Where is she getting this Percocet? Dad had Vicodin. Did she steal the pills from my aunt and uncle? Because if she did, they are going to find out, and when they do, they will have to deal with this, and they already have enough to do, taking us in. I mean, that is a real violation, stealing someone’s medicine. Uncle Tony said the vodka is missing, in addition to his bottle of bourbon. Nate took the blame for that, but he said it’s the last time he’ll cover for Nah. And then I had to lie to Nate when he asked what was going on with her, the drinking. I made it sound like it’s a new thing.

When I told her I knew about the new pills, the old Hannah—sober Hannah, who is sweet and likes to dance around the kitchen with Mom—was gone, and this Hannah told me to mind my own fucking business and leave her the hell alone.

And I can’t do that, obviously. But the way I’m going about it is all wrong, I think. I don’t want to push her away even more. Then we’ll never get back to each other.

Her grief, it’s an ocean. It’s a wave. Mine, I think, is a glacier, floating in that water. I can feel it in my chest, this ancient, cold mountain of grief. It’s all in one place, but you can only see the tip. It’s so much bigger than people realize.

I spend most nights on the trampoline in the backyard, staring up at the stars, wrapped in a sleeping bag. It hurts too much to use the telescope Dad bought me for my birthday last year. It seems wrong to look through it without being able to tell him what I see. It’s strange, how instinctual it is to search for dead people in the sky. Perhaps it’s a biological imperative our psyche needs to make sense out of the sudden disappearance of the people we love. I always knew my parents were not going to live forever. But my brain never told my heart that.

They’re not up there, gazing down on me. But I can’t stop looking.

I don’t remember what it was like being in foster care—I was too young. But my bones know what it’s like to be abandoned, and I feel that deep inside, like you’d have to give me an MRI to see it. It’s an ache that won’t go away.

Everyone I love leaves me. I don’t know why.