“Nah.” My voice is faraway, tinny.

I took the pills away. How is this happening?

I can’t move. I need to. I should. Mom would be on the floor already, cleaning her up, fixing this, but it’s like someone’s put weights in my shoes.

Gravity is a bitch.

She looks up at me. “I wish I were you.”

Nah lets out a laugh like the lady on the boardwalk at home who sells incense and tells everyone she’s Cleopatra reincarnated and also she knows who killed JFK and do we by any chance have some weed we can give her because she just needs a little something.

“You think you know everything, Mae, but you don’t know—you don’t know…” She breaks down, hacking sobs that echo throughout the kitchen. “People like me, like Mom—we’re never enough. That counselor at the clinic lied, she lied, because we’re not, we’re not.”

“What are you talking about?” I lean down, just outside the puddle of bourbon and miserable sister. “Nah, please. I know this is the most horrible thing, but you can’t do this, you have to stop, you have to … to find something to keep breathing for—”

“I’m not like you, Mae,” she says, her eyes so bright with fury that they look like the Helix Nebula in infrared: two bursts of green fire. Dad’s eyes. “I can’t just forget them, put my head down, and get on with all my grand plans for life—”

“Forget them?”

I shoot up and, oh, that fight-or-flight response kicks in and I want both at the same time—how dare she, and maybe she’s right, maybe I’m a terrible daughter, but Dad said, he always said I had to never give up and—

Nate pushes off the counter and gets in Nah’s face. “Not cool, cuz.”

I am being flooded with chemicals and my body responds to the increased adrenaline by shaking uncontrollably, because I thought I’d worked the problem, gotten us here, away from the pills on the boardwalk, but our problems have followed us and now I don’t even have Micah to help, and danger is in the equation, an X that ensures no matter how many experiments you conduct, it will never come out right. This addiction, this sister—how can I solve problems with variables like these?

Something warm and solid rests between my shoulder blades—Ben’s hand. For just a second, there’s quiet. I breathe.

It was so nice in the living room. Fixing Nate’s project. Talking to Ben. I didn’t realize I needed a break from my sister, from her weather system, until I had it. Every time I’m with Nah these days, it feels like liftoff will never happen. Like we’ll both be grounded by the wave forever.