prised by the fact that Maya didn’t know how to use the
toaster and then again by how little butter she used for someone who seemed so comfortable helping herself to anything
she wanted. “That’s not how you do it,” Hannah had said,
almost affronted by Maya’s under-buttered bagel. “Give me
that.” She slathered on a thick glaze. “Now make little slits like this.” Hannah showed her with the knife. “So the butter
melts all the way through.”
Maya did as she was told, and when she took her first bite,
Hannah watched her. “Good, right?”
“Oh my God,” Maya had said, and her huge smile entered
Hannah, lit her own.
After Maya left that day, Hannah worried what Maya
would do when she found out how unpopular Hannah was
at school—how leprous she seemed to be with her red clown
hair. But it turned out Maya didn’t care what other people
thought. In fact, all the better if other people were against it.
Maya threw other people’s opinions out the window, not with
a summoning of courage, but with a rush of glee. And any-
way, Maya taught her how to tame her ridiculous hair, how
to move through the world with her back a little straighter,
how to ride a swing into the sky and then leap.
Hannah couldn’t imagine not having Maya the way Renee
no longer had Blue. The way Renee no longer had any of
them.
There had been a moment right after Maya mentioned
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Renee was living in Connecticut that Hannah had wanted to
say, “Let’s go get her!” That’s the kind of thing they would’ve done when they were younger—show up on Renee’s doorstep with “Surprise!” and drag her off with them on an ad-
venture. That instinct still lived in her somewhere. A small, mostly buried seed of spontaneity. But even if Blue would’ve
gone along (never!), Hannah wouldn’t have suggested it. She
was too aware of how easily things could go wrong, how an
unplanned detour could result in catastrophe. She’d already
learned that lesson once. They all had. Her mind darted back
to that night, the fork in the road. “Which way? Which way?”
The black highway unrolled. A fleet of headlights whizzed
past at unsettling speeds. An unpleasant flurry in her chest, that small bird beating its wings against her rib cage. She
should’ve known the peace she’d experienced when she first
got into the car would be short-lived. Wasn’t peace always?
She opened her bag, pulled out the Xanax. She would just
take a half.
Blue turned. “Hey, can I get one of those?”
“Are you anxious?” Hannah asked as she tapped out a sec-
ond pill into Blue’s outstretched palm.
“Nope,” Blue said, popping it into her mouth. “I just want
to knock myself out so I don’t have to deal with Maya the
traitor.”
“Good plan!” Maya said, unfazed. She switched the radio
station to something light and easy, as if coaxing Blue into
sedation.
Hannah suspected Blue really was anxious—that her imper-tinence with Maya was a cover for genuine distress over the
mention of Renee. But she knew Blue would never admit that.
Hannah sighed and closed her eyes, tried to let the music
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soothe her. Everything would be great once they got to Nana’s house. It always was. They’d gone every summer of middle
school and high school, and each time they’d made the drive,
windows down, life wind rushing at her, Hannah would feel as
if a big bright balloon were suspended in her chest, weightless and airy and flying about. When they hit the Sunrise Highway, she knew they were close, and this glow would fill her
as if they were driving straight into light. And then to be at the house! Hannah loved all the noise and the laughter! There was always someone around to chat with or to go on a snack
run with or simply to climb into bed with and lean her head
against. She’d imagined this was what it must be like to have a real, loving family. And then she’d realized that she did have one, that nothing could stop her from claiming a family that
wasn’t blood born.
She tried to summon that feeling of safety now. To re-
member what it was to feel at home somewhere. She felt her
body relax.
She must have dozed off for a bit, because the next time
she looked at the clock, almost an hour and a half had passed.
“Why does that sign say we’re headed toward Pittsburg?”
she asked.
“What sign?”
Hannah leaned forward, pointed up.
“Uh oh,” Maya said.
Blue snorted awake in the passenger seat. “What’s going
on?”
The half Xanax was no match for Hannah’s nerves, which
were suddenly vibrating like the inside of a rung bell. She sat back and wrapped her arms around herself. It was too familiar, a reminder of another night. You guys, I think we’re lost…
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“Think I maybe took a wrong turn somewhere?” Maya said.
“But not to worry! We’ll just turn around at the next exit!”
She pulled up the navigation system on her phone. Glanced
at it. “In about fifteen miles…”
“Oh, Jesus,” Blue said.
“Sorry,” Maya said. “I’m freaking exhausted. I worked the
night shift yesterday. You wanna take over?”
“Sure,” Blue said.
“You can’t drive,” Hannah said. “You took a Xanax!”
“I’m fine,” Blue said.
“No way,” Hannah said.
“All right. Crap,” Maya said. “Is there a place we can stop
for the night?”
Blue sighed, pulled out her phone and asked Siri to locate
the nearest motel.
“Wait, what?” Hannah said. “You’re serious?” The thought
of staying in a roadside motel, in a bed that other people had slept in, was just…well, she couldn’t. “Can’t we just get coffee and keep going?” She could hear the rise of panic in her voice.
“I mean, we can,” Maya said. “I’m just afraid I’ll drive us
into a ditch. Or to Alaska. You do realize we drove four hours already just to get to you.”
“It looks like there’s a motel a few minutes up the road,”
Blue said. “Another about twenty miles farther.”
“Which place seems nicer?” Maya asked.
“Why?” Blue said. “You paying?”
“I don’t mind paying,” Maya said, which everyone in the
car knew was technically true but also irrelevant since Maya
never had any money.
They reached the first motel. A neon sign blinked Vacancy,
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tion–restaurant for $9.99. Hannah was pretty sure she rec-
ognized the place from an episode of Cops. “No,” she said.
“Keep driving.”
“Th
is is fine,” Maya said. “It’s just a place to crash for five or six hours. The other could be worse.” She pulled in to
the dimly lit semicircle parking lot, where the only two cars looked like incisors on an otherwise toothless and demented
grin.
Bile rose in Hannah’s throat. She hated being this way,
hated it so much. She used to love motels when she was a kid, the cheap little soaps and upside-down plastic-wrapped cups
in the bathrooms, the vending machines with candy bars and
sodas, the dinky swimming pools with bottoms stained with
mold—every motel so comfortingly the same. Now all she
could see were the germs and filth. She remembered asking
Dr. Maloney if the contamination fears had started because
of all the blood. It had been all over her, on her hands and in her hair, Henry’s blood. But he’d said that interpretation was too literal, that it was something far more poisonous that had gotten in. He’d sat back then, folded his hands across his lap and gazed at her in that penetrating way, waiting for her to
figure it out. She’d stared back blankly until he announced
her time was up. Whatever it was, she was certain she could
not survive it. Whatever it was, her whole life was designed
to avoid it. She thought again of the Xanax in her bag.
“I’ll check in,” Maya said.
“Wait!” Hannah said. “Can’t we talk about this?”
Blue flipped Maya her credit card, got out of the car and
wandered off for another smoke. Hannah saw the small red
glow of a cigarette in the distance.
She tucked her knees to her chest and attempted some deep
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breathing exercises. Already she wanted a scalding hot shower, maybe a precautionary antibiotic. And they hadn’t even gone
in yet. Which reminded her—who would be checking to
make sure Henry’s room was sterile without her to supervise
the nurses when Vivian wasn’t there?
She checked her phone, her mind lurching toward disaster.
But there was nothing from Vivian. Nothing from the care
facility. Just a bunch of Dear Miss Know-It-All emails, which made her feel heavy with answers she didn’t have about questions she hadn’t even read. Maybe by the time she got back—
if she actually survived this trip—she’d feel less like a fraud offering other people wisdom.
A large truck rumbled up behind her, its square face glaring
down with blinding yellow eyes. Hannah looked for Blue but
could no longer find her. She inched lower in the seat, heard the sound of her own whimper. Breathe, breathe, breathe. She did this for as long as she could. When she finally opened her eyes, the truck was gone.
There was a sudden knock on the window. Hannah jumped,
screamed.
Maya laughed as she held a key card up to the glass. “The
key to paradise, baby,” she said, spreading her arms wide across the parking lot, nearly knocking Blue, who had come up behind her, in the face. “I requested a room without a meth lab.
But those were all booked up. I’m kidding.”
“This place is seriously not safe!” Hannah said. “This creepy trucker pulled in right after you left. Scared the hell out of me.”
“Your whole life scares the hell out of you,” Maya said.
“If you saw the Dateline segment on roadside motels, you’d get it. They don’t even clean the rooms!”
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“Well, I haven’t showered, so…it’s a match,” Maya said.
“And sometimes they don’t even change the key codes, so
anyone can get in.”
“So it’s a good thing you’re staying with me,” Maya said.
“If anyone gets kidnapped, it’ll be Blue. She’s the low-hang-
ing fruit.”
“It’s true,” Blue said.
“I’m sleeping in the car,” Hannah said.
“Please stop being ridiculous,” Maya said.
Blue opened the car door, peered in. “You’re definitely
not safer alone in a car in the parking lot,” Blue said gently.
“Maybe the rooms are nicer than you think.”
Hannah grabbed at Blue’s compassion as if it were a para-
chute rip cord. She took another deep breath, clinging to the last-standing soldier of reason in her brain trying to fight back the stampede of irrational terror. One quick look at the room.
If it wasn’t okay, she would insist that they leave.
They wheeled their luggage toward the rusty metal stair-
case, past a vending machine with a ripped sign taped to it—
Out of Ordor—the words Eat me scrawled below it. Even Blue looked a little uneasy.
“Here we are,” Maya said, sticking the key into the slot.
Hannah peered over Blue’s shoulder as Maya opened the
door, causing an exhale of mildew and uncirculated air. Maya
flipped the light switch to reveal two twin beds with bed-
spreads the color of vomit, a neat fold of white top sheet dis-guising all the human ick that had slept within.
Hannah froze at the door. “I can’t,” she said. “There has
to be something else.”
Maya dumped her luggage onto the floor. “There isn’t.”
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She kicked off her flip-flops, marched across the stained carpet and launched herself onto the bed.
“Oh my God,” Hannah said. Her heart was hurtling. Her
insides fizzing like a shaken can. Brain jumping from one
terror to another. “Those comforters probably haven’t been
washed since the sixties.” She could hear the hysteria in her voice, an onslaught of adrenaline and flight signals trampling over her capacity for reason. “Now you know why I always
say no to everything. This is what yes looks like.”
“This,” Maya said, gesturing around her, “is what life looks
like! Embrace it! Roll around in the shit of it!” She turned
over and buried her face in the bedspread. “I love germs!”
Hannah screamed.
“You’re an ass,” Blue said to Maya. “She’s right. They don’t
wash those things.” Then to Hannah she added, “It’s only
one night. You can stay with me if you want. I’m more fun
anyway.”
“Ha! In your dreams!” Maya said, rolling over onto her
back. “She’s staying with me in the nondelusional room.”
Blue laughed seemingly despite herself. “Well, I’m going
to bed. I’ll see you clowns in the morning.” She turned to
Hannah. “Remember, I’m right next door if it’s too crowded
in there with Maya’s ego.”
Maya threw a pillow at Blue.
Blue ducked, shouting “Nice try loser!” as she slipped off
to her room.
The second she was gone, Hannah realized there was no
chance of them changing their minds about staying here. She
looked at the bed next to Maya’s but couldn’t bring herself to move toward it. “I don’t think I can do this,” she said. Just standing there was making her itch.
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Maya sat up. “What on earth do you think is going to hap-
pen?”
“I don’t know… I just…” But there was no way to explain
a phobia to anyone who didn’t have one. It didn’t matter that it wasn’t rational, that the danger was imagined or overblown.
What mattered was that it felt real and that the fear was a torture far worse than whatever had triggered it. She closed her eyes, picturing her bed at home, everything so clean and neat and safe. All she wanted was to be normal again. To not be so exhausted and exhausting. She started to cry.
“Stop!” Maya said, jumping up from the bed. The energy
of her annoyance crowded the room, clashing with Hannah’s
distress, further abandoning her to it. “You are not going to do this. You are not allowed to break down on me. We’re on
vacation!”
“I’m trying!” Hannah said. She wept harder. “Do you think
I want to be like this? Do you think this is a choice?”
Maya held up her hands in surrender. “Okay, okay,” she
said. “Hey, I’m sorry. Seriously, please don’t cry. We’ll figure something out. I’m going to help you.” She scanned the room,
frowning. Then her face lit up. “I know!”
“What?” Hannah said.
“Close your eyes.”
“Why? Are you going to do something gross?”
“No. Just do it.”
Hannah sighed.
“Both eyes, please. Thank you. Okay, take a few deep
breaths.”
Hannah tried, but her body resisted, didn’t want to take
in the musty, moldy air, didn’t want to take in any life at all.
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The sound of her own pathetic efforts made her only want
to cry more.
“Now I want you to imagine you’re walking into a…where
do you wish you could be?”
Hannah thought. What is the opposite of this motel room?
“Somewhere clean,” she said over the mass in her throat.
“Sterile.” She heard the swish of the thick curtains being
closed, could see the light behind her lids go black.
“Okay, great! So we’re walking into a hospital.”
Hannah thought of all those months with Henry in the
ICU and squeezed her eyes against the image. She must have
shaken her head because Maya quickly added, “It’s not that
kind of hospital though.” And then, “I’m thinking it’s more
like an asylum.”
Hannah opened one eye.
“Okay, sorry, kidding. Bad joke. It’s more like a med spa.
East Coast Girls (ARC) Page 8
