Nate wraps his arms around me, then pulls me onto his lap like I’m a little girl and it’s embarrassing but nice to cry into a T-shirt that says STRING THEORY with an illustration of a cat tangled up in a ball of yarn.

I can hear Hannah crying, too, but I don’t look.

“Good, Buzz. Let all that shit out,” he murmurs.

It does feel good. Like someone released a pressure valve I didn’t know I had. I wish I could cry more. I see why people do it now.

“Mae,” Hannah says. “I … I’m sorry. I am. I really am.”

I look up at her. She’s a little blurry.

“Then let us help you,” I say.

“The doctors at the ER recommended Hannah do an intensive inpatient program,” Aunt Nora says. “There’s one out in Belmont. But we’ll do the detox first and the outpatient program at Boston Children’s. If that goes well, then the inpatient rehab won’t be necessary—other than detox, Hannah will be home with us each night.”

“It’s Thanksgiving in three days,” Nah says. “Can’t I do all this after?”

She doesn’t say: our first without them.

Aunt Nora’s eyes well up. “Sweetie, we want you to have a lot more Thanksgivings. That’s why we’re doing this. You know we can’t wait on the detox.”

“What exactly … How does this detox thing work?” Nate asks.

Uncle Tony tries to explain, because Nah has gone silent, into herself. Every now and then, one of her legs kicks out, an involuntary spasm. I read about this—it’s where the phrase kicking the habit comes from. Nah has done detox before, but she refused to ever talk about it with me. Just said it was worse than death.

But we know better now. Nothing can be worse than that.

Uncle Tony tells Nate the things I read about online. Detox is basically three or four days of Nah battling her own body. Like a knock-down, drag-out under her skin. Either she kicks the habit, or the habit kicks her.

“I don’t need that,” Nah insists. “The pills just help me feel normal. I don’t even get high anymore when I take them, not really. If I can just get some Suboxone to taper off—”

“The fact they make you feel normal means you’re addicted,” Aunt Nora says.

It’s true. The more opiates you have in your system, the more dependent the brain gets on those chemicals, and the opiates begin to have a normalizing effect.

“You heard what the doctor said: This can cause brain damage, Hannah,” Uncle Tony says. “A stroke. Heart and cognitive defects. You don’t get that Suboxa stuff, whatever it’s called, until you’ve detoxed. It won’t work otherwise, the doctor said that. We have to get you back to normal before you—”

My sister explodes.