We fall asleep, hand in hand, curled against each other, like twins in a womb. When I wake up, Mae is gone.

So are my pills.

This right here, this is the Three of Swords card, each blade sticking into a heart: Betrayal.

Here I thought we were having a moment, and all she was trying to do was steal my fucking pills. Did she lie awake, waiting to make sure I was asleep?

I throw off the covers, ready to tear into her, but then I stop, because I can already see how this will play out. This argument in which I try to reason with the Queen of Swords—the embodiment of logic—about how it was wrong of her to flush her sister’s stolen opiates down the toilet.

I’m tired of losing things: pills, pride, people.

There is no point arguing, defending yourself. Everyone just decides who you are—that you’re a zero, a druggie—and nothing you do or say changes that. Once you get labeled an addict, that’s it. You’re fucked for life. That’s why at meetings they don’t let you say, Hi, I’m Hannah and I WAS an addict. No. You have to say, I AM an addict.

They never let you fucking forget.

At Al-Anon, where the parents go to bitch about us losers, I heard they have this saying, this fucked-up joke: How do you know an addict is lying?… Because she’s talking.

So maybe it doesn’t matter, the trying. No one’s gonna believe me anyway.

13

Mae

ISS Location: Low-Earth Orbit

Earth Date: 2 October

Earth Time (EST): 21:30

It’s cold in Boston.

And beautiful.

The leaves on the trees are russet, scarlet, gold. People wear scarves and wool coats now that it’s getting colder, and they walk quickly, with a lot of purpose. They have stiff upper lips.

In Boston, sprinkles are jimmies and milkshakes are frappes. We don’t take the train to Harvard Station, we take it to Hah-vahd Station. Every few blocks we pass a beautiful stone church. The graveyards here are so old the stones are crumbling, and the graves are filled with soldiers from the Revolutionary War. This place has roots.

I’ve always liked Boston more than LA. Maybe that’s because, thanks to Harvard’s Center for Astrophysics, there are more physicists here than anywhere else in the United States—except for NASA, of course. There’s MIT, too.

People here read a lot. On the train, on benches, in cafes. Everyone looks like they’ve pulled an all-nighter, because they probably have. It’s a town of universities, of smaht people. I really love it a lot. For the first time, I don’t feel like the strangest person in the room. I hope Annapolis is like this, too. And NASA.