the only person who thinks these thoughts that I write down. These acorns, I think maybe they’re inside all of us.
But maybe I am the only person.
I need to know.
If the words matter.
If any of it does.
If I do.
I’m at Copley Library, the beautiful one that Drew brought me to all those weeks ago, on what a part of me thinks of as our first date: the day we ditched school.
I ignore the tourists standing in front of the marble staircase flanked by lions, walk past the little cafe. I had tea there with Dad once. Earl Grey. Just the two of us, a father-daughter date. I hate missing him, missing this person who hurt us all.