We Are Satellites

by Sarah Pinsker

  “Hey,” he said as he walked out, before the kids could leave again. “Do you know where I can get some Quiet?”

  The first looked at him blankly, and he realized that was his own name for it. “Fortress of Solitude, I mean. I call it Quiet ’cause that’s how it feels. It has a lowercase q on it. Teal pill. Bluish.”

  The second guy shook his head. “I’ve seen those, but that isn’t a q. It’s a b. You were reading it upside down.”

  “What’s b for?” his friend asked. “Blue?”

  The second guy shrugged. “Beats me. Maybe. I don’t have ’em either way. Sorry.”

  At least he’d tried. David opened the whiskey and took a swig. Offered it to the two guys, who declined, exchanging pity glances. He felt a little sorry for himself, too. As he crossed the street, he called Phil from the park, one last effort to avoid the thing he knew he would do if he had to.

  “Already?” Phil asked. “I mean, not that it’s my business, but I saw you yesterday.”

  “Went to a party,” David said.

  “Gotcha. Like I said, not my business. But I’m afraid to say, I can’t help you tonight. Empty house.”

  David was about to disconnect, again picturing blue pills in gravel, when his friend added, “Hmm. I do know one guy who can help you.”

  He rattled off an address on the other side of town. David didn’t have enough cash left to get there and buy from a stranger, who would know that for Phil to have sent him, he must be desperate. Not to mention, even with a referral, he was obviously giving off bad vibes tonight. There was no guarantee they’d trust him, and he’d have gone all the way over there for nothing.

  “Thanks, anyway,” David said. “But hey, one other question. What’s the b on the pill stand for?”

  “Balkenhol. You know, BNL, like the Pilots.”

  David hung up, his mind reeling. Why was Balkenhol making pills to dampen their own Pilots? Was that even their purpose? Were they on the market, available if you told the right doctor you had a noisy head? He couldn’t stand the thought that the same people who ruined his head and refused to fix it might also have manufactured the only bandage he’d found for the wound they’d created. He was still theirs, just in a different way now. He craved the Quiet, or whatever it was.

  His next thought was a terrible one, but in the incipient Quiet, it was the only thing in his head, and he fixated on it. How pathetic was he, to even imagine doing that? In that thought, he recognized the seeds of addiction, of a need that obliterated common sense. In the same moment, he didn’t care, because he didn’t care how he achieved Quiet, and if this was the way, so be it.

  He ducked into the woods a couple of complexes away from Karina and Milo’s, so he wouldn’t scare their neighbors again. The fence was topped with barbed wire, not razor wire, and it was easy enough to wrap his jacket around it and throw himself over. It took more effort than it should have; he’d fallen out of shape in recent weeks. He landed on his feet, but there was a thin tear in his jeans down the length of his shin, and an even thinner tear in his leg, starting where the barb must have gone in above his ankle, and trailing away to just below his knee. It didn’t hurt, at least.

  He walked along the fence line, trailing one hand along it, enjoying the sensation. Wrapped in Quiet, he could focus on his fingers and the fence, the metal lattice and the spaces between it, a luxury to be able to experience that without also noticing the footing, the needles, the broken glass, the damp air, the far-off clanging, his position in space. Or noticing, but at a distance, muted, unimportant.

  A train passed, moving slower than he would expect this far between stations, and then another in the opposite direction, gathering speed. He was glad again for the Quiet buffering the rattle and the violent displacement of air. He knew it was there, knew how overwhelming it would be without his fortifications. This was a necessary mission. A few minutes later he came to a place where the double track narrowed to single, which explained the slow trains.

  When he reached what he thought was the right area, he refocused. He was looking for twelve pills in a gravel sea. Teal, but teal would look gray in this light, and he didn’t want to turn on his phone’s flashlight in case somebody in the apartments saw it. He looked for smooth and rounded, for shine. He was grateful to be too Quiet for embarrassment. This was necessary.

  He found his mint tin before any of the pills, and considered that a victory. How far had he thrown the pills? He remembered them arcing through the air, scattering like stars.

  After however many minutes, he found a single pill in a grassy patch beside the tracks. He wiped it off, peered at it. Was it his? He didn’t imagine anyone else was wandering around tossing pills. It looked white, but the grass was damp and the color might have bled away. It tasted right, like a slight hint of sugar, like round. It held the right shape on his tongue. He realized after he’d taken it that he’d never taken two in succession before, let alone three, and never taken one while still feeling one, let alone two.

  He was having trouble holding thoughts in his head. It was glorious, the Quiet settling heavier and heavier, a welcome weighted blanket. He settled onto his knees in the gravel, picking through handfuls, sifting through then letting them go, watching the stones fall back to earth. He found another pill and put it in the container in his pocket. Found another pill and put it on his tongue. Found another pill and didn’t remember what he was supposed to do with it, so he put it in his pocket beside his phone. Why was he doing this in the dark? He turned on his phone’s flashlight and found three more pills between the tracks.

  There was a noise, far away. A noise from outside his blanket, quiet then loud and loud and louder, and a light, bright and bright and brighter. He remembered he was on a train track, and he should get off it, though surely he would hear a train before it came close. He stepped off the track, to be safe, and in perfect time, too, because a train whipped past inches from him, displacing air, displacing David. It was a great sensation, and in the Quiet it was an all-encompassing everything.

  The train passed, and he stepped back onto the track and laughed at how good it had felt, and how much better the Quiet was in its wake. In the back of his mind, he fought to hold on to the thought that the last time a train had passed in one direction, another had passed in the opposite direction a moment later. He was on the track, and that was okay, because this train had just passed, except there was only one track, it was single track here, and as he had that thought, something shifted on the track, pinning his left foot.

  He had been pinned once before, in a different place, in a different way, a figurative pinning, they had used the words “pinned down” on the radio, we’re pinned down, we’re safe in here for now. He had spotted the first rooftop sniper, and maybe he would have had time to say something except at the same time as he spotted the barrel, he spotted a tiny blue light, a Pilot light, and even with all his raging attentions he paused, because he had never seen a Pilot on the other end of a gun.

  In that same moment, McKay fell, a bullet through his neck, which meant David hadn’t been fast enough, he had been distracted, he had failed McKay, and all he could do was put that aside, keep it together, work with the others so they all stayed alive, and David saw the open shop door, and he was shouting, they were all shouting, but he was able to make himself heard, and they spent the next six hours in that cramped, dark haven, waiting for backup, waiting for the bullets to come through the window, watching McKay die even while they tried to save him, McKay’s blood drying on his hands, and BNL were the only ones who made Pilots, why were they selling to the other side, a thought for later, and he had failed McKay but not the others, not yet, and for all his attentions this never left his mind, and he worked constantly to keep it tamped down, pinned down, pinned down.

  He had all the focus he needed, all the Quiet, too much Quiet to hang on to any thought, the focus so tight he couldn’t even se
e what he was looking at, which was his foot, pinned by the mechanism that siphoned the two tracks to one or the one track to two, he wasn’t sure, and it didn’t matter and he knew he should move, and told his legs to step, to step, and was it his foot or his shoe that was caught, maybe he had time to get the shoe off, to leave the shoe behind, but untying his shoe was everything, was too much, his focus had narrowed to his shoelace and his phone’s flashlight on his shoelace and it was a Gordian knot, a Gaelic complication, a labyrinthian impossibility, and in the Quiet there was a clanging, and in the Quiet he knew this shoe was not coming off, and he stepped back with his other foot, and in the Quiet the train spun him with noise and light, spun him tight in his blanket, and he fell.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

  JULIE

  Julie had managed to alienate her entire family. Her daughter slept at her weird activist commune headquarters, furious with her. Her son was who knew where, furious with her. Val was camping in their daughter’s bedroom, leaving before Julie woke, timing her evenings to avoid Julie, furious with her. Julie tried to accommodate the anger, tried not to enter a room where Val might be; she’d rather not see her wife than watch her stand and walk away.

  She had no idea how everything had gone so wrong. Every day was an exercise in wrongness, wrong piled on top of wrong. There had to be something she could say or do to bring them back. Mere apology wasn’t doing it; she had tried that. Nobody answered her calls.

  The anger couldn’t last forever; she didn’t think so, anyway. Family; family lasted forever. Good family, anyhow. A part of her thought this was punishment for the way she’d shut her own parents out. That was different; that was survival. That was the family she’d been born into, and this was the family they’d created out of nothing. Created family, bound by love and promises and blood and tears and laughter. Why had it seemed so much stronger? Family was the shelter and the storm, both at once, an impossible thing that didn’t seem impossible. You assume your house is sturdy until the roof rips off and leaves you in the rain.

  So she carried on. She went to work, she paid the bills, she waited for someone to come through the door and sit with her and tell her she hadn’t ruined them. She had the sinking feeling that she was the storm.

  Her cooking had, for the first time in her life, begun to improve. Cooking turned out to be yet another thing that wanted attention and practice. She’d always thought of it as a chore like mowing the lawn or cleaning the grout, a thing you did to have it done. In this time when none of her normal coping mechanisms proved adequate, she found comfort in the subskills of food preparation. She watched videos explaining proper knife technique, explaining the chemistry and alchemy of baking and the smoke points of various oils.

  Tonight she’d attempted a galette, which was a thing like a savory pie but slightly different, free-form on a cookie tray instead of in a pie dish, which was a thing she knew they had somewhere but had not been able to find. It had thinly sliced yams, yams she’d sliced relatively evenly and only undercooked slightly, and goat cheese, which she’d bought specially, and caramelized onions, which she’d almost had enough patience for. The result was lumpy and misshapen but she’d cooked it right, and it tasted as close to delicious as she’d ever gotten. She wanted desperately for someone to arrive home and try it, to recognize in its flavors that she had always meant well and loved them all unconditionally.

  She carved a large piece and left the rest on a trivet by the stove for a family that wouldn’t come for it. Sat on the couch—the table was for family, and hers was achingly absent—and turned the television to a rerun of a show she and Val liked to watch. She couldn’t bear to watch a new episode; it seemed like a violation of rules that she was the only one left keeping. Except she’d been the one to violate other, bigger rules. This was all her fault, despite her good intentions.

  The door to Sophie’s room opened, and Julie felt sudden hope that the scents of onions and butter and dough had drawn Val. She wanted to say There’s dinner, but any invitation could be rebuffed, and that would feel infinitely worse than being ignored.

  Val came downstairs, to the actual room Julie was in, and Julie turned, but the expression on Val’s face was wrong. “David’s in the emergency room. Something about a train.”

  Julie was on her feet in an instant, her plate on the floor.

  They didn’t talk. Julie’s car was closest, but she passed her keys, because she had too many questions, like which hospital, and what about a train, what did that even mean. Easier to let Val drive than ask those questions and potentially get answers to them.

  Val wasn’t a speeder, but now she pushed the lights, weaving around cars and gunning through yellows, heading west. Julie wanted to put a hand on her arm, to say We’ll get there, it’s okay, slow down, but she didn’t know that any of those things were true without details she was afraid to ask for, or if her touch would be welcome, so she kept her hands in her lap, and tore at her cuticles, and watched the road from the unfamiliar passenger seat of her own car.

  Val was in a mode of high competence. Sign in here. Take this badge. Yes, we’re both his mothers. It was a weeknight and chilly after weeks of abnormal warmth, and the emergency room was relatively empty. A couple of sniffling children, a person holding an ice pack to their hand. It was easier to focus on them than on the phrase “He’s still in surgery.”

  The television played a home improvement show where people got absurdly excited about other people removing all the personality from their homes, and Julie watched while she ran web searches for “hit by a train” and learned that it mattered what kind of train, how fast it was going, how exactly the person had been hit.

  Her Pilot, always reliable, let her watch both screens while also watching the doors for movement, and siphoning off the silent scream she was trying her best not to let out. They sat in uncomfortable plastic seats, and at one point Val’s knee touched Julie’s and Julie held her breath, waiting for it to be drawn away again, but it stayed, and she narrowed all her focus to that contact, tuning out the television, the other people, the doors, the search results, the scream.

  “We should call Sophie,” Julie said, then corrected herself. “You should call Sophie. She’ll answer your call.”

  Val shifted in her seat, breaking the knee connection. “No. She doesn’t like half states.”

  “Half states?”

  “Do you remember? She didn’t want to know when David was coming home until he came home. She didn’t want to know the side effects of her medications unless we noticed them. We’ll call her as soon as he’s out of surgery.”

  Julie liked the phrase “out of surgery” better than “still in surgery,” so that made sense, as long as the one followed the other. “What if he doesn’t—”

  “Don’t say it. Nobody has said that.”

  “They said ‘hit by a train.’”

  “But he’s alive. He’s tough.”

  Julie risked reaching out and taking Val’s hand in hers, and Val squeezed back once, then returned Julie’s hand to her lap. The squeeze lifted Julie’s heart; maybe everything would be okay. A nurse called them in after what was too long, what was only made better by a moment of a hand in another hand, something Julie had always taken for granted and never would again.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

  SOPHIE

  It was Sophie’s own fault that David had been in the hospital for a full day before she got the news. Val had left two voice messages an hour apart while Sophie was busy, and who listened to voice messages? If the phone had rung three times in a row, she would have answered, maybe. If Val had texted, she’d have read it, but no texts, which was why Sophie didn’t even find out from Val. She found out because Gabe held his phone out to her halfway through a meeting and said, “Um, Soph, is this your brother?”

  The article was brief, a headline with little more to go on:

  LOCAL MAN HIT BY TRAIN
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  David Geller-Bradley, 25, was struck by a light-rail train when his foot became trapped in the track-switching mechanism. He was taken to Pimlico General, where he is listed in stable condition.

  The news story didn’t answer any number of questions she had, starting with why he was on a train track, and why he didn’t notice a train coming. The important part was “stable condition.” She pulled her muted phone from her pocket and discovered two missed calls and two voice mails. They hadn’t hidden it from her; they just couldn’t reach her.

  The whole circle was watching her, and it felt a bit like when she came out of a seizure to find everyone staring.

  “I have to go,” she said.

  Gabe smoothly took over the group, asking a question she forgot as soon as she heard it, clearly meant to redirect everyone. He was a good friend.

  She went to the office to get her wallet and make sure she had enough money to get out to the hospital on the opposite side of the city. Not that it was about inconvenience to her. If that was the closest hospital and they had saved him, then it was the best hospital ever. Her stupid brother, Local Man Hit by Train.

  “Is everything okay?” Dominic stood in the doorway.

  “Yeah. No. Uh, my brother is at Pimlico General. I’ve got to get over there.”

  “Do you want a ride?”

  Relief washed over her. “Please, if you don’t mind. I feel like you’re always rescuing me.”

  “My pleasure. Anything for the cause. Or for the leader of the cause.”

  “I’m not the leader,” she said.

  “Co-leader, then. You’ve got to know this group is so good because of your energy. You and Gabe both.”

  “Sure, I guess.”

  She followed Dominic out to the street and into a driving, cold rain. For a minute she thought the rain must have somehow confused David, but no, he had been hit the night before, not tonight. Clear skies. Hit by a train.