Getting Annapolis was all that was keeping me from falling right into this hole in my chest. Now I’ve been accepted, and there is nothing to distract me. Nah’s sober, graduation’s a couple months away, I’m on the path to becoming an astronaut.
And yet this hole, this hole is eating me alive.
I stand there in the middle of Boston Common, stunned. This is what those old sages were talking about, and Tite Kubo, the author of Bleach. If I died right now, I’d be a Hollow, and Ichigo Kurosaki would have to battle me, and that Soul Reaper would totally kick my ass. Hungry ghosts aren’t just Hannah or the ghouls in Bleach—addicts or people with issues. Anyone can be a hungry ghost. EVERYONE is a hungry ghost.
I wrap my arms around myself and try really hard to feel my feet on the ground because I suddenly feel floaty, but not in a good, zero-gravity way.
I am an empty hole that nothing can fill.
Not even NASA.
I’ve lost everything.
Even the stars.
A thought that I have had many times since my parents died swirls round and round in my head, like space debris: Who am I?
If I’m not the girl who is going to be an astronaut, or the girl who is but isn’t over the moon about it, then WHO AM I?
“Oh god.”
I don’t know who I am. I DON’T KNOW WHO I AM.
Am I a daughter? But if my parents are dead, then does that un-daughter me? As my quantitative value of being an orphan has increased, the qualitative value has decreased. Before the wave, I was a lucky orphan. Now I’m just a particularly unique one.
Am I a sister, even though Nah and I don’t share blood? And if she starts using again and dies, then would I still have a sister, even if that sister doesn’t exist anymore?
Am I a girl who likes manga and brownies and boys that smell like coffee and wind?
Am I a member of the armed forces?
An honors student?
A girl? But what is gender really?
An atheist? But I feel my dead parents and that is not very atheistic.
An American? Yes, but only as long as there is something called America, which might not be that much longer, let’s be honest, or might be as long as ancient Greece, which would be a pretty good run, BUT THAT IS NOT THE POINT.
“Dad.” He can’t hear me, but I whisper his name again anyway, and my cognitive defects are becoming more and more apparent, and I think maybe the wave has filled me with something dead, because I am maybe dead inside.
I miss them so much.
I sit down right where I am, in the center of Boston Common, and I’m not sure I can get back up any time soon.
I am floating and sitting at the same time. I am living a Zen koan, an unsolvable riddle, like what is the sound of one hand clapping, which I never understood because ONE HAND CAN’T CLAP. And now I am holding up my hand and hitting the air—DAMN THESE ZEN BASTARDS. The sound of one hand clapping is nothing. So does that mean everything is nothing? No thing is a thing.
“Help,” I whisper.
“Mae? What’s wrong?”
I look up. Nah’s standing over me, a worried frown on her face.
“Nothing.” I keep clapping my one hand. “Nothing. It’s NOTHING.”
“Bullshit.”
I stand up, a little off-balance, because I can feel Earth rotating now, and it’s too fast.
My sister is so happy about the letter in my pocket. Annapolis was her Christmas gift to me. I can’t tell her I’m empty. That the hole in my spaceship is so big, I might not make it back to Earth. So I just stare at her.
“Mae. Tell me what’s up. You’re freaking my shit out right now.”
And if you’re on a spaceship that might not make it back to Earth, and maybe you’re all alone in a Soyuz you don’t know how to fly, like Dr. Stone in Gravity, then are you REALLY alone? Because she saw a dead person and they helped her get home. And I can’t help but feel like Mom and Dad wouldn’t let me die up there. I don’t believe in Hannah’s Something Else. But if there’s no Something Else, then why did Yuri—
“Mae, you are freaking me out. What is wrong?” She presses a hand to my forehead. “You’re all sweaty. Should we go home, or—”
“When Yuri Gagarin came back from space, he said something weird,” I say.
“Which one is Yuri Gaga—whatever?” Nah asks.
“Yuri Gagarin. The first human to enter space. 1961. Cosmonaut.”
“So Russia beat us to space?”
“We got the moon. Hannah, that’s not the POINT.” I press the heels of my hands into my eye sockets. Earth is going too fast.
“Whoa. Okay. What did he say?”
My hands drop. “He said: ‘I looked and looked but I didn’t see God.’”
“About when he was in space, you mean?” she says.
“Yes. Can you believe it?!”
“Okay … so he was an atheist in the Soviet Union. What’s so surprising about that? He’s just saying he has proof that God doesn’t exist. Or so he thinks.” She rolls her eyes. “Typical rocket scientist.”
I grip her shoulders. “But he looked, Nah. One of the foremost scientific minds in the world. He knew better. Why did he look? YURI GAGARIN IS FUCKING WITH MY SERENITY.”
Yuri didn’t just look: He looked—and looked. Like he was hoping to find something. Perhaps it was just dry Russian humor. But I’m not convinced. It’s that second looked that’s getting me. Looked and looked. Once: You’re a cheeky atheist. Twice: You really looked for God-with-a-capital-G up there. Just in case.
She cocks her head to the side. “How could he not? You get up there, you have to wonder, right? Some of the smartest people in the world—Mom included—believe there’s something out there. It’s not just the weirdos and little people who believe.” She leans in. “Also: He said he didn’t see God. But everyone knows you feel God.”
That gives me pause.
“What does God feel like?”
She loops her arm though mine, and we start toward where Nate is trying to get a tan.
“I think it’s different for everyone,” Nah says. “For me, it’s that feeling I get when I look at a kick-ass sunset over the ocean or when I realized Drew had been secretly using Dad’s miracle life lesson on me all along. When I read one of Yoko’s poems.”
“But that’s not God,” I say, stubborn. “That’s neurology. Psychology. Chemicals in your brain responding to outside stimuli.”
“Every culture has its own name for God, its own way of talking about God. Dad said he was an atheist, but get him talking about the universe and he sounded downright religious. He just used big science words instead of woo-woo words, whatever. We’re all talking about the same thing, I think. Remember what he said? I don’t need to pray. I just need to look into a telescope.” She grins, sneaky. “He looked and looked.”
“I’ll allow that it feels like an intelligence is at work,” I say. “But Dad always said that the universe is like a complex symphony playing itself, and our job is to listen.”
He also said he wanted to leave our mother. Maybe I should stop quoting him.
The hole widens because I am a hungry ghost and I want my dad to come back from the dead and make me a happy atheist again.