Little Universes

by Heather Demetrios

  The train slows and she raises her hands to adjust her scarf, and I see those words tattooed on the sides: ONLY LOVE.

  “Hah-vahd,” the announcer calls over the speaker.

  “Your stop,” she says.

  I stand, unsteady.

  “I’m trying to understand,” I say. “But if I took your advice in space, I’d die. Control is very important to the mission. I really don’t see the practical applications of this philosophy.”

  River leans back, gestures to the train car enclosing us. “Just ride the ride—you’ll get it.”

  Zen people are infuriating. No answers, just more questions.

  When I get to Castaways, Ben takes one look at me and turns toward the huge vat of coffee behind him. It’s interesting to me that the name of this place is how I feel: like a castaway, a survivor of an ocean catastrophe, who has washed up on this strange shore—this new life that looks nothing like my old one. I don’t know if I’m waiting to be rescued, or if I already have been, and I just don’t know it. Sometimes it feels like I’m shooting up flares, and Ben is the one who sees them.

  He fills a cup with steaming coffee, then slides the mug across the counter toward me. Our fingers touch, and it’s the first time I’ve felt warm all day.

  How do I keep Ben from turning me into a hungry ghost? I don’t want to be like Hannah, shredded to pieces by these boys. And if something happens to Ben, or we break up, I don’t want to feel hollow after. I don’t want to kid myself into thinking he can make me feel whole.

  I pull my skin away from his, from those fingers that are trying to intertwine with mine as he hands me my cup of coffee.

  “Thanks,” I say.

  A look of confusion crosses his face, but he leans across the counter anyway and kisses my forehead. “I missed you.”

  It’s been days since we’ve seen each other. I can’t leave the house all the time and go off with my boyfriend while my sister’s holed up in her room, hurting.

  “I missed you, too. I can’t stay long.”

  The coffee tastes bitter today. Too strong. Or maybe I’m just getting weak.

  “I’m off in a couple hours. We could—”

  I shake my head. “I have to get home.”

  “Okay.” I can hear disappointment, frustration, worry. Fear. Love.

  I think about what River said, how nothing is for keeps, but that we also have to ride the ride and be all in with life. But this is cognitive dissonance: She’s telling me I have to both hold on and let go at the same time. Impossible.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m really out of my element here. I’m a better lab partner than girlfriend.”

  Ben runs a finger across the counter’s scarred wood, watching me. Those three words I haven’t said hover in the air between us. Ten days since my birthday, since that night he climbed through my window.

  “I get that you’re worried about Hannah,” he finally says. “And you should be. It’s really scary, what’s going on with her. And you’re a great sister. I don’t want to stand in the way of that.”

  “Thank you.” I rest my hand on his arm, and it feels so good to touch him. I think the social scientists are correct about the need for human contact. “I know I’m not being fair—trying to be with you and sort this out all at the same time.”

  I did warn him. But then he brought in Heisenberg and wormholes.

  “I told you: I’m patient. And you did say you needed space. But.” He tucks my hair behind my ear. “I don’t think you’re being fair to yourself. Mae, you need to have a life. It’s not healthy—”

  I think we are about to have our first fight.

  “Ben, my sister is very sick. I’m all she has.” I look around, but no one seems to be paying attention to us. It’s finals week—everyone has better things to do than eavesdrop on the barista and his girlfriend. “You’re an only child, and both your parents are alive. Nobody in your family has a serious disease. I don’t think you understand what I’m dealing with! I can’t just frolic around with you all the time.”

  I’ve hurt him, I can tell. I am SO BAD WITH WORDS.

  “I wish I could explain with numbers,” I say. “I don’t mean to be rude about it—”

  “I wasn’t talking about me when I said you need to have a life. I know where I rank on your list of priorities. And I’m right where I should be, all things considered.” Ben clears his throat. “I want you to go, Mae.”

  I freeze. Is he breaking up with me? I stare at him, and he must know what I’m thinking, because he reaches over and takes the mug out of my hands and then takes my hands, kisses the palm of the one that’s shaking the most. Because I hold him. He’d said that before. I hold him in the palm of my hand.

  “I meant Annapolis,” he murmurs.

  I close my eyes. Breathe. The feeling I had when I thought he was breaking up with me: hunger.

  “I thought you’d be happy I was staying,” I say. “Long-distance relationships don’t usually work out.”

  His lips turn up. “I’m in love with a future astronaut who’s going to be four hundred kilometers above Earth. I’ve had to make my peace with the whole long-distance thing.”

  There it is again: love.

  “Well.” I pull my hands away, gulp down the scalding coffee. “You don’t need to worry about that for a while now.”

  “You told me that without fighter pilot experience, you were seriously hampering your chances of becoming an astronaut candidate.”

  I wanted to be as well-rounded as possible. Mission essential from both a military and scientific standpoint. I wanted to be a commander. Now I’ll just be another rocket scientist. Much easier to ignore.

  “I’ll need to distinguish myself even more as an engineer, but not everyone chosen is military. I’ll still … be in the running.”

  I don’t care what River says about not being able to help Hannah. Her brother—that was different. Heroin: that’s a very hard drug, the hardest. Yes, it’s technically the same thing as Nah’s pills, but my sister’s not sticking needles into her arm. And once she’s had time to process the grief and—

  Ben hoists himself onto the counter, slides across it, and jumps down next to me, then pulls me close. For just a second, the roaring in my head stops. Hug meditation.

  Goddamn you, Heisenberg. My person, in the chaos. But you lose people all the time, in chaos. It’s the easiest way to lose someone. In crowded train stations, for instance. In amusement parks. In waves.

  River’s wrong. There’s no freedom in the chaos. None. If you ask me, I don’t think the Buddha knew how to work the problem.

  Ben runs his fingers through my short strands of hair. “I want you here, always, but … it’s your dream, Mae. You can’t stay for your sister. It won’t make her better. And you’ll regret it, maybe lose your chance. You’ve worked so hard—”

  “She’s all I’ve got, Ben.”

  “No,” he says, soft. “She’s not.”

  “I know you mean that.” I rest my palms on his chest. “But there are so many variables that can prove you wrong: women named Cathy or Rebecca, waves in Malaysia. Heroin and OxyContin and cancer and all the things, all the things that could take you. So many THINGS.”

  “Mae, it’s too late.”

  “What?”

  “It’s too late to worry about the variables. You and me—this is already in motion.” He rests the tips of his fingers against my cheeks. “Let me put it this way: We’re on the rocket and it’s already blasted off. Anything—everything—could go wrong. But we just have to sit back and—”

  “Ride the ride?”

  He smiles. “River strikes again.”

  I nod. “I saw her on the train today.”

  “Dharma insurgency?”

  “I was ambushed.” I sigh. “I don’t know what to say, Ben. You and River want me to give up on my sister, and I can’t. I won’t. It’s way too early to back off. I’ve got my whole life ahead of me—hopefully. But she might not.” I rest my
cheek against his for a moment, breathe in his coffee-and-wind scent, which is really the most wonderful thing, then step away. “And, honestly, you saying these things—about how I’m not being fair to myself, not making healthy choices—it’s not helping. I know you mean well. And please don’t take this the wrong way, but I’ve only known you for two months. You don’t know what’s best for me. But I do.”

  He swallows, nods. “All very astute observations. I’m sorry for pushing. I just … It breaks my heart, not thinking of you in your uniform, or up in those fighter jets.”

  “It breaks mine, too.”

  Saying that out loud makes me feel more naked than that night he climbed through my window.

  Ben pulls me close again, hugs me hard. I can feel all the things he wants to say but won’t. I’ve never had someone be disappointed in me. I hate what it does to me on a cellular level.

  My phone rings. Aunt Nora.

  “Mae?” Her voice is a code red, high and shrill. “Hannah’s not in her room. Is she with you?”

  Sound waves, traveling. Grandma calling: Honey? Something’s happened.

  I stare at Ben, the phone falling from my hand. I see Hannah in my mind, asking me to name a star after her. Talking about the Little Prince.

  Ben’s picking up my phone, talking to me, his brown eyes—my mother’s eyes—searching mine.

  “Mae? What’s wrong? Who was that?”

  “I think my sister’s going to hurt herself.”

  I want to die.

  Courtyard Table

  Copley Library

  Boston

  34

  Hannah

  I decide to watch.

  For once, just once, I want to see someone read my words.

  I want to see what their face does.

  If they care.

  If they feel the same way, too.

  I don’t think I’m the only person who thinks these thoughts that I write down. These acorns, I think maybe they’re inside all of us.

  But maybe I am the only person.

  I need to know.

  If the words matter.

  If any of it does.

  If I do.

  I’m at Copley Library, the beautiful one that Drew brought me to all those weeks ago, on what a part of me thinks of as our first date: the day we ditched school.

  I ignore the tourists standing in front of the marble staircase flanked by lions, walk past the little cafe. I had tea there with Dad once. Earl Grey. Just the two of us, a father-daughter date. I hate missing him, missing this person who hurt us all.

  I wonder if Mae and Drew and what’s left of my family think of me that way. As the person who hurt us all.

  I slide through the marble halls, past the dark wood doors, the sound of people’s wet snow boots slapping on the stone echoing all around, then push through the double doors that lead to the library’s inner courtyard.

  Even though it’s in the middle of Boston, this courtyard feels like a secret. It’s instantly silent, like the whole world has been muzzled. It reminds me of an Italian villa, like some of the places my parents took us that summer we went to Rome. It reminds me a little of Greece, too—the columns. The last time we were there to visit Yia-yia’s grave, I walked around the Acropolis thinking: As soon as you die, it’s as if you never existed at all. All the artists are unknown. No names signed on statues, no plaques on buildings. Except for a few people—Plato, Socrates, all those old white guys—any ancient Greek who ever lived has been erased from Earth. Practically any person who’s ever lived will be erased from Earth. That really bummed me out. But now I think maybe there’s freedom in that. Nobody matters, in the end. Which means nothing matters.

  A statue of a dancing woman holding a baby twirls in the fountain in the center of the courtyard, covered in verdigris. The water is turned off for winter, the base hidden by a pristine pile of snow. Like me, the statue is heedless of the cold, of the square patch of open December sky that dumps snow on her head. Unlike me, she is holding her baby. Happy. Playing. I watch her for a moment. Them.

  I would have come, Drew said. Where would I be, who would I be, if it had been Drew and not Micah? Or if Micah had come? If I hadn’t been on drugs and worried I had ruined the acorn inside me? You can’t grow into a tree if your soil is soaked in opiates.

  So many ifs.

  It doesn’t matter anymore.

  I turn away from the statue and sit at one of the tiny wrought-iron cafe tables that are set up under the horseshoe-shaped portico that surrounds the space. I’ve chosen this table with care. Right under one of the bronze gothic lamps that hang from the ceiling, light pooling over it in the gathering dusk. The table sits in the path that connects the old and new wings of the library. People walk back and forth, back and forth. Not too many—it’s getting late; the library will close soon. And it’s cold and snowing. When it’s warm, the courtyard is full, but now it belongs to me.

  I take out my pen—a white paint pen I use for writing on metal, so it stands out. With it, I write my last acorn, carefully shaping each letter, pressing the pen down hard, but not too hard, or the paint will smear:

  I want to die.

  I stare at the words.

  They are true.

  I thought it might be hard to write them, but it’s not.

  I’ve been writing them in my head for so long now. It’s a relief to put them out loud.

  I wait a bit to make sure the paint dries. I pretend to check my phone because people look at you weird if you’re just sitting doing nothing, but I have it on airplane mode. I’ve already told Mae what I needed to. I lean forward, look up to the sliver of sky that peeks into the courtyard. I wonder which one she’ll choose. Which one will be named Hannah.

  After a minute, I get up and cross to the other side of the courtyard and sit in the shadows.

  For a while, people just hurry by. Trying to get out of the cold as quick as possible. Negative ten with windchill today. Can’t blame them.

  “Please,” I whisper.

  Just one.

  Minutes go by—it’s only me and the empty tables, the snow whipping past the stone arches, the statue and her baby.

  Then.

  A woman pushes through the door that leads out of the new library. She stops by the table, looking at her phone. Curses. Sets her bag on the table. Stops. Stares at the table. At the white words on the wrought iron.

  She stopped because of me.

  Because of what I wrote.

  She reads the words, and I can’t breathe, watching her.

  My reader runs a finger over my acorn, then looks around the courtyard. I shrink into my shadows, and she doesn’t see me.

  For just a second, she closes her eyes.

  She gets it. I think.

  She’s been here, too. Maybe not now. But she’s been here.

  After a moment, the woman slips her phone into her pocket then walks away, into the light, the warmth, of the library.

  I am suddenly so, so tired.

  The chair scrapes against the stone as I get up. I cross the courtyard, walk through the snow, up to the bronze woman and her baby. I run my hand over the baby’s head.

  “Hello, you,” I whisper.

  The diamonds in my pocket slip past my lips. Enough of them to turn me into a star.

  A little girl runs past the table, and I wait until she’s gone, then take the cap off the pen and cross the words out. I wouldn’t want a kid to read this. To feel this.

  Turns out, it’s not hard to erase yourself.

  I start walking.

  Out of the courtyard.

  Out of the library.

  Through the knife of the wind, through the snow, past the shops and their Christmas displays and the rushing people, and into the Boston Public Garden. Empty and quiet and dark.

  And there she is, my bronze angel.

  I lie at her feet. Make a snow angel.

  35

  Mae

  ISS Location: Low-Earth Orbit


  Earth Date: 5 December

  Earth Time (EST): 18:00

  “HANNAH!”

  Nate and I are running, tripping, sliding on black icy paths in the Boston Public Garden. A stone angel looms over my sister. She is going to take her. That angel is going to take my sister away.

  Nate is faster than me—he reaches her first. I drop the phone in my hand, Drew’s voice lost in the snow, and throw myself to the ground when I reach Nah.

  “Is she breathing?” I’m screaming. “IS SHE BREATHING?”

  He nods.

  I fall on my knees beside him. “Tilt her head back.”

  I take the Naloxone out of my pocket, insert the nozzle into her nose. My hands are shaking.

  “Just a sim,” I tell myself, the words rushing out with my breath. “A death sim. That’s all this is. Just a sim.”

  I push the plunger and pull the nozzle out of her nose.

  “Two minutes,” I say. I’m already pulling out a second dose, in case she doesn’t wake up from this one.

  Nate sits in the snow, pulls her halfway onto his lap. “Come on, cuz,” he whispers into her ear.

  I stare at my watch. One minute.

  She’s not waking up.

  Oh god, she’s not waking up.

  “Nah,” I whisper. Take off my coat, cover her, pat her body, shake her. “Brownies. Drew. Sunsets. Yoko. French fries. Soup. All the soup, Hannah. Harry Potter and Nate and Gram and Gramps and stars and blue nail polish and Mom’s lotion and basil plants in the garden and tarot cards and—and—”

  Nate picks up my litany. All the reasons she should stay alive. So many. Not enough.

  Snow falls. In the distance, sirens. Closer. They are too late.

  White foam begins to pool around her mouth.

  Ten seconds.

  “Tilt her head back,” I say.

  I push the nozzle in. Push the meds in.