Begin Reading
Table of Contents
About the Author
Copyright Page
Thank you for buying this
Henry Holt and Company ebook.
To receive special offers, bonus content,
and info on new releases and other great reads,
sign up for our newsletters.
Or visit us online at
us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup
For email updates on the author, click here.
The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.
For Sarah
I’m ready
To meet what refuses to let us keep anything
For long.
—TRACY K. SMITH, The Universe as Primal Scream
Part 1
The Universe as Primal Scream
Mae
THERE ARE PIECES OF STARS IN OUR GUTTERS.
(!!!!!!!!!).
It wasn’t a Nobel-winning astrophysicist who made this discovery, but a Norwegian jazz musician named Jon Larsen. A completely random human who’s into the cosmos and got to thinking.
His experiments led to the observation that these micrometeorites are EVERYWHERE—gutters, yes, and in our hair, the tops of cars, on the rosebushes in your front lawn. Stick out your tongue long enough, and perhaps you can SWALLOW THE STARS.
In case you didn’t know, these micrometeorites are older than the planets themselves, some of the oldest matter in existence. Some of them are older than the sun, even. One hundred metric TONS of stardust crashes into Earth—Every. Single. Day.
And it’s just raining down on us, all the time.
Hannah
My mom has this book called Acorn by Yoko Ono and, I’m warning you right now, if you read it, you will never be the same again. It should maybe come with a warning label.
Say her name to yourself, softly: Yoooooh … kooooohhhhhh.
Mom says Yoko’s presence in the world is the universe’s way of reminding us all that we don’t have to spend our lives wearing business casual. Or sensible shoes.
Spend our lives. Minutes as currency. It’s like we’re paying God, handing Her our time in exchange for more breath: Here’s a minute, here’s another minute, another. And sometimes I want to be like, Can I have a refund? Or maybe an exchange. A new life. A new me. Because I’m only seventeen and I feel broke. Like I spent my life already.
Do you ever feel like your skin is a little too baggy, like a pair of jeans that you should probably get rid of, but can’t bring yourself to because maybe you wore them the night you lost your virginity or they’re your good-luck charm on test days? But you really want to get a new pair. Or some days your skin is too tight, like all of you got stuck in the dryer too long?
And that’s where Yoko comes in. She is the great reminder that It Doesn’t Have To Be This Way.
Yoooooh … koooooohhhhhh.
Whisper with me. Come on.
Do it.
I’ll wait.
The sound of her name is just like these wooden wind chimes my mom keeps on our back porch. The wind comes in off the beach and bumps them around, soft wood clunking out poetry. Sound medicine. An incantation.
Good word. Incantation. Almost as good as Yoko.
Yoko fronts her own rock band even though she’s a senior citizen, and she sees the truth of the world and writes about it and draws about it, too, and one time I got to see her art for real, and it made me cry, it was so good. Most people only know about Yoko because she was married to John Lennon. You know, the Beatle. He’s the imagine all the people guy. I’m a George girl, ’cause he’s the silent, sexy one who’s all enlightened and plays the sitar, but even I have to admit that John is the man.
People say Yoko broke up the Beatles, but that’s just dumb humans blaming a girl for boy problems. The thing is, people change. You know? You love someone, you make things with them, and then you realize you don’t fit anymore. And that’s what happened for John and Paul. They understood that it wasn’t working. No matter how good it was. Before.
In her book Acorn, Yoko has all these suggestions that she writes down for people to do. Like in “Connection Piece I”:
Whisper your name to a pebble.
Sometimes late at night I sneak out of the house and walk over to the beach. I go past the boardwalk, past those iconic Cali lifeguard huts, and the homeless guys and stoners, right down to where the water kisses the shore. I pick up a pebble and I whisper my name to it. Then I throw it into the ocean.
Maybe it will tell the crabs or jellyfish or dolphins my name when they come by.
Maybe someday the whole ocean will be whispering
Hannah. Hannah. Haaaaaa … naaaaaahhhhhhh.
I always have a Sharpie in my pocket, and when no one’s looking, I write my own acorns. They’re not like Yoko’s. They’re more like secrets I whisper to the whole world. Or just thoughts I want to share, but have no one to share them with because if I did they would give me that blank look they always do when I say things like what I write down with my Sharpies. I say stuff like that and Dad goes, “Maybe we should make an appointment with Dr. Brown,” and then I say I don’t really need to sit in her stupid paisley chair and talk about my problems and I walk out before he can start rattling off statistics about adolescent junkies, though he would never use that word. Neither would I. Because I’m not one—a junkie, no matter what they say in group. Mom tries to sweeten the deal with some Reiki from her friend Cynthia after the Dr. Brown appointments, to balance things out.
There isn’t enough Reiki in the world to fix me, but I don’t tell her that.
I wrote this on a stop sign a few days ago, after my first week of senior year:
i am invisible.
Mae would say this is a scientifically unsound assertion, but she doesn’t understand that some things are true even if you don’t have proof.
I don’t know why I do them. The acorns. It’s weird, I guess, to leave little pieces of yourself all over Los Angeles and never go back to pick them up.
1
Mae
ISS Location: Low-Earth Orbit
Earth Date: 29 August
Earth Time (PST): 20:10
I find out in waves.
My grandmother picks up her cell phone in Florida and dials my number. She calls me because I’m the commander of our crew while my parents are in Malaysia. And also because, even though she doesn’t know what my sister did in March, doesn’t know about the stuff Mom found in Hannah’s room and the counseling sessions and her failed classes, Gram somehow knows that Nah is not okay right now. It’s hard to talk on the phone to someone who only speaks crying, or doesn’t speak at all. So Gram calls me.
My phone rings, and I answer in the way I always do, our way, which is to tell her something I’ve learned today. She says this is good practice for my NASA interview. Never mind I still have to get three degrees and become a test pilot in between now and then. Sometimes, just to see if I’m in fighting shape, she’ll throw a devilishly hard calculus problem my way. That’s what you get for having a grandmother who’s a retired math teacher.
“Gram. Hello! I can’t get in touch with Dad—have you tried? It’s just after breakfast in Malaysia and he’s probably on the beach, but maybe the guesthouse has a number? It’s of the utmost importance that I call him immediately because I was reading today’s Bad Astronomy post and it’s all about how Dad’s quintessence theory about dark energy is getting more support fr
om that Harvard string theorist nemesis of his! This paper came out, and in it, they mentioned Dad by name: Dr. Winters’s theories gain more credence … That’s my Scientist Voice, in case you didn’t know. I’m aware of the neurological benefits of rest when one is on vacation, but this is a DARK MATTER EMERGENCY, so—”
“Sweetie—”
“These physicists are seeing that Dad’s probably right about string theory not being compatible with the rapid expansion of the universe. Finally! Of course, we have to see from the experiments up in space if the rate of acceleration is constant, because if it’s not, that’s a whole other—”
“Mae.”
I stop talking. The way she says my name causes tiny electrical pulses to spread across the tips of my fingers. I’m not like Mom and Nah—I don’t believe in vibes, and I certainly don’t allow Cynthia to do “energy work” on me (good grief). But I do get tingles. Specifically in my fingers. And that’s never good. Never. I know it’s only a biological reaction to external stimuli, but Mom insists it’s an indication of my female intuition; never mind that female is a concept up for debate, anyway.
There’s a pause while my grandmother’s phone converts her next words into an electrical signal, which is then transmitted into radio waves to the cell tower nearest her. The network of towers carries that wave across the country from a condo in Fort Lauderdale to my cell phone in Venice Beach, California. My phone converts her radio wave to an electrical signal and then back to sound.
And the sound I hear is Gram’s crinkly, butterscotch-candy-wrapper voice whisper, “Honey? Something’s happened.”
i am not enough.
Elevator Door
Hedrick Hall, UCLA
Westwood, Los Angeles
2
Hannah
I hate cell phones. They skeeve me out. Priscilla, this circus aerialist who basically lives on the boardwalk and used to sell weed or pills to me sometimes—okay, more than sometimes—she told me that the government can track where you are—and listen in on you—through your cell phone. I’m not a conspiracy theorist or anything, but that’s messed up. Mom’s yoga friends say that cell phones fuck with your vibes and so they’re always setting amethysts on top of their phones to clear the negative energy or whatever. I don’t need any more bad energy than I have, so I figure keeping a safe distance from my cell is the smart play.
And then after March, after what happened, it got annoying, my friends texting me Are you okay? They finally got the hint and now they don’t text me anything anymore and I’m okay with that. I became the Hermit card in Mom’s tarot. I got off social media, too—and, you know, it’s kind of true that if you’re not online you don’t really exist to the rest of the world. Besides, what would I post pictures of? Here’s an empty Suboxone package—physician-approved nicotine for opiate users! Here’s my flat stomach. Here’s my stupid/pointless/lame group therapy Circle of Sad. Here’s the vegan chocolate cake Mom made on day sixty that says Clean Machine in pink frosting, even though I’m not vegan. It was good, though. Here’s the Death card I keep getting.
So when Micah picks me up in his ancient Jeep, I leave my phone at home. Mom and Dad are halfway across the world—there’d be no check-in calls, no curfew. Mom said we’re almost eighteen now, so she’s going to trust us. Or at least trust Mae to make sure I don’t fuck up too much. Cynthia has already come by twice, and taken me to the Circle of Sad herself—I’m sure she’s sending Mom reports.
“You hungry?” Micah asks.
He has to shout because the top is down and we’re on the 405 and there’s magic happening somewhere close because there isn’t much traffic. Blond hair flying around his face—perfect California boy. I shake my head.
“Mind if I get a burrito?”
“Whatever you want.” I smile; he smiles.
When we get to UCLA, we squeeze onto his twin bed with the striped comforter I helped him pick out at Target. The roommate took a three-day weekend to roll in the desert, so we have the place to ourselves.
A poster of Bob Marley hangs on the wall beside us, and Bob looks down, giving us his blessing, one hand holding a joint, raised in benediction.
Normally we would smoke a little, but I can’t, haven’t since last spring—golf clap for my five months of sobriety—so we have to try and remember how to be together without any help. It’s awkward. We’ve forgotten. Even though we’ve done this so many times since what happened in March, we still can’t remember how it was Before.
Micah should have come that day.
He wasn’t there because I told him not to be—I knew he’d rather be anywhere else. He’d looked so relieved when I said it was okay not to come. Smiled. I wanted him to come anyway, to, like, be there for me, but the only guy who came through the door was this dad-aged dude wearing a polo shirt, and that made me think about how Dad offered to come, which was actually really sweet, but I was like, this isn’t Take Your Daughter to Abortion Day, you know? Mom kept trying to feed me Life Savers, those wintergreen ones, until I told her the name was kind of ironic, wasn’t it (lifesavers, get it?), and then she stopped.
Micah looks down at me. “Could we have a drink? Or is that against the rules?”
Yes, it’s against the rules. And he knows it, or at least he should know it. I start to say yes, but you go ahead, I’m cool like I have been since April, but Jesus, I’ve been so good. And a drink is not a pill, and the pills are the problem, the main problem, right? One drink is not the same as one pill. I’m good now, I am. Before, I never could have gone five months without a diamond. I could hardly go five hours without one. Before.
And the thought of doing this—spending the night, a whole night, with Micah and not being a drag like I know I am: I need help. Just a little something.
I bite my lip. Nod. “A drink would be nice.”
“You’re sure? I’m not, like, fucking with your serenity or whatever?”
Some tatted-up college guy who came to speak at group used that phrase once, and I dig it.
“I’m sure. Yeah. Totally. It’s not, you know, Percs.”
Just one little blue pill, one teensy-tiny Percocet, and I’d be fine.
Micah reaches under the bed and grabs a bottle of Popov, which is like drinking Windex, and we drink it straight because the only thing in his fridge is a suspicious-smelling carton of chocolate milk. When we’re done, he sets the bottle on the desk behind us. We will need it later, I think.
The relief is almost instant. Not being me anymore.
It is so warm.
And then I realize: I am no longer sober.
“Hey.” Micah rests a hand on my arm. “You good?”
He’s not in my Circle of Sad, where we try to be honest when people ask questions like that. So I say:
“What? Yeah. Totally. All good.”
All those days of denying myself, of doing the right thing, all that torture—down the drain. So I take another drink, then another.
“This is what got us in trouble in the first place,” Micah says, running his finger along the edge of my lacy bra. He’s just teasing—he’s trying, you know?—but it isn’t funny. Trouble? There are no words to describe what happened in March, but some are better than others, and trouble isn’t one of them. Gutting, maybe. That would be a good one.
This is Micah, I remind myself. He loves you.
But in the elevator up here, when he was tapping his foot and talking about the waves he’d caught this morning, I realized I didn’t give a shit about the waves, and the foot tapping might make me commit a homicide, it really might.
And, look, I know he was right. About what I had to do back in March. The pills, who knew what they would have done to the acorn inside me? Before it happened, the counselor and I talked, and she said that a pregnancy is an acorn—not the tree, not yet—but it contains the possibility of a tree. Acorn. Perfect, right? She didn’t know about Yoko, but it was like she kind of did know, on a psychic level only the sisterhood operates on. And she
said it was okay to do whatever I wanted. Did I want to do this? And I told her about the pills and we talked about damage to acorns exposed to high levels of opiates and about risks, but how it’s also possible the acorn would be fine. And I told her about all the trees I wanted someday, I really do, and am I a bad person if I do this? And she hugged me and she said no, but that this decision was mine.
I don’t know what makes you a woman, but I don’t think it’s getting your period or losing your virginity or having guys suddenly notice you and the harassment beginning, especially when you have hips like mine. I think it’s the moment when you get to decide something for yourself, something that will affect the rest of your life.
And this decision: It grew me up.
I told the counselor that I’d had this idea, like this momentary thought that maybe, maybe if I had a baby, then things would be okay. Like, I’d have some value in the world. Someone would need me and maybe that need would be the thing, the thing that would make me good and also would keep me from the pills. And maybe take the sadness away. But the thought, the thought of ending up like Mae’s birth mother, with the drugs and child protective services and then this acorn-that-is-now-a-tree having to go into foster care because I’m such a fuckup—Micah was right. The clinic, it was the right thing to do. I’m glad I had the choice. That no one took it away from me.
I just wish I hadn’t had to make it in the first place.
The counselor looked at me for a long moment: She had red hair and green eyes and it was like this Celtic priestess had come to hear my confession. And she rested a hand on my knee and she said, “Whatever you decide, Hannah, remember this: You are enough.”
When she left the room, I put on the scratchy gown, lay down, and closed my eyes.
What haunts me isn’t what happened—I don’t think it was wrong. But what is killing me is how something got taken off the table. Taken by the look on Micah’s face when I showed him the stick with the two lines. And because I’d made other choices, bad ones. I didn’t really get to decide—am I ready to be a mom yet?—because of what was in my blood, all those diamonds I couldn’t stop swallowing because they fill me with sparkling, glittery light. Like binge-eating starlight.
Little Universes Page 1