Except that the last time someone I loved got on a plane, I never saw them again. Everything feels like it’s made of glass: me and Micah, the future, my body.

I start to walk away, but he pulls me back. “You’re not just my girlfriend—you’re my family. We’ll get through this.”

Later, on the plane, I catch myself staring out the window as we fly over fields and cities and rivers and highways. Looking hard at the clouds, at the rips between the white and gray. I think I’m looking for them. I don’t know where they are, what they are. I don’t know if they were taken on purpose or not. Can they see me?

I catch myself looking for Micah, too.

It feels like he’s a ghost already.

Mae leans her head against my shoulder. “They have Toy Story. Want to watch together?” She tries to smile. “‘To infinity and beyond.’”

Our thing.

I look away. “Disney lied. Infinity doesn’t exist.”

“Well, actually, if you consider—” I give her a look, and she stops.

I don’t want to be conscious anymore. Then I have to think about new schools and a house that smells different from mine and a whole life of waking up and remembering they’re gone.

I push an eye mask over my eyes. Mae rests her head on my shoulder, and we sleep our way across the country.

i want to go home, but i don’t have one.

Baggage Claim Carousel

Logan Airport

Boston

12

Hannah

There’s a place between waking and sleeping, and I try to stay there.

It’s warm, like bathwater. It tastes like forgetting.

I just want to never leave, huddled under the blankets, curled in on myself. Floating.

I have three Vicodin left of Dad’s month supply. Mae kept me from going to the boardwalk to get more from Priscilla. I need to conserve them until I find a dealer here. I had a quit attempt yesterday, but by noon I gave up. I’ll get good again—I just need to get through the next … I just need to get through.

I hear the door open—it creaks, this strange, new door in my strange new room.

“Nah?”

I don’t say anything, just scoot closer to the wall. Mae lies down and throws an arm over me.

“I feel like I’m in a black hole,” I say. This is speaking Mae’s language.

“Did you know that a black hole is actually a collapsed star?” she says. I shake my head. “To escape it, you’d have to travel FASTER than the speed of light. Which is really fast.”

“How fast?”

“Six hundred seventy million miles per hour.”

“Fuck.”

“Right?” she says. “That’s why a black hole is black—not even the light can escape it.”