Little Universes

by Heather Demetrios

  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—”

  I kiss him.

  Quick and soft, and then I pull away and murmur against his lips, so cold from waiting for me in the snow, “I love you, Drew Nolan.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I swear my angel’s wings flutter.

  * * *

  We thaw out from the cold on the frayed couch in Drew’s living room, in front of a hissing radiator. I wish I could steal him away from here, from this place with dirty walls. There is a faint scent of stale beer, no decorations, no family photos. No loving touches. It’s a place to crash when you’re too tired or wasted to move.

  “The radiator in my room broke, so it’s better if we’re out here,” he says, tucking another blanket around me. “My dad’s at the pub. Won’t be back for hours.”

  “This time yesterday I was in a hospital bed. Your couch is perfect.” I lean my forehead against his. “I’m glad to be with you. I don’t care where.”

  “Me, too.” He smiles. “How’d you get out of the house? Seemed like they had you under lockdown.”

  “I think they assumed because I’m not really athletic that I would never figure out how to climb out my window. It wasn’t that high up, though. And all the yoga helped. I practically had to sun salutation my way out of there.”

  “You’ll get in trouble, though. When they see you’re gone.”

  I shrug. “Worth it.”

  I settle my legs over his lap and he reaches over and intertwines our fingers. “Was it as bad as I imagined—the hospital?”

  “It sucked. Really hard.”

  “What happens next?”

  “They’re ‘monitoring’ me. If I stay clean, they won’t send me to inpatient rehab. If I don’t, then there’s that. Either way, there’s weekly group therapy in this lame-ass outpatient program.” I roll my eyes. The return of Circle of Sad. “Random drug testing at home. Suboxone—this medicine that helps with getting me off this shit. They took the lock off my bedroom door. My aunt and uncle have never done this before, so once my aunt finishes reading all the books she bought I’m sure they’ll figure out more ways to make my life suck. Right now they just stare at me a lot.”

  “What kind of books? Like, psychology books?”

  “Let me see. There’s Don’t Let Your Kid Kill You, Expecting Better, Addict in the Family … I don’t even want to know what the hell Mae’s reading.”

  He pulls me a little closer. “I wish I could have been there with you.”

  My aunt and uncle have made it clear: I’m not allowed to date a drug dealer. Even a former drug dealer. Not that I care what they allow or don’t allow.

  “I wouldn’t have wanted you to … see me like that.” I frown. “I feel like you always see me at my worst. I wish you could have known me. Before.”

  Drew reaches beneath the blanket, pulls me onto his lap. “If your worst is a girl who hangs out with angels and convinces a hardened criminal to give up his drug-dealing ways just by being herself, by always keeping it real no matter how fucking messy things get, I’d say this Hannah’s pretty great.”

  She’s a shell, I think. But if I said that, it would break his heart. So I don’t.

  “Are you ever gonna kiss me?” I say instead.

  I was the one who kissed him. He kissed me back, but still.

  “You sure you want me to, after the other night? I kinda fucked that up.”

  “Don’t be an idiot.”

  “See? Keeping it real.” Drew smiles, and his eyes are playful and full of light.

  He ducks his head toward mine, and his lips brush against my skin, soft and light, snowflake kisses that melt against me. So gentle. Careful.

  “You won’t break me, Drew.” The hands resting against my cheeks tremble a little. “I’m stronger than you think.”

  He swallows. “I … I know you are.”

  I shift so that my legs straddle his hips, and that one movement unlocks something in Drew, whatever was holding him back. He lets out a low growl, pulls me
close, crushes his lips against mine. This kiss is a homecoming, reminding me I’m not that girl shivering on the hospital bed, that my body isn’t always a traitor.This kiss does right by the miracle.

  A new height. A new high.

  I open, open, open to him, to his breath and lips and hands, to his tongue and his teeth and his skin. Drew kisses me like he wants to pull me inside him, his whole body fusing with mine, sending sparks of light all through me until I’m dizzy, like we’re on carnival swings that spin, faster and faster, higher and higher, and oh God, this new high feels so, so good. I ride this wave, let it take me all the way to the shore.

  When he pulls away, my lips are swollen, and I’m covered with his scent, tea tree and cedar, like the inside of my mom’s hope chest, which we had to put in storage.

  “You smell like hope,” I whisper against his lips. I can feel the blood fly under my face. “Sorry. That was weird. I just—”

  He kisses me again. “So do you.”

  I want to believe him. So badly.

  The high of the kiss melts away, and then I feel it, just like the doctor said I would: the craving. More, I want more.

  That kiss, so good, so perfect—but it wasn’t quite enough.

  I need to feel … calibrated. Normal. Me. Just a little kick in my bloodstream to be me.

  Drew reaches into his pocket. “I have one more diamond for you. Just one.”

  I stare at him.

  On the one hand: Oh, thank God, he knows me so well, he loves me, he has my back. On the other: I just got out of detox. He said he was sorry about the pills. What is he thinking?

  “I don’t know if—” I start, but then the words, they don’t matter anymore. Whatever I was going to say doesn’t matter.

  He holds up a velvet box. Not a pill bottle.

  A bit of Yoko comes to me, slices right into my heart:

  Each time we don’t say

  what we want to say

  we’re dying.

  I want to say to Drew: You can’t save me.

  I want to say: I wish it were a pill. I hate myself for that.

  But I don’t. Because he keeps his eyes on mine as he opens the box. “It’s small.” His lips turn down a little, uncertain. “I hope that’s okay.”

  Nestled inside the black velvet is a tiny teardrop diamond, just a sliver of sparkle, hanging from a thin gold chain. I know he spent everything he had on this. For me.

  I die. For the fiftieth time this week. I die.

  You can’t save me.

  I’m not worth saving.

  “It’s beautiful,” I say instead.

  Drew leans his forehead against mine. “From now on, these are the only kinds of diamonds I will give you. I promise.”

  I wish this was enough. That he was enough.

  I wish I didn’t still want a pill.

  “Hannah.” His voice is rough. “When … when I said I had a diamond for you. For a second, you seemed like…” His eyes fly to mine. “Would you have taken it? If it weren’t a necklace?”

  My eyes fill. I nod. “Yes. I’m sorry. Yes.”

  “Don’t cry,” he murmurs. “It’s okay. It takes time. I’m here. Always. I’ll carry you. I told you that before. I meant it.”

  I shake my head. “And I told you before—you can’t carry me.”

  “Hannah, I would carry you across the damn universe if you needed it.”

  It is the perfect thing to say. I know that. I feel how perfect it is.

  But if there is anything they made clear in detox, it was this: I’m on my own. As per fucking usual. No one can kick this for me. I have to do it myself. I have to not wish a pill were in a velvet box.

  “But you can’t, Drew. You can’t get sober for me. I don’t deserve you. This.” I put my hand over his, over the box, and push it away.

  “Yes, you do,” he insists.

  “You want me to tell you I’ll never use again,” I say.

  “Yes.”

  “I can’t, Drew. I can’t promise you that.” The ocean streams down my face and Drew holds me close and I hate myself for hurting him, for ruining this moment. “In the hospital, I … I realized something. The pills, they, they make me feel normal. Without them, my brain—it just doesn’t work anymore. I need them. To get through senior year.”

  “You don’t. I promise. You just have to get used to not having them again.”

  “You don’t understand! Okay? You can’t possibly. So don’t talk to me like you do, because you don’t.”

  “Okay. You’re right. I’m sorry.” He runs his hands across my back, long, soothing strokes. I never told him how I need that, but he knows, somehow he knows. “You said you were stronger than I think—than any of us think. I believe you. You are, Hannah. So strong. Look what you’ve come through already. You can fight this. I know you can. We can.”

  I cover my face, say the words through the bars of my fingers. Can’t he see I’m in a cell I can’t get out of?

  “I can’t. Not on empty. I’m telling you, my brain just doesn’t—if I just had one—can’t you give me—”

  “No.” He’s firm. Gently slides my fingers back so he can see me. “I’m not holding, and I won’t ever be again, and I will fucking kill anyone who sells to you, and that’s a promise.”

  Drew takes the necklace out of the box, and I shake my head, but he slips it around my neck anyway, secures the clasp.

  I start to cry for real. Horrible, ugly, pathetic tears. “Drew, please … Your cousin. Eddie. He likes me, right? When he was over that one time, he said anything I need, he’d get it for me.”

  “He shouldn’t have fucking said that, and I told him so.”

  “But, Drew, he’ll have something. Even just some Vicodin. Just, I need help to get through … please. I know you love me. I need you. I need your help.”

  “I do love you. I do, Hannah. All of me loves all of you.”

  “Not this part.”

  “Yes, yes: this part, too.”

  I cry harder. Because the way he says it—he’s not on my side. He won’t help. I thought he saw me, but he doesn’t. If he did, he’d help me.

  “Your mom loved Yoko, right?”

  I blink, surprised he remembered from whatever rambling monologue that was from. “Yeah.”

  “Okay, well. Yoko—what would she say to you, huh? Or your mom? What would they say? To help you right now?”

  I’m so tired. Days and days of detox takes it out of you. Everything hurts. Especially him. The desperate fear in his face. I think of the Fox telling the Little Prince: You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed. The Little Prince knows that forever and ever he will be responsible for his thorny rose. And the Fox, too, if he tames him.

  I don’t want to be Drew’s burden. His responsibility.

  I’m such a fucking loser.

  So fucking weak.

  I don’t deserve this diamond, this boy, this breath in my body.

  “My mom can’t say anything to help me now, Drew. She’s dead.” I slide off his lap. “And I think a part of me is, too.”

  An empty shell.

  Nameless.

  Nothing.

  I lean down. Kiss him once. This is goodbye, but I don’t say that.

  I have died so many times this week.

  32

  Mae

  ISS Location: Low-Earth Orbit

  Earth Date: 5 December

  Earth Time (EST): 14:25

  There are so many silences—good ones, like when Ben hugs me tight or I sit on a meditation cushion—but this one scares me. The silence behind her closed door.

  I keep thinking about how quiet my sister’s death would be, if she overdosed: with respiratory suppression, you stop being able to inhale or exhale.

  You forget how to breathe.

  And now, when I open Nah’s bedroom door, I forget how to breathe, too.

  I don’t know this person. This ghost sitting in the window seat.

  An afghan Gram knitted a
long time ago must have been wrapped around her at some point, but it’s fallen to the ground. Nah sits, looking out the window, onto the street, where wind whips hard and vicious through the bare branches, staring at nothing.

  It’s been one week since she’s been back. She hasn’t left this room except for her therapy and drug testing at an outpatient clinic through Boston Children’s. That’s not entirely true—on her first night back after detox, Uncle Tony discovered Nah had snuck out of her window. There’s an alarm on it now that will go off if she opens it. She’s on home study because she refuses to go to school. She’s failing all her classes. I’m not sure if she’ll be able to graduate. I don’t think she cares.

  Aunt Nora hasn’t signed her up for the rehab in Belmont yet, since her tests are coming back negative. But she said she still wants Hannah to go. They agreed that as long as her tests were drug-free, she could wait until the new year. I’ve been looking into research coming out of Europe and other places—maybe we’re doing it all wrong. Maybe the Twelve Steps aren’t getting Nah anywhere. There’s no conclusive data on the method itself—shocking, really. And yet they seem to work for a lot of people.

  I wish my parents were here.

  The breakfast I brought up earlier sits on Nah’s desk, untouched. Blueberry corn pancakes—her favorite.

  “I’m going to Castaways,” I say. “Come with. It’d be good—to get outside. And there’s finally some sun! It’s cold, but we’ll bundle up. Ben will make you something with lots of chocolate. He does pretty good latte art—I bet he could do a tarot card for you.”

  Her hand goes to the necklace around her neck, a tiny diamond. It hangs just above Mom’s Greek evil eye charm. She rubs it with her thumb.

  “Did Drew give you that?” I ask.

  She nods.

  I saw him on our street once. Since Nah can’t climb out the window anymore and she never comes downstairs, I think Drew might just be trying to be as close to her as possible. Gazing up at her window, like a twisted Romeo. But one look at Drew’s face, and I didn’t have it in me to interrogate him. I didn’t know drug dealers wore their hearts on their sleeves, but this one does, and it’s clear that heart belongs to Hannah, whether or not any of us like it.