“—been over thirty hours since the tsunami hit,” a reporter says. “The American embassy in Kuala Lumpur says they’re making every effort to—”

“Why can’t anyone fucking answer this shit?” Micah growls into his phone.

Due to high volumes …

A McDonald’s commercial comes on. Fuck Happy Meals and Ronald McDonald, that creepy-ass clown. Probably a pedophile. My eyes fill, and when Micah reaches for me, I let myself collapse.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper.

Why can’t I be strong like Mae? Why do I always have to be an open wound?

“Nothing to be sorry about,” he murmurs, fingers in my hair.

Later, half-asleep, I hear Mae and Micah talking.

Mae tells him how she just read on the National Geographic website that many bodies are never found after a tsunami because they’re washed out to sea. Jesus fuck. So there’s actually something even worse than them dying.

I get that Mae has to know how things work so she can form a hypothesis—If many bodies wash out to sea, then we may never find our parents—but I don’t care how things work, just that they actually freaking work. I need unicorns in the sky shitting rainbows, not data.

“Do you think they made it?” Micah asks quietly.

I stop breathing. There’s a long pause. Too long. Remember: Mae knows all the things.

“Ask me at ninety-six hours,” she says.

Four days. In the modern world, if you can’t contact someone within that amount of time, you are incapable of contacting them.

“But what’s your gut feeling?” Micah says. His voice is so hopeful, so broken.

I can imagine the look on her face. “I need more data.”

my mom is terrible at holding her breath.

Death Tarot Card

4302 Seaview Lane

Venice, CA

6

Hannah

I think I might fall off the wagon again.

Preferably today. Preferably now.

Are wagons really that hard to climb back onto? They don’t say fall off a skyscraper, fall out of a plane. It’s just a wagon.

A single pill.

On a loop, in my head, never ending: I told her to go. I told her to go.

We haven’t heard a thing.

Anyone would want a pill if they hadn’t heard a thing. Not Mae, but a normal person, maybe.