Hannah’s lower lip trembles. “I’m here, okay? I’m sorry. I’ll start … doing whatever you think I should.”
“I’m not sure how much assistance you’ll be if you’re not sober,” I say.
“Dude, Mae. Lay off her—” Micah starts.
“Don’t.” I give him the look my father gives exceptionally obtuse graduate students, then turn back to Hannah. “Have you seen the videos online? Of the wave?”
She nods.
“And you thought the best way to help our parents survive that was to get drunk?”
Hannah steps back, as though I have hit her. And I want to. I have never wanted to slam the back of my hand against her cheek, but right now, that would feel really excellent.
“Hey.” I have never heard this edge in Micah’s voice. “She is not drunk. We had some drinks last night. Responsibly. Don’t make her feel worse than she already does. It’s not helping anyone.”
I cover my face with the palms of my hands because I am very, very tired. And perhaps I have made a tactical error. The psychologist would say this response of mine could result in Hannah falling into a shame spiral—and more nights of me looking for her on the boardwalk at three a.m. before Dad and Mom realize she’s not in bed.
“I’m sorry, Mae,” Nah says. “It was just one night. Just drinks. I’m here, okay? How can I help?”
Does this mean it all starts again? The using and the lying and the detoxing and the days when there is even less light in my sister’s eyes? And will it be the wave’s fault—or mine?
“Do you know who’s going to be blamed for you drinking when they get home?” I ask her. My vocal cords are masking my fear with the sound of anger, a higher pitch than usual, and I’m grateful for that. “Not you. Never you. It will be my fault. And maybe it is. You told me to lay off, and I did, but I shouldn’t have. I should have followed Mom’s rules, and now—”
“Oh, like you’d actually get in trouble.” Maybe she is still drunk and this is why she says: “Besides, I wouldn’t worry, because they might not even come home.”
I stare at her.
“I didn’t mean—” Hannah stops herself, looks around in a panic, then lunges toward the wooden fence that forms a lazy barrier to our front yard.
Three knocks.
The thing about working the problem is that you can’t work all the problems at once. And I don’t have time to work the problem of my sister.
I need to help my parents come home.
there is no point to me.
Bathroom Stall Door
Peet’s Coffee
Westwood, Los Angeles
5
Hannah
On this first night, we sleep in Mom and Dad’s room. I lie on Mom’s side and Mae lies on Dad’s and we hold hands and watch CNN, which is the only light in the room. It’s on mute because they keep replaying the cell phone videos where everyone is screaming.
We made up. It took ten hours, but when she offered to braid my hair, I knew we were okay.
It wasn’t like the vodka just fell into my mouth. I know I made a choice, the wrong choice. But it’s hard to explain to my sister about why I did it. Hard to explain to myself. I’m not saying Mae’s lucky for what happened to her before she officially became one of us (Mom says she’s always been one of us, and I agree), but I think it made her strong. Maybe knowing you are safe and loved and that all your needs will be met is the trade-off for my weakness.
If Mom and Dad were here, it would all begin again, right away: the random drug tests at home, more meetings in the Circle of Sad, extra appointments with Dr. Brown. As it is, Mae keeps checking my pupils, and her nostrils flare so much I know she’s checking for whiffs of booze on me.
“It was just one time,” I say. “A slipup. It won’t happen again.”
Mae’s eyes slide toward me, and you can almost see her brain working behind the bright turquoise of them, like her brain is a really fast, expensive computer: assessing, calculating, sorting.
“I don’t think it works that way, Nah. All the websites say—”
“Can you at least let me be the expert on my own shit? You can know best about everything else—space is all yours, okay? The whole universe.”
Nobody gets under my skin like my sister.
That thinking crinkle we both get—it’s like our bodies know we’re sisters, even if our blood doesn’t—forms between her two pale eyebrows. When Mae gets it, it means she’s confused. Which means you rarely see the crinkle on her face.
“I’m just trying to help,” she says.
“You can help by trusting me, for once.” In the blue light of the TV, she glows a little, milky-white skin and hair the color of wheat. Light to my dark. How cliché is that? “I’m clean. I didn’t take any pills. And I’m not going to. I just fucked up because Micah had the stuff and—”
“He shouldn’t have let you.”
“He’s my boyfriend, not my boss. Micah doesn’t let me do anything. Drinking isn’t my problem, anyway.”
She gives me a look.
“Legit addicts are way worse than I ever was,” I say. “I was the one who told Mom and Dad I was using. I wasn’t, like, stealing from them to buy smack on the boardwalk or something.”
Everyone keeps telling me I’m an addict. I’m not. I had a problem, and now I don’t. I’m only seventeen—you can’t be an addict when you’re seventeen. What happened to sowing wild oats and experimenting and all that? They’ve written me off before I’m even legally allowed to vote.
Mae squeezes my hand. “You can talk to me. Just because we’re not the same doesn’t mean I can’t understand.”
“You can’t. This one thing, Mae—you can’t.”
People that don’t wake up every morning feeling like what’s the point will never understand. It’s impossible. They say: exercise, meditate, think happy thoughts, snap out of it, wear this crystal, drink this tea, find your goddamn bliss. But I literally—and I am not exaggerating—do not remember a time when I was truly happy. Except for when I was on Percocet. Those fuckers in their fancy labs actually figured out how to bottle happiness. Thing is, when you don’t have those diamonds in you, it’s all worse. So much worse. The Sad is so big it’s like, I don’t know, it’s like that movie Mae loves where the astronaut can’t get back to the ship and he just floats off into the complete, utter, terrifying darkness of space listening to cowboy music. My sister studies the void—but I look into it Every. Single. Day.
The universe is so big and terrifying, and we are so small and weak. What is the point of getting out of bed in the morning when you are so utterly insignificant?
I turn away from her, push my face into the pillow, and the tears come fast and hard because—
“It smells like her,” I say into the cotton, into the pretty forget-me-nots Mom picked out.
Mae scoots closer and presses her nose to the pillow. “Roses.”
She rubs her palm between my shoulder blades, which always makes me feel better, I don’t know why. After a while, after she smooths away my crying, I hear her sit up, and when I look over, Mae is holding Dad’s pillow to her face. I know exactly what it smells like: my great-grandpa’s cologne, Brut, which Dad started wearing after he died. Sweet and cedary. Dad says it keeps his feet on the ground, since his head is mostly in space.