Here we go. I expected a lecture. Instead, I get Dr. Mae, who has done so much research on my disease that Harvard will likely give her an honorary degree. Opiate abuse results in nausea and vomiting, loss of appetite, loss of parents.

“Not yet, Dr. Winters.”

Mae looks down at me. “What did you take, and how much?”

My sister. So good. It would never occur to her, like it did to me, to steal our dead father’s opiates.

I lie, because I’m good at it, and because it never occurs to Mae to lie. She’s so smart, but kind of dumb, too.

“Vicodin. I just had one pill left,” I say. “I hid it. For an emergency. That’s all I took. I promise.”

Her eyes search mine the way they search the night sky for falling meteorites. “Okay,” she finally says. “But that’s it?”

“That’s it. I just miss them. You know?”

She nods, then lies next to me on the rug. We are quiet.

That kid in group was right about all of us in the Circle of Sad: I am a piece-of-shit lying junkie.

“There’s a crack in your ceiling.”

“Yeah.”

Right now, my sister radiates calm. Usually she’s buzzing, like a third rail, zzzzzzzzz, never stops, but right now she’s like putting your hand on a stone that’s been sitting out in the sun for hours. A rock. Me? I’m water. A puddle. Sludge at the bottom of a well.

I wait for her to tell me I’m a piece-of-shit junkie. She won’t say it like that. She will use big words and be precise and reasonable. But underneath, we’d both know I’m a piece-of-shit junkie.

“The Red Cross called,” Mae says. She almost whispers it. “They need DNA.”

I turn my head to look at her. Push the cobwebs out of my brain. Dee-en-nay.

“What?”

She swallows. “To help them identify the bodies, Nah.”

There’s not enough Vicodin in the world.

“Fuck no. Fuck that.”

I have decided that my parents are just floating. Forever. Whole and forever and they will float on the sea with sunlight and moonlight. Hand in hand.

She ignores this and explains how, in order to prevent disease, the Malaysian government has dug mass graves. Our parents might be in one of those. Mom, with dirt and other people on top of her. She’d hate that. She never liked closed spaces, always had mini panic attacks on elevators. We took the stairs a lot. “Good for our hearts,” she said. Then she would grin. “And our asses.”

I push up onto my elbow, which is goddamn hard when you’re made of sand. “They’re not bodies, they’re our parents, Mae.” I have a hard time zeroing in on her face, but I do my best. “Don’t get fucking clinical on me.”