I’ve almost reached Nah and Nate when a weird Hannah-and-Mom kind of thing happens: A girl walks by me wearing a Pac-Man T-shirt, where Pac-Man is eating up all the ghosts, and I think, hungry ghost, and then I have a Newtonian moment. EUREKA! I realize that this feeling I’m having, the hole, and Annapolis not filling it: I’m just as much of a hungry ghost as Nah. I thought I was doing things to avoid ghostism, but I have had this condition ALL ALONG.

Getting Annapolis was all that was keeping me from falling right into this hole in my chest. Now I’ve been accepted, and there is nothing to distract me. Nah’s sober, graduation’s a couple months away, I’m on the path to becoming an astronaut.

And yet this hole, this hole is eating me alive.

I stand there in the middle of Boston Common, stunned. This is what those old sages were talking about, and Tite Kubo, the author of Bleach. If I died right now, I’d be a Hollow, and Ichigo Kurosaki would have to battle me, and that Soul Reaper would totally kick my ass. Hungry ghosts aren’t just Hannah or the ghouls in Bleach—addicts or people with issues. Anyone can be a hungry ghost. EVERYONE is a hungry ghost.

I wrap my arms around myself and try really hard to feel my feet on the ground because I suddenly feel floaty, but not in a good, zero-gravity way.

I am an empty hole that nothing can fill.

Not even NASA.

I’ve lost everything.

Even the stars.

A thought that I have had many times since my parents died swirls round and round in my head, like space debris: Who am I?

If I’m not the girl who is going to be an astronaut, or the girl who is but isn’t over the moon about it, then WHO AM I?

“Oh god.”

I don’t know who I am. I DON’T KNOW WHO I AM.

Am I a daughter? But if my parents are dead, then does that un-daughter me? As my quantitative value of being an orphan has increased, the qualitative value has decreased. Before the wave, I was a lucky orphan. Now I’m just a particularly unique one.

Am I a sister, even though Nah and I don’t share blood? And if she starts using again and dies, then would I still have a sister, even if that sister doesn’t exist anymore?

Am I a girl who likes manga and brownies and boys that smell like coffee and wind?

Am I a member of the armed forces?

An honors student?

A girl? But what is gender really?

An atheist? But I feel my dead parents and that is not very atheistic.