I say stuff like that and Dad goes, “Maybe we should make an appointment with Dr. Brown,” and then I say I don’t really need to sit in her stupid paisley chair and talk about my problems and I walk out before he can start rattling off statistics about adolescent junkies, though he would never use that word. Neither would I. Because I’m not one—a junkie, no matter what they say in group. Mom tries to sweeten the deal with some Reiki from her friend Cynthia after the Dr. Brown appointments, to balance things out.
There isn’t enough Reiki in the world to fix me, but I don’t tell her that.
I wrote this on a stop sign a few days ago, after my first week of senior year:
i am invisible.
Mae would say this is a scientifically unsound assertion, but she doesn’t understand that some things are true even if you don’t have proof.
I don’t know why I do them. The acorns. It’s weird, I guess, to leave little pieces of yourself all over Los Angeles and never go back to pick them up.
1
Mae
ISS Location: Low-Earth Orbit
Earth Date: 29 August
Earth Time (PST): 20:10
I find out in waves.
My grandmother picks up her cell phone in Florida and dials my number. She calls me because I’m the commander of our crew while my parents are in Malaysia. And also because, even though she doesn’t know what my sister did in March, doesn’t know about the stuff Mom found in Hannah’s room and the counseling sessions and her failed classes, Gram somehow knows that Nah is not okay right now. It’s hard to talk on the phone to someone who only speaks crying, or doesn’t speak at all. So Gram calls me.
My phone rings, and I answer in the way I always do, our way, which is to tell her something I’ve learned today. She says this is good practice for my NASA interview. Never mind I still have to get three degrees and become a test pilot in between now and then. Sometimes, just to see if I’m in fighting shape, she’ll throw a devilishly hard calculus problem my way. That’s what you get for having a grandmother who’s a retired math teacher.
“Gram. Hello! I can’t get in touch with Dad—have you tried? It’s just after breakfast in Malaysia and he’s probably on the beach, but maybe the guesthouse has a number? It’s of the utmost importance that I call him immediately because I was reading today’s Bad Astronomy post and it’s all about how Dad’s quintessence theory about dark energy is getting more support from that Harvard string theorist nemesis of his! This paper came out, and in it, they mentioned Dad by name: Dr. Winters’s theories gain more credence … That’s my Scientist Voice, in case you didn’t know. I’m aware of the neurological benefits of rest when one is on vacation, but this is a DARK MATTER EMERGENCY, so—”
“Sweetie—”
“These physicists are seeing that Dad’s probably right about string theory not being compatible with the rapid expansion of the universe. Finally! Of course, we have to see from the experiments up in space if the rate of acceleration is constant, because if it’s not, that’s a whole other—”
“Mae.”
I stop talking. The way she says my name causes tiny electrical pulses to spread across the tips of my fingers. I’m not like Mom and Nah—I don’t believe in vibes, and I certainly don’t allow Cynthia to do “energy work” on me (good grief). But I do get tingles. Specifically in my fingers. And that’s never good. Never. I know it’s only a biological reaction to external stimuli, but Mom insists it’s an indication of my female intuition; never mind that female is a concept up for debate, anyway.
There’s a pause while my grandmother’s phone converts her next words into an electrical signal, which is then transmitted into radio waves to the cell tower nearest her. The network of towers carries that wave across the country from a condo in Fort Lauderdale to my cell phone in Venice Beach, California. My phone converts her radio wave to an electrical signal and then back to sound.
And the sound I hear is Gram’s crinkly, butterscotch-candy-wrapper voice whisper, “Honey? Something’s happened.”
i am not enough.
Elevator Door
Hedrick Hall, UCLA
Westwood, Los Angeles
2
Hannah
I hate cell phones. They skeeve me out. Priscilla, this circus aerialist who basically lives on the boardwalk and used to sell weed or pills to me sometimes—okay, more than sometimes—she told me that the government can track where