Magonia(20)

That was the first time something felt accurate. I tried to explain to Carol and Eve, but it created concerns that I might be planning to perish.
“Suicidal ideation,” said Carol, “is what that sounds like.” I could feel her dialing a therapist in her head. She wasn’t wrong. It did sound that way.
“Straight up, kiddo, are you thinking of offing yourself?” asked Eve, clearly using unserious words to ease her way into talking about something serious.
“I’m fine,” I said. She looked at me, her eyebrow up.
“You don’t have to be fine. If you were fine, that’d mean you had no human feelings. I’m not fine. Neither is Carol. We loved Aza. But know that if you ever thought it’d be a plan to kill yourself, we’d come and find you and kill you all over again. Just so you know. So do NOT. If you’re thinking about it, come to us. We’ll figure out a better choice.”
“No,” I said. “This isn’t about suicide. This is about philosophy.”
They looked at me, with no intention of believing anything was about philosophy. Which, okay, I was touch and go. I’m still touch and go.
“Pills?” said Carol. “I notice you’re looking a little—”
“A little what?”
“A little pi,” says Eve.
I try not to make eye contact with her. A little pi. How does she know? I’ve been quiet.
“Yes,” I told her. “I’m taking them.” Antianxiety. Which do not work. Anything working right now would be a miracle.
Carol’s been trying to get me to see a therapist. Eve’s been trying to send me to yoga, the practice of which has semi-calmed her wrath about the state of the universe. I got her to desist by doing a brief, not-too-shabby, I-already-know-about-yoga crane pose. Aza made fun of yoga. It drove her crazy when I did that pose. That was the main reason I learned to do it—to crack her up.
FYI, that shit is as hard as it looks.
“I don’t blame you for that,” Eve said, looking at how I was all twisted around my own arms. “I’m mad about things I can’t fix too. Yoga doesn’t fix anything. It only dulls the aggravation. Ice caps, Burmese pythons, and floodplains are still a mess . . .”
And she was off. I briefly, briefly felt a little bit better.
Right now, it’s three a.m., and Eve comes into my room. The moms are on watch.
She puts a mug of hot milk down on my desk. I look at it, minorly tempted. Hot milk is one of the lesser evils, but it’s still an evil.
“Honey,” she says.
“I’m busy,” I say. “I promise I’m not falling apart.”
“You seem like you are,” she says. “And even if you’re not right now, if you don’t start sleeping, you will be soon.”
“What if Carol died?” I say. “How would you sleep?” I regret it the moment I say it.
Eve looks stricken. “I’d be awake,” she says. “For years.”
“Well,” I say. “It’s the same thing.”
“Yeah, but you can’t be awake for years,” she says.
“Even though you just said you would be.”
“Even though.” She’s whispering.
“I can be awake for three days, and I slept before that. I slept for four hours on each of the days after it happened,” I say. “I’ll sleep after tomorrow. I’m on it. I’m working.”
What I’m working on: I’m planning Aza’s funeral.
After a while, Eve goes. I feel mean. I send her a text telling her I’m sorry. I hear her phone buzz down the hall. After a second, I get a message back from her.
Don’t die, she says. Dying won’t help.
Sometimes Eve is exactly the right mom. There’s no “pass away” or “lose” in that.
She sends another text. This time, a guilty one.
And if you *really* don’t want to fall asleep, I wouldn’t drink the milk. Carol made it.
Carol loves me, is worried about me, and is a doctor with access to sleeping pills. I move the milk off the desk. I’m not done thinking, but I turn off the overhead light for a minute.
Aza must have done what she did to my ceiling a week or so before she died. It doesn’t show during the day. Pretty sure the moms don’t know about it. I didn’t either until I turned out the lights for the first time, two nights after she died. Glow paint.
AZA RAY WAS HERE.
Except that the last E got smudged due to Aza apparently falling off my headboard or something. So, it actually reads AZA RAY WAS HER.
I look at that for a minute, trying to get myself together. I’m a f*cking mess of rattling pi and things I never said.
I spent the last ten years talking. Why I couldn’t say any of the right words, I don’t know.
I want to install a better version of all the things that happened right before she died. All the crazy stuff, beginning with the skyship, right through the feather in Aza’s lung. The storm when we were in the basement—the whole town should have been rain, and lightning, and it was only Aza’s block.

Yes. I know people die. I know that when people die, the people they leave behind always think something insane happened, because death, by its nature, feels insane. It’s part of how humans have always dealt with dying, as though it’s somehow special, as though every person who dies is a hero. We want to die spectacularly, not just “perish.”
I keep trying to make it make sense.
In the ambulance, the medic cut into her like she wasn’t even a person. Aza made a choking noise. Her back arched. Her heart stopped again. The medic used the crash pads to start it. Twice.